OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, is a goal-setting system used by organizations like Google, Spotify and Twitter, to set measurable goals within the performance management process.

Instead of setting completely disparate goals for each employee, OKRs help employees work towards a common goal or “result” through individual objectives.

In this post, we’ll take a look at what OKRs are for, when you might use them and how to set OKRs for effective employee performance management.

What are OKRs for?

Put simply, OKRs are a way for employees to get aligned with their wider team and organization with their own objectives.

Traditionally, workplace goals might be something like “Improve presentation skills” or “Become a better communicator.” While these are important, they don’t provide any way of measuring success. OKRs aren’t just about working towards a goal – they show what success looks like.

The basic structure of an OKR is:

I will [objective] as measured by [key results].

Essentially, this means “where do I want to go?” and “how do I know when I’m there?”.

A real-life example of this might be:

All key results should contain a number. This keeps the result measurable and gives the employee something to aim for.

OKRs also shift the focus from outputs to outcomes. For example, under a traditional goal-setting system, a marketing manager may be expected to create six ebooks a year to increase leads.

With OKRs, their key result may be to increase leads by 20% in a year, which may be achieved with a single great ebook. This can help shift from “working hard” to “working smart.”

What are the benefits of OKRs?

Some of the key benefits of OKRs for performance management include:

• More focused performance improvements. Instead of improving in 10 areas by 5% each, employees know exactly which skill they need to focus on, meaning they can instead improve in one desired area by 50%.

• Better strategic alignment. If an entire team’s goals are aligned, this will ultimately be better for the organization than taking a scattergun approach. OKRs ensure that everyone is progressing in the same direction for better strategic results.

• More engaged employees. People like having goals to work towards, and putting numbers against those goals means that they have something concrete to work towards. Once they have achieved the key results listed in their OKRs, they will benefit from a sense of accomplishment and feel motivated to set their next set of goals.

• A more cohesive company culture. OKRs make the goal-setting process more transparent and focused.

How do I record and track OKRs?

How many times have you set goals as part of your annual appraisal and then never revisited them? Unfortunately, this is the case in many, many organizations.

OKRs actually work best when they’re shorter-term goals – perhaps quarterly. They should then be revisited in every performance conversation, so you can find out how employees are progressing towards their goals.

Performance management systems like Totara Perform span the full spectrum from traditional performance management to new practices. In Totara Perform, you can add OKRs and refer back to them every time you discuss an employee’s performance. You can set your own schedule, whether your OKRs last for a month, a quarter or for a whole project.

Setting OKRs in a dedicated system—rather than using paper-based performance management tools or noting them down in Word documents—ensures that they remain front of mind and become a useful tool for managing performance.

With a well-crafted training or e-learning video, learners can pause, play, rewind or repeat as many times as necessary. Video is an engaging medium because it facilitates self-paced learning and increases the effectiveness of the workplace learning process.

That being said, creating e-learning videos takes some time and effort.

To spare you from incurring extravagant costs or spending an unjustifiable amount of hours on creating training videos for your courses, we’ve included some actionable tips to strengthen, simplify and shorten the production process

1. Create concise, content-rich training videos

When it comes to e-learning videos, especially those dedicated to detailed courses, less is often more.

This means using the principle of simplicity in your e-learning videos to convey information in the simplest way possible.

Ensure that your videos pack a punch by making them concise and focused on a specific topic. Pithy videos are important because most of your employees will find long-length e-learning videos overwhelming, time-consuming and in dire cases, boring.

So, instead of firehosing information your learner with information in a single video, split course material into multiple shorter videos and collect them into a playlist (easy to do with an LXP like Totara Engage). This will enhance an employee’s retention of the subject matter while also respecting their time constraints.

2. Enhance your video with vivid examples

Filming yourself talking about a topic for hours on end in a talking-head format makes for a poor instructional or educational video. This makes the case for showing examples of skills being applied in real-life situations rather than simply telling your learners what they need to do.

e-Learning videos are ideal for demonstrations or “how-to” content that provides a complete picture of the topic employees are learning about. Capitalising on this visually demonstrative nature, you can improve video training content and give learners greater meaning and context by leveraging:

• Whiteboard animations

• Simple screen sharing

• B-roll footage

• And animated graphics

3. Spice up training videos with simple storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story?

No matter what learning medium you use, poor-performing and vanilla content will cause learners to quickly lose interest.

One way to avoid this is to inject vigor into your content using simple storytelling elements to make the learning “stick” and provide a captivating experience.

