4C’s of Success

While the dawn of Internet technology made it a viable educational alternative, electronic learning can never truly prosper without paying careful attention to the following “4 C’s”:

• A Culture of learning;
• Champions who will lead eLearning efforts;
• Communications that position eLearning’s value; and
• Attractive Compensation scheme for people to accept the eLearning culture

These 4C’s are broadly described as follows:

Focus at the enterprise level.
New cultures can be successfully adapted when a sufficient critical mass of people wanting that particular change to happen exists. Trying to work those cultural issues group by group can only prove frustrating and failure-prone. In the event that the training and development community within the organization is fragmented, try to bring unity to the function. Otherwise, not enough clout will exist to change much of anything. A learning management system like Excelearn can assist in this endeavor.

Incorporate learning directly into the work environment.
As far as possible, make eLearning a part of everyone’s daily work activities. A simple way to begin doing this is to take time out of the daily schedule to share new insights or problems.

Resources should be easily accessible.
This means placing main eLearning access points on the intranet pages people visit most often. While this may create some initial fears about cost and security, the advantages that result often more than compensate for the risk.

Teach executives.
Give your employees some short, business-oriented eLearning publications that address their chief concerns. Try to offer them benchmarking data that indicates the effectiveness of eLearning. Suggest to your employees a business conference where they can talk to their peers and experts about eLearning.

Pay no attention to the disbelievers.
Never waste your time trying to sell eLearning to those who are resistant to it. Their inability to adapt to eLearning methodologies could be based on good intentions, genuine strategic disagreements, or personal issues such as fear of losing power. Many people come around when they witness that some benefits are resulting from the eLearning process. A custom eLearning development program can illuminate these results more quickly and vividly.

Communicate value from the top order.
Always make sure your sponsors are involved in the communication process. If you’ve built management ownership into your agreement, getting them to spread your message to others should be easy. Communication from the top also lends trustworthiness to your efforts to institute an eLearning culture.

Build support with coaches first.
Design a separate communication strategy for front-line managers, as their support is vital if workplace learning is to be successful. Commence your work with them early, before the deployment of your eLearning initiatives, since it will definitely take some time to win them over.

Build and promote an initial win.
Position your communications around best practices and solid examples of what eLearning can accomplish. Highlight what you have already achieved, even if it’s a small win, Tout your eLearning successes with endorsements and testimonials of the resulting benefits and impact on senior managers and learners, if possible.

What will I achieve from this?
This is likely to be the first question most of the employees in any organization will ask themselves. Top management has to deal with the incentives issue if they hope to encourage their employees to adopt the new culture readily. If management can effectively relate the eLearning effort to the performance appraisal, workers will see this as directly affecting their own bottom lines: in the form of bonuses, raises and promotional prospects within the organization.

Make everyone aware of the consequences.
The managing committee should clearly spell out the positive consequences of adopting such cultural changes to their employees. Alternatively, the negative consequences should be implied to those who are unwilling to adopt the new culture. Whichever of these two consequential approaches is employed, management must take up fair measurement criteria to track the progress of their employees’ job performance.

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