by Brian Clark | e-learning, Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Cindy Pascale, Director of Vado Inc. Vado is a partner with DOTS Talent Solutions to bring the innovative Vado course modules to Australia.
Besides a beautiful city in Italy, what is Vado, and why would anyone give an e-learning courseware company such a name?
Vado means “go” in Latin, however, it has a deeper meaning for Vado’s other co-founder, Kim Egan, and me. You see, we set out to create learning content to solve the biggest issues impacting all training and development initiatives. Whether it’s e-learning courseware, instructor-led workshops, or something in between, we wanted to solve the question everyone is asking. That is, how do you get a learner to apply what they learned on the job?
Most learning and development professionals will agree with the following statements:
- Employees and leaders want to grow, develop, and improve on the job performance.
- The goal of training and development activities is to improve employee on the job performance, and as a result organizational performance.
- Performance can only improve if learners apply learning content on the job.
Unfortunately, if your employees and leaders are motivated to develop and improve their performance, and if the only way they can do this is to apply what they learned on the job, then why don’t they? We think it comes down to the design of the training.
Unfortunately, it seems most learning content is not designed to help the learner apply what is learned. Instead, learners are given a quiz at the end of an e-learning course, or they are asked to write an “Action Plan” outlining what they plan to doafter a workshop. Sounds good in theory, and yet none of these methods really help the learner apply the new skill on the job.
The good news is that Vado’s unique course design helps learners “go” and apply learning on the job to develop a desired skill. With a step by step, detailed process or exercise, the learner builds his or her capabilities by doing and performing at work, where real development happens—it’s Action Defined.
With this in mind, we encourage you to ask your learning content provider how they help your learners apply their learning content on the job. It’s a question all training and development professionals should be asking.
If you would like to experience the Vado modules please get in touch with us at DOTS Talent Solutions and we will send you a full catalogue and enroll you in a Vado module in DOTS LMS.
by Brian Clark | coaching, e-learning, Performance, performance management, strategy
In our business we have the pleasure of working with some very successful organisations and each has a culture that oozes high performance when you walk in their offices. You can see clues in the way people interact; looking at each other in the eyes, greeting people with their names, and well organised work spaces with personal touches. I am sure there are many factors that contribute to a performance culture but here are three factors that have been mentioned most often in my conversations.
1. Follow up and follow through. Sounds simple enough but one of the biggest killers of a performance culture is lack of follow up with other people. When leaders do not follow up it show a lack of care. As a leader people know you are busy but that does not forgive your lack of follow up. The lack of follow through is just as damaging. When a leader commits to something and it gets dropped or fades away the damage is serious. You lose trust when you do not follow through. Both lack of follow up and follow through are like a disease, when leaders exhibit these behaviours it creeps into an entire culture. Performance appraisals are one critical area that must never compromised by lack of follow up and follow through.
2. Person to person engagement. Managers need to meet with their teams as individuals and groups regularly. It is priority one and it needs to be scheduled and committed to. If a leader consistently cancels these meetings it sends the signal, ‘you are not important.’ A performance culture has a meeting rhythm and this flows to information sharing, communication, collaboration and often innovation. Some managers and leaders do not really know how to run effective meetings and these people need some coaching. In one client the change identified as being the biggest contributor to their culture is daily team meetings with a set agenda.
3. Learning is readily available and encouraged. Learning can be in many forms and it need not be expensive. For example, one client has brown bag learning sessions that are facilitated by fellow employees. Online learning is great and you can use your own content as well as find online courseware that can be delivered from your own LMS or via an online portal. Blended learning in a manager to employee coaching framework is one program that one of our clients has used to increase productivity and align activity with strategy more effectively. This program involves short online learning content, forms for applying learning and fortnightly coaching sessions with a direct or other manager.