Stop making your online courses too textbook-focused. When you deliver the course through intriguing stories, it will be much easier for learners to follow and retain crucial information.

For example, if you want to teach how to operate equipment, you can start by creating characters that are currently facing a problem. After that, you can break down some possibilities to overcome them.

4. Add animations to amplify retention

Cartoons and animations have always been a part of our childhood. Fortunately, they also make the online courses more fun and enjoyable to follow.

That’s why videos that primarily rely on animations like animated explainer videos can sometimes help learners retain information better. They take the boredom away from learning – without overshadowing the subject matter.

Not to mention that animation is great for depicting something that can’t be filmed by real-life cameras. This is extremely useful, especially if you deliver content on complicated subjects like science or geography.

5. Leverage interactive elements to boost engagement

Use tech tools to add quizzes, clickable links on videos, mini-games, branching scenarios, and more. You might also want to give your learners opportunities to ask some questions or provide some feedback.

Ask yourself, ‘how can I spark attention and delight my learners?.’

Put your marketing hat on and try to think about what kind of entertainment your learners would enjoy while absorbing your lessons.

Wrapping up

With the five tips mentioned above, you can now create better video training content to add more flavor and fun to your online courses and training.

If you’re looking to take interactivity and engagement even further, you can combine an enterprise LMS like Totara Learn, with an LXP like Totara Engage to allow your employees to collaborate, share and curate video/ learning playlists and empower your subject matter experts.

About the guest author

Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).

Welcome to the latest post in our Disruption Debate series, where Lars Hyland speaks to some of L&D’s top influencers and thought leaders about the most pressing issues facing businesses today. This time, we spoke to Clive Shepherd, founding director at The More Than Blended Learning Company. Clive has played a key role in the L&D sector for 30 years, with particular interest in technology-assisted learning and communications. We wanted to find out more about Clive’s unique insight into the industry, as well as where he thinks we need to start making changes in our approach to learning.

Sustained change leading to significant change

“Thinking about the last 10 years in L&D, there have been some major changes,” said Clive. “Firstly, there’s the shift from events to processes. It is now widely acknowledged that learning is best conceived as a process that takes place over time, requiring a range of different methods and media. This change is hugely disruptive for some L&D teams. At worst, they have acted like travel agents – instead of booking you into a hotel, they book you onto a course in a purely transactional relationship. And even this intermediary level isn’t needed anymore, as learners can book themselves onto a course directly on an LMS.”

Lars considered how this might affect the outsourcing of L&D services, where the aim is for third-party learning vendors to organise courses for an organisation. However, as Lars said, the model behind this approach doesn’t fit the new reality, as it suggests a lack of understanding about the real business context. Clive agreed, saying that outsourcing only makes sense to introduce efficiencies into the old model of ‘learning as an event,’ which is becoming obsolete.

The best of blended learning

The second major disruption Clive has observed is the move from exclusively face-to-face training to learning remotely. “This is bringing about major benefits in terms of flexibility and scalability,” said Clive, “but there are times when learning face-to-face is still the right choice, when we need to make a big emotional impact on our learners, shift mind-sets and help learners gain confidence.”

Clive compared the choices we make in terms of learning with how we consume media: “We routinely listen to music streamed on our phones, but every now and then we take the trouble to go to a concert or festival. This creates lifelong memories, but it’s not part of our usual routine. Most of our consumption of music, sport and drama is remote and we’re happy with that, but when we go to a live football match or a play, the impact can be profound.” This is why Clive believes that getting the right balance between remote learning and face-to-face learning is essential for the success of today’s learning departments.

“It’s hard to change mindsets with e-learning or videos. Sometimes we need the emotional impact of a face-to-face experience to make a difference.”

Lars gave the example of virtual simulations, where pilots or firefighters may encounter a dangerous situation in a virtual environment for safe practice. Clive agreed, but reflected that while we can take people a long way remotely, there comes a time when learners have to interact with real people, whether that’s a surgeon practising their skills under the watch of an experienced supervisor or a pilot getting into a real cockpit to practise flying a real plane.

From dependency to empowerment

“People now realise that the power to make learning happen is in their hands”

Clive has identified a further disruptive force being the shift from dependency on L&D to determine what learning is done and when to a situation in which learners are empowered to discover content and learn independently.

“Historically, we used to moan that nobody attempted to learn anything if they weren’t told what to do and how. But now, people don’t really need to be told – they just do it. Once you’re empowered, there’s no going back, and employers telling you what to do will feel increasingly weird and patronising.”

