Key Results Summary

Turnaround: Revamping a Corporate E-Learning Site

Situation:

The international division of a major insurance company entered into a four year agreement with an E-learning vendor to provide online training courses for 600 information systems workers worldwide. Two years after the deployment, the courseware was virtually unused.

Action Plan:

• Current users were interviewed / surveyed to find out what value they received. Previous users were interviewed / surveyed to find out why they used the materials and why they were no longer using them. Non-users were interviewed / surveyed to find out if they were aware of the resource and if so, why they did not utilize it.
• Results from interviews and surveys indicated a substantial lack of awareness of the resources. Current users and previous users indicated that much of the course content was not relevant to their current work. In general, users felt strongly that there was a lack of time available to pursue training even if it was specific to their needs.
• Meetings were held with the vendor to discuss the situation and look for solutions. New content and courseware were available that was not offered at the time the contract was signed. Partnering with the vendor the contract was restructured to include access to online technical books and hundreds of new courses that were currently available.
• Training needs of the technical staff were assessed and matched to the available curriculum and resource materials. A new access portal web site was built and tested.
• Promotional materials were developed and a series of presentations were scheduled to brief the user audience about the new E-Learning site, new content, and new ways to utilize the content.
• E-newsletters were distributed to the users monthly and promotional flyers were posted to maintain awareness. Staff usage was recognized by notifying student’s managers of their course completions. Success stories were gathered from users and published to promote additional usage.
• Usage of the online training and the online technical reference materials were closely monitored and reported to management.

Results:

Within weeks dozens of users had accessed the new system. Usage of online training materials was monitored and evidenced by hundreds of completed courses over the first six months of deployment. Usage of the online technical reference material also increased monthly. User feedback that the reference materials were valuable for finding answers to immediate technical challenges was used to further promote usage of the resource materials. One year after redeployment, usage was at an all time high and new target audience specific content was being evaluated.