These 3 factors were the top three mentioned in discussions with some of our clients. I am interested in learning about others that have been applied to create and sustain a performance culture.
by Brian Clark | coaching, competency frameworks, DOTS LMS, e-learning, Performance, performance management
The new range of learning modules we have released are getting a great deal of interest. These modules are designed to deliver competencies to learners with a short video introduction, step by step implementation guides and downloadable job aids.
Research has shown that 70% of development happens on the job and these courses are designed to leverage a more natural way of personal development. Since these content modules are short and include tools to implement the learning in the work environment they are highly suitable for blended delivery.
The Development Plan, Performance Management and Profiling modules in DOTS LMS are ideal for supporting the successful roll-out of these modules. The key is ensuring that the learning activities are supported by coaching and collaboration either individually or in groups.
Development Plans – include these modules as part of your Development Plans and assign them or enable your people to enrol in them out of interest or need. Your managers will be able to track progress and meet to discuss outcomes and the application of the learning.
Performance Appraisals can be used to ensure that one-to-one meetings occur in conjunction with the enrolments in these modules. You can include the competencies delivered by these modules in the Performance Appraisal module. Both the employee and the manager will be able to comment on experience and observation. This has proven a highly effective way to embed these competency based learning modules in an organisation and improve engagement with managers and employees focusing on ‘positives’ [learning & development] in a regular appraisal cycle.
The Profiling Tool in DOTS LMS helps you create as many profile as you need. In one case we developed a 360 Profile that included feedback on a large number of competencies included in the Project Management course catalog. We created both self-assessments and 360 profiles mapped to these competencies to provide some peer review.
If you would like to have a look at these learning content modules please get in touch and we can organise a pilot for you. If you decide to use these modules in your organisation we can help you implement their roll-out using one or all of the DOTS LMS modules mentioned in this blog.
by Brian Clark | competency frameworks, e-learning, learning and development
The eLearning Industry Association of Victoria is hosting a breakfast seminar on May 16. You do not want to miss ‘Development Best Practices.’ You can register for this event here. The presenter is Cindy Pascale, Founder and Vice President of Vado Inc. Cindy’s presentation is full of insights based on research and these translate to actions you can execute in your organisation.
Cindy has over 20 years of Human Resources, Sales & Marketing and Operations experience. Before co-founding Vado, she:
- Was a SVP & Partner for a niche employee engagement provider, leading the sales, marketing and business development functions
- As the President & COO, led an assessment services organization delivering employee surveys and 360 degree assessments
- Lead the Human Resources, Training & Development and Organizational Development functions for a mid-sized software company and a medical device manufacturing company.
Cindy earned a MBA in Human Resources from the University of St. Thomas and a B.A. in Business Management with a Minor in Organizational Communication from the University of Wisconsin.
If you would like to learn more about Vado’s innovative learning content and supporting tools, please get in touch with us here. We can set up online access so you can see for yourself this unique range of courses really is.
by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, DOTS webinar, e-learning, learning and development, utilisation
We are focused on helping you get the most out of the DOTS LMS. We know how hard it is to juggle the demands of your position as well as knowing all the features and tools in DOTS. We are giving you an opportunity to take 60 minutes out of your day to learn and refresh your knowledge in using DOTS LMS.
This online webinar is going to focus on how to “Set up a Beautiful Course Catalogue”, which will include the following topics:
- Changing the Course Catalogue Home Page
- Adding and Editing Categories and using images and description
- What course components display in the Course Catalogue
- Creating Deep Links to Course Detail Pages in the Course Catalogue
- Creating an Auto-Enrol Link for Course Sessions in the Course Catalogue
- Why you can’t see a course in the Course Catalogue
This webinar will be hosted by Kathleen Bosworth.
Block out one hour in your calendar on Tuesday 23 April.
- 12.00pm AEST (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane)
- 11.30am ACST (Adelaide)
- 10.00am AWST (Perth)
You can register by sending an email to dotsinvitation@dotstalentsolutions.com
Your registration will be confirmed by email with a link to the online webinar.