Lars highlighted the role of technology in this move towards empowerment. “We’re living in an age in which people can run a business from their mobile phone. If you can do that, a single person is far more capable than ever before in history. And if you can combine this individual power, you begin to challenge the notion of a centralised structure in an organisation.”

However, moving to this model of many empowered learners teaming up to accelerate learning isn’t always plain sailing. As Clive points out, there are often cultural resistances to social learning. “If people are afraid of saying the wrong things, making mistakes or drawing attention to themselves, they won’t feel safe engaging in social learning. It’s a huge waste not to take advantage of social media in a workplace context, but in reality there is some way to go before many organisations can create the safe culture in which learning can thrive.”

The new face of L&D

“There are lots of new roles in L&D today, requiring many new skills. As one example, take curation – it can be enormously valuable to the population you work with to act as a filter to all the content out there that could be useful.  As a curator you suggest how people might ‘connect with this person, read this article, watch this video’ – dramatically reducing the time they need to spend trying to find relevant material.”

Clive suggests three areas in which L&D professionals need new skills to stay ahead of the game:

1. Facilitation skills
   Interacting with learners to support them on their learning journeys and help them to make the most of available opportunities
2. Consulting skills
   Acting more like a doctor or a lawyer – providing an additional perspective on a performance problem rather than simply acting in a transactional ‘course booking’ role
3. Digital content skills
   Making the most of existing and emerging technologies, and staying on top of the latest developments in digital content

Lars said that the idea of a professional e-learning production has now shifted. “We can’t tie activities up in a nice neat bow, ask learners to do them in a specific time window and have them transformed at the other end anymore – that’s not how it works. It’s a continuous experience requiring mistakes and toing and froing – it’s inherently messy.” That’s why, according to Clive, L&D needs to ‘match the messiness’ of real learning and embrace the way people actually learn today – and that means acquiring new skills to help them do that.

Building a sustainable learning infrastructure

Our last talking point was raised by Lars: what exactly does a sustainable learning infrastructure look like?

Clive responded: “We need to be as open as possible to help people access what they identify as useful. Don’t shut doors and make it impossible for people to use their own mobile devices or access YouTube at work. We can’t control everything and we shouldn’t want to.”

As well as this, Clive believes we need to be using systems which make it easy for employers to understand their employees and the gaps in their skills and knowledge. From there, we need to be making it as easy and possible to find and share information, which may include user-generated content, as well as just-in-time performance support, such as web articles, videos and micro-content.

Finally, Clive issued a reminder not to underestimate the power of personal reward in learning. “People like doing courses if they’ll get a personal advantage, such as a badge, a certificate or something that will look good on their CV. But they also have an innate desire to achieve mastery in their work and to fulfil their potential.” This means implementing strategies which enable learners to prove their competence for current and future roles. It’s up to the L&D team of today to prepare learners for their on-going careers, and it is only with new skills and a fresh outlook that we will be in a position to achieve this.

Did you enjoy Clive’s take on disruption in L&D? You can follow him on Twitter @cliveshepherd.You can also share your take on the debate on social media using #DisruptionDebate.

With the launch of the brand-new Totara Learn 13 imminent, we know lots of you are keen to get your hands on the latest version of our learning management system. Totara Learn 13 brings with it a whole bunch of powerful new features and functionality, including the much-requested Totara Mobile app, and we wanted to share with you some of our secrets for building a next-level learning management system.

Embrace integration

 

Totara Learn 13 is the very first version of our learning management system that will be part of Totara’s Talent Experience Platform. Our Talent Experience Platform comprises Totara Learn, Totara Engage (a learning experience platform) and Totara Perform (a performance management system). Totara Learn works seamlessly with other systems, both in and outside the Totara ecosystem, meaning you can increase automation, save time on manual processes and boost the impact of all your systems.

For instance, Totara Learn connects with Totara Engage, meaning you can support both formal, structured learning and informal knowledge sharing and collaboration from a single platform. Equally, you can manage performance with Totara Perform, and connect performance goals with appropriate training for a more cohesive development strategy. You could even connect your LMS with your HR, payroll or sales systems for a fully integrated ecosystem.

Choosing the right theme

 

In the grand scheme of things, your LMS theme might not seem too important – but a theme can make or break the success of your system. If the look and feel of your LMS isn’t in keeping with your organization’s brand or your learning content, it can put off potential learners.

Opting for an open learning management system like Totara Learn means that you can go beyond the traditional “logo and colors” approach of LMS theming. Instead you can customize your layout, navigation, imagery, fonts and icons for an LMS consistent with the rest of your online experience. A visually appealing, consistent theme will help you get your learners on your side from the moment they set eyes on your LMS, helping you lock in engagement rates right from the start.

Playing with plugins

Very often, there is no need to start from scratch with any customized LMS solution you may need. It may be as simple as finding the right plugin, installing it and switching it on.

Totara’s plugins library helps you find the right solution without having to build it yourself. These plugins and extensions solve a wide range of challenges, from gamification to e-learning content authoring and comprehensive course libraries. With plugins, customization doesn’t have to be scary or difficult, and within a few clicks you can completely transform your LMS.

Setting audience rules

Audience management has always been one of the most popular features in Totara Learn, and Totara Learn 13 builds on this with new dynamic audience rules. This allows you to automatically enroll users into the most relevant learning activities, based on criteria such as previous course and program enrollment, how many direct reports a manager has and when the user’s account was created.

Dynamic audiences free up learning administrators’ time, allowing them to stop manually moving learners between audiences within the LMS and instead have them move automatically according to preset rules. This time saved can be used on more important activities, such as developing new learning content or analyzing learning activity.

Supporting multitenancy

 

One of the most hotly anticipated new features in Totara Learn 13 is enhanced multitenancy. This allows you to offer learning to both internal and external learners, meaning you can connect your stakeholders with your core business values and processes.

Totara Learn 13 provides a powerful extended enterprise solution for organizations offering a variety of training models. Your customers, departments, sub-organizations, subsidiaries, partners, resellers and even different brands within your group can now be added as tenants within the same LMS. Each tenant can be given autonomy over their learners and content, with personalized tenant dashboards for a dedicated overview of each tenant’s members and learning activity.

Embrace customizations

At Totara, we like to practice what we preach. Our Totara Academy is a prime example. We needed a better way to deliver information about a wide range of topics, so we developed our own “collapsible topics” to help users navigate around a course page by expanding and collapsing topics as they wish, making it great for longer course pages.

 

 

This customization proved so popular within the Totara Academy that lots of users requested it for their own systems, so we released it as part of the core Totara Learn product. The global totara.community means that if you want a solution that isn’t already available in the core product, it’s likely someone else has already created it, meaning you can take advantage of existing solutions. If it’s a completely new idea, opting for an adaptable learning management system like Totara Learn means you’re free to build a feature that precisely meets your needs.

A great user experience

If you visit a website covered in pop-ups, with confusing navigation and an unclear user journey, it’s likely you’ll click straight off it. The same applies to your LMS. That’s why Totara Learn 13 places a special focus on the user experience, including robust accessibility testing and improved design processes.

No matter what’s on your LMS, straightforward navigation, visible content and the ability to do what you want to do when you want to do it is vital. In Totara Learn 13, we’ve ensured that learning administrators and end users alike have everything they need to move quickly and easily through the LMS, whether that’s navigating through a learning plan, browsing the course catalog or even updating a user profile.

Anywhere, anytime access

 

Totara Learn 13 sees the introduction of the Totara Mobile app, which puts current learning straight into the hands of your learners. Your people may not have constant access to a computer in their roles, or they simply may not have time to complete all of their learning in one go.

Totara Mobile helps you boost completion rates by giving learners access to their current learning on the go. The app, which is available on both iOS and Android operating systems, gives learners offline access to SCORM activities and direct access to their courses, programs and certifications, giving everyone the freedom and flexibility to learn whenever and wherever they want.

And the best part? It’s completely free for users of Totara Learn 13.

Selecting the right learning management system (LMS) is only half the battle. To get the most out of your new LMS, you need to know how to effectively administer and integrate it into your organisational structure. This easy recipe will help you successfully launch your LMS within your company.

Ingredients

• Learning management system
• Team
• Project pla
• Timeline
• Content

Preparatio

• Have a clearly defined list of expectations and goals in place
• Get five or six team members on board to oversee the administration, technical support and content management of your new LMS
• Appoint one person as the team leader, and another person to create a training strategy once the new system has been installed

Method

Now it’s time formulate a realistic timeline. Ask your vendor for a configuration checklist or sheet. Collectively draw a flexible project plan from where you are and where you want to get to after the LMS launch.

Liaise with your LMS hosting provider and technicians to ensure that it is working seamlessly with other related systems such as your CRM and back-office systems. Integrate to get the most out of your tracking and reporting across all platforms.

For testing purposes, you need to have a minimal set of LMS-compliant training content ready to go. This could include videos, audio recordings, spreadsheets, handouts and quizzes. Create a couple of courses for every planned use case of your LMS.

Test your new LMS before it goes live. Act as though you are the user and carry out a variety of tasks. Do a soft launch where you test your setup with a select sample of end users, survey them on their experience and fix any issues.

Serve and enjoy!

• Remember to keep everyone in the organisation informed of your launch pla
• Measure the success of phase one rollout against your training goals
• Roll out new and exciting features to keep your learners coming back for more
• Stay in contact with your vendor to learn about new functionality and features

Download the LMS launch recipe

Have you been cooking up a storm with our recipes so far? We’d love it if you could share your favourites on social media using #TotaraRecipe.

A common issue organisations run into when they invest in a new LMS is a lack of user engagement. For many businesses, their LMS will be the most expensive part of their learning strategy, but just because you’ve spent the money, that doesn’t mean your job is done – in fact, far from it. A comprehensive launch and internal marketing strategy can spell the difference between LMS success and failure, so we’ve put together some ideas to help you make the most of your learning platform.

Consider all your channels

Most organisations communicate with staff across multiple channels, which can include email, the intranet, instant messaging, chat programs like Slack and social media. Many companies make the mistake of hiding a link to their new LMS in a monthly internal newsletter, or sending one email on launch day and then never mentioning it again and wondering why nobody is using it. Instead, think about a multi-channel communications strategy – plan a series of emails spanning several weeks, ask managers to drop links into chat programs and create an eye-catching banner for the front page of your intranet. If you’ve spent the money on a new LMS, don’t let it go to waste by letting it sit unused.

Take it offline

Poster campaigns may seem a bit retro, but they can actually be surprisingly effective. A bright, smart series of posters displayed prominently around your workplace provide a useful and constant reminder about your LMS. While an email can get buried in a busy inbox fast, the poster will be constantly visible. Think about putting them in frequently used areas such as the kitchen, next to the water cooler or in meeting rooms. If the URL for your LMS is long and cumbersome, you could consider using an online tool to create a short URL for easier printing and access.

Gamify the experience

 

Some organisations find success when they add incentives to learning engagement. For instance, all employees who login before a certain date or complete a certain course could be entered into a prize draw, or you could create a leaderboard with points gained for completing activities, reaching goals or achieving certain scores in assessments. This can help foster a sense of friendly competition, and drive engagement as users make an effort to earn points and rise through the ranks.

Recruit learning ambassadors

Identify early and enthusiastic adopters of your learning platform and ask them to become learning ambassadors. This could mean that they help you drive engagement in their own teams, or you could work with them to market the platform by creating some content with them. This could be anything from asking them for a quote about their experience of using the LMS to be used in internal marketing to using them as a case study which can be shared across the business (such as identifying their achievement of certain learning goals and how this relates to an overall improvement in their performance). Consider rewarding ambassadors to show your appreciation for their efforts, and be vigilant about spotting other employees who appear particularly engaged with your LMS to become future ambassadors.

Plan beyond the launch

No doubt you’ve been counting down to launch day for a while, but rolling out a new learning platform involves a lot more than making a splash on day one and expecting it to be enough. Instead, you should drip-feed content through to your learners over the following weeks and months. Communicate when you upload relevant new content (especially compliance training), and make a point to highlight any important deadlines (such as for certifications). Creating a series of emails upfront is a good way to ensure consistency across your messaging, and to keep users coming back for more content over time. Keeping the LMS fresh in learners’ minds is the best way to boost engagement, especially if you’re constantly providing new resources to help them progress towards their learning and career goals.

How do you market your LMS? If you’re looking for inspiration, take a look at how A.G. Barr’s internal marketing campaign led to unprecedented LMS engagement.

Laura Caveney, Head of Marketing at platinum partner, BuildEmpire, shares key LMS marketing strategies you can try to encourage engagement with your learning platform.

One of the biggest challenges organizations face is getting employees to engage with their learning platform. Regardless of sector, when learning feels like just another checkbox on a to-do list, convincing people to buy into your strategy—and your content—can be difficult.

But what if you approached it differently? What if you promoted your learning content like a marketing professional? This blog explores key LMS marketing strategies you can use to boost engagement and drive adoption of your learning platform.

Get the highlights here and then read the complete guide to LMS adoption in our ebook co-created with BuildEmpire and Totara.

Medical device and equipment providers have a huge training challenge on their hands:

Educate practitioners, healthcare professionals and end-users to make the best use of devices whilst also securing customer loyalty, retention and brand advocacy.

In this post, you’ll learn from real-world examples and case studies revealing how medical device organizations have increased sales, reduced costs and improved compliance with well-structured medical device training programs.

Sinclair Pharma trains a global audience of 10,000 aesthetic physicians

Sinclair Pharma is an aesthetics company providing physicians around the world with products used in high-quality, natural-looking and minimally invasive cosmetic treatments.

The company operates in Western Europe, the US, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil, and via distributors in Asia, North America, Latin America and the Middle East.

The challenge

In 2017, having realized the difficulty in training physicians in some parts of the world directly, Sinclair Pharma created a basic WordPress website to deliver video training.

While not equipped to deliver the high-quality learning experiences the company wanted for its physicians, the website at least demonstrated the potential for an e-learning platform to work successfully.

A year later, they approached Totara Partner Synergy Learning to develop a medical device training learning management system that would:

• Present adaptive learning journeys based on each physician’s interests, knowledge and experience

• Provide better measurement and reporting on the participation of individual learners

• Improve user experience to optimize training experiences for physicians

• Offer multilingual training to cater to learners around the world

• Provide a platform for prospecting and promoting

The solution

Synergy Learning worked with Sinclair Pharma to create Sinclair College, an e-learning platform that is pioneering within a sector still heavily reliant on face-to-face sales and training.

Using the Totara Learn LMS, Synergy Learning designed a user interface and user experience that makes it far easier for aesthetic physicians to get the information they need.

The LMS includes on-demand videos delivering training on products, anatomy, combined treatments and practice support, along with webinars allowing physicians to participate in peer-to-peer training.

It also supports programs guiding learners from basic training through to advanced techniques on the application of each product.

A tagging system provides intuitive training pathways, ensuring that physicians engage in training suited to their level of experience and knowledge, as well as their professional interests or specialisms.

More than 10,000 aesthetic physicians are now registered to learn about Sinclair Pharma’s products via Sinclair College.

“Our platform has been very well received and we have seen a huge number of physicians going onto our LMS to learn about our products. It would have been very difficult to keep in contact with them without our LMS. We are very proud of the platform, which has proven to be a very efficient way to train and stay in touch with physicians in markets around the world.” —Virginie Cheguillaume, Head of e-Education, Sinclair Pharma

The limitations of the previous website make it impossible to be precise about the number of physicians who used it, but the new LMS has resulted in a significant increase in the number of learners engaging with Sinclair Pharma’s e-learning content.

Thanks to multiple translated versions of the LMS, each physician is able to learn in a language of their choosing, improving completion rates and overall satisfaction with the LMS.

The platform has received glowing feedback from physicians who, despite not always being the most computer-literate of learners, are now able to access the information they need more easily, and are guided through relevant training.

Read more about Sinclair Pharma’s medical device training success.

Wassenburg Medical drives international growth by digitalizing the learning process

Wassenburg Medical is a leading company delivering products and solutions for the cleaning and disinfection of endoscopes.

With its head office in the Netherlands, sales offices in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, France and Germany, and an exclusive distribution network in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and Africa, the role of Wassenburg Medical in the world market is rapidly expanding.

The challenge

Wassenburg previously had an outdated, paper-based onboarding process, where new employees were told on paper which classroom training they had to take.

Not everyone came to these introductory sessions, meaning they missed important onboarding information. With the help of Netherlands-based Totara Partner, The Courseware Company, Wassenburg was empowered to develop its own e-learning modules with the Articulate 360 authoring tool.

After staff received initial training on the product portfolio in the head office in the Netherlands, they also needed training on the product updates.

Since it is not possible to have account managers and engineers from all over the world come to Dodewaard all the time, they opted to deliver learning to their geographically dispersed audience with an LMS.

In addition, the training department had a lot of administrative work. All information was stored in a database that not everyone could see. As a result, employees could not see their own training status, creating a lot of administration requests.

Understandbly, Wassenburg wanted to further digitalize this process and make it accessible to everyone.

The solution

With their new Totara Learn-powered medical device training platform, Wassenburg was able to streamline the administration process and make training more accessible via online modules.

Additionally, Wassenburg has developed modules for emergency response and product information, as well as a module for the introduction of a new CRM system.

About 200 engineers and account managers in 35 countries now use Totara Learn. Prior to Totara Learn, information was sent to international employees via email as a PDF attachment.

With the arrival of their new LMS, Wassenburg has more control over the information people receive. Furthermore, Wassenburg has now managed to certify everyone in the field, which is vital for anyone working for them.

They can now manage the certification process much more conveniently via their LMS.

Read more about Wassenburg’s medical device training success.

Ziehm Imaging moves to an efficiency-boosting hybrid learning program

Ziehm Imaging is a leading specialist in the creation of mobile x-ray systems for intra-operative use. They deliver a range of innovative C-arm systems focused on physicians’ needs and the care of patients.

The challenge

Each year, distributors of Ziehm Imaging’s mobile x-ray machines from all over the world visit the Ziehm Imaging headquarters in Germany for several weeks at a time.

They attend training sessions to help them better understand the products they are selling, and distributors operating in remote regions may also need to know how to carry out repair work or maintenance on the complex mobile imaging systems.

However, these distributors often wished that there was more time to carry out practical exercises in these face-to-face training sessions, so Ziehm Imaging needed a new solution.

In addition to that, there was no scalable solution for systematic documentation of the competencies and educational levels of Ziehm Imaging employees.

This posed a significant challenge in the compliance-heavy healthcare sector, especially with regulatory requirements differing across target markets.

The solution

Working with Totara Partner LearnChamp, Ziehm Imaging created a better way of delivering medical device training to overseas distributors.

While some elements of the onsite training needed to remain, LearnChamp and Ziehm Imaging quickly identified the potential to move some parts of the learning online. LearnChamp worked to convert some of the theoretical training into e-learning, made available via Totara Learn for course participants.

These e-learning modules are compulsory, and must be taken before the onsite training to leave more time for practical exercises and questions during the face-to-face sessions. The LMS also has two separate views; one for interactive learning modules for distributors, and the other for internal training.

For the internal training, Ziehm Imaging bought over 100 courses on rhetoric skills, computer programs and compliance topics, as well as content they’re creating themselves. With some customization, they were also able to manage and track their employees’ formal learning within one system.

Totara Learn allows Ziehm Imaging to manage face-to-face training through the LMS itself, which they find very useful as very few other tools support this by default. As well as the face-to-face training, LearnChamp created many add-ons to tailor the LMS to suit the Ziehm Imaging’s unique needs.

Read more about Ziehm Imaging’s medical device training success.

Migrating from one learning platform to another can be stressful. Time, budget and scope creep can all send the project off track, meaning it is essential to have a watertight plan of action for the best possible results. If you’ve been putting off switching to a new learning platform, we’ve pulled together 10 best practices to make the process as painless as possible.

1. Change management

Change management and effective communication is usually the most challenging part of any system migration. Stakeholders need to understand the reasons for switching systems and the benefits of the new learning platform, whether this is cost savings, better accessibility, or new and improved features and functionality. Being honest to your stakeholders should earn you the buy-in you need.

2. Project management

To limit surprises around time, costs and availability of people for the duration of the project, think about having a project sponsor and project manager. In particular, ensure you budget appropriate time and resources for the development of design/theming working within your new LMS. It will be expected by your end users that a new system looks ‘new’, so this is the ideal time to refresh the look and feel of the site.

3. Technical engagement

It is vital to liaise early and often with the various internal and external technical suppliers involved in your existing and new learning platform. Your project manager will oversee the entire process, including time frames, budgets, data migration and contractual obligations with both the incoming and outgoing learning platform suppliers to protect you from any nasty surprises further down the line.

 

4. System integrations

Alert the relevant internal group or vendor early on that a new system is being put in place and, again, check the contractual obligations and estimated time frames and costs associated with re-implementation of any integration. Factor in the relevant time, costs and resources into your migration business and project plan. If your existing LMS is integrated with any other systems like your HR or CRM system ensure you have full technical and functional details and documentation of these systems and integration technology.

5. Course audit

Consider whether some courses could be archived elsewhere or simply deleted. Your migration will take longer with the number of courses transferred across, and the more testing and QA required. Be 100% sure you can archive or delete any courses you choose to exclude from the migration. Remember course completions and Record of Prior Learning (RPL) information may need to be kept for legal and/or long-term reporting reasons.

6. Functionality audit

It will be tempting to assume you need all features carried across, but many developments/add-ons/plugins/features may have been employed on now-depreciated technologies, decisions or workflows. Ensure you conduct a gap analysis.

7. Quality assurance

Testing and QA of user accounts, data and courses following the LMS migration will need to be performed alongside, but separate to, user acceptance testing of the new learning platform. Sufficient time must be allowed for testing, ideally driven by test scripts and efficient bug/issue reporting.

8. Training and support

Providing training is critical when migrating to a new learning platform. Also ensure there is both reactive and proactive support for your end users. This means not only including training for your support team, but also creating a knowledge base or FAQ for the team before roll out so they can confidently offer solutions and advice to users. Undertaking failed login monitoring and creating a robust mechanism for capturing issues and ideas will demonstrate a proactive approach to user support, and help encourage constructive feedback on the new system.

9. System switchover

There are a variety of ways to implement your new learning platform, including:

-An overnight, complete switchover
-A gradual phase out of the old platform and phase in of the new one
-Silently running the two systems in parallel before switching over

Finding the best solution for your organisation comes from a discussion with your outgoing and incoming supplier/vendor/team.

10. Measuring and celebrating success

It’s important that you establish metrics for success prior to the launch of your new LMS. For an LMS migration project, this might include user uptake percentages, improvements in course completions and compliance, increased user satisfaction and improved system performance. Also take a moment to celebrate the success of your new learning platform – you’ve earned it!

Congratulations! You have decided to introduce your employees and customers to e-learning. For employees, you want to strengthen their skills needed to help the company thrive. For customers, you want to cultivate their relationship with your business further.

These are great initiatives, but implementing a learning management strategy can be a bit overwhelming if you do not identify areas where you can incorporate some automation or AI.

You can use technology to help understand the learning structure and educational progressions your learners need.

So, to improve learning outcomes and make implementation a bit more streamlined, here are seven ways to build AI into your learning strategy.

Develop a plan for differentiation

Everyone learns differently. Some people are visual learners, while others are better with audio or text.

While some learners who use your LMS will pick up concepts a lot faster than others, you should have a plan in place for your LMS to identify when to differentiate lessons to help your employees and customers grasp concepts.

This could be through a direct ask on a survey or through a system that picks up on how learners respond to specific question types.

Have a plan for personalised learning in place

What happens if an employee is struggling with grasping a new skill? How can the system better respond to help them?

It makes sense for you to plan to have your LMS pick up on employees who may be struggling with a course or are having a hard time getting through quizzes or tests. This way, the system can not only offer them more personalised help, but it could even alert you to also meet with the employee to provide guidance.

Incorporate adaptive learning

Instead of uploading pre-written tests, an LMS with adaptive learning can pick up on the nuances of employee and customer responses and provide an experience that adapts to their understanding.

Whether someone is having difficulty moving through questions, or an individual is acing every lesson, adaptive learning can choose questions that are best suited for their development.

In turn, employees and customers are getting an experience that actually allows them to learn and retain the material.

Providing relevant data

It is crucial for you to know if your LMS strategies are working. An AI-based LMS should be able to provide timely and relevant data that shows you how things are going.

Are learners struggling with a specific area more than another? Could a question be written a little better? How long is it taking everyone to move through various courses and modules?

Excellent data can help answer these questions, and put you in a position to make decisions that will help your employees and clients learn.

Suggesting additional resources

Another way to use AI and automation to fill out your LMS plan is to ensure that systems can provide students with documents, case studies data, and extra information they may need during coursework.

If employees or customers do well on a section, it would be helpful for the system to offer additional reading or material based on that topic.

For employees, this can enhance learning and retention. For customers, this is a great way to not only improve their relationship with your brand, but it can also be a great marketing tool.

Taking account of language differences

You want to have a system that picks up on language differences.

Whether it be through hearing their voice through a microphone or picking up on their written text, an LMS should have the ability to switch the language immediately. This creates an inclusive environment and makes effective learning possible for everyone.

This advancement should also apply to anyone with disabilities who may need a different learning experience.

How to incorporate AI into your LMS

Having to accomplish all the elements above yourself would be nearly impossible. This is why it is critical to use the help of technology – and ideally your LMS – when possible.

Your goal should be to encourage a successful learning experience while also making your job of learning management as straightforward as possible.

Come up with an implementation plan, and then use a project management software to map out the changes you want to make within your e-learning programme. You can then use the project management tool to analyse your progress and the performance of the program.

Employees want to pick up more skills, and your customers are likely interested in learning more about when you can offer to them. So, focus on making these educational processes easier by incorporating AI when possible.

However, as with anything, always make a point to monitor progress and the interactions learners are having with your system. This will allow you to address any tweaks and continue to improve the user’s experience.