LEADERSHIP TRAINING
MANAGERS: CONVERTING CLASSROOM TRAINING
THE CLIENT
Our client is a global leader in water, hygiene, and infection prevention solutions, helping businesses succeed while protecting people and vital resources. Each day, their 48,000 associates serve 3 million customers in 170 countries, generating $14 billion in annual sales. They deliver comprehensive science-based solutions, data-driven insights, and world-class service to advance food safety, helps maintain clean and safe environments, optimize water and energy use, and improve operational efficiencies and sustainability for customers throughout the world.
Recognized as a leader in the field of chemical manufacturing, they serve more than 40 different industries, from food production, restaurants, hotels and hospitals to paper mills, power generation, manufacturing plants, and other businesses spanning.
THE RELATIONSHIP
CommLab India started working with the client way back in 2015 when we did a USD 100,000 pilot project (eLearning curriculum with translations) for one of their subsidiary companies. Since then, we have partnered with them for 300 eLearning projects and 280 translations.
They chose to try us out as we are one of the very few eLearning vendors offering multiple services under one roof – classroom to eLearning or VILT conversion, Flash to HTML5 conversion, and eLearning translations.
Opting for Commlab India helped them avoid the hassle of working with multiple, local eLearning vendors for all their global training requirements. That too, within timelines, and at a pricing that works!
It was Commlab India’s quality, responsiveness, speed of execution, 24/7 availability, and expertise in most of the popular eLearning authoring tools (including Articulate, Lectora, Captivate, iSpring, and dominKnow) that made the client opt for us in the highly crowded eLearning space of corporate training.
We had a single stakeholder in 2015, and now work with around 70 stakeholders from different divisions of the organization.
THE REQUIREMENT
The organization operates on a people-centric business model that made it imperative they attract, retain, and grow the world’s most capable talent. And who plays a critical role in this talent strategy? People managers!
Their Manager Essentials training program was launched in 2017 to enhance the leadership capabilities of their first-line managers. It was later deployed to their first-line people managers as well in 2018. The highly successful 3-level training was being conducted as an 18-week program.
And then came the COVID 19 pandemic, making classroom training virtually impossible! In addition to working on a broad portfolio of solutions and protocols against COVID-19 and supporting their employees worldwide in their fight against COVID-19, the company had to relook at the format of their Manager Essentials training.
How does an organization with a highly successful leadership training for first-line managers continue the training during the COVID-19 pandemic?
By shifting their face-to-face instructor led training (ILT) from the classroom to a virtual platform – VILT!
Why VILT? Because VILT offers learners all the benefits of human interaction in a brick-and-mortar classroom without the hassles of travel, logistics, and space. CommLab India was the logical choice for the project as they had already worked on a VILT project for the client before the pandemic.
Classroom training material cannot be used ‘as is’ in the virtual classroom as the physical absence of the instructor and lack of collaboration have to be factored in. One has to also consider the technology platform to be used. So, the brief included:
- Reviewing the 9 PPT decks of 25 slides each for content and gaps
- Redesigning the PPT decks for the virtual platform
- Creating facilitator guides
- Creating participant guides
- Providing guidance for participants and facilitators on using:
- WebEx training center
- Teams
- Poll Everywhere
The project had to be completed within 3 weeks.
THE SOLUTION
The virtual classroom has very different challenges from the physical one, important ones being:
- Lack of learner engagement
- Technology issues
Not all classroom activities can be translated into VILT, and engagement in virtual sessions needs more planning and effort. For the VILT to be a success, the team that included CommLab India’s Director Learning Solutions, a senior instructional designer, and a visual designer:
- Replaced/ redesigned activities that don’t work on the virtual platform
- Designed a Tech Check slide on how to use the activities on the virtual platform (Polls, Breakout rooms, Teams, Animated slide/Chat, etc.)
- Increased learner engagement and participation through:
- Polls to help collect learners’ opinions and feedback, stimulate recall, summarize a learning point, or quiz learners on a topic just covered.
- Chats to enable textual communication between learners and instructors, which could be private or public.
- Breakout rooms to replicate the collaboration and peer-to-peer interaction of a physical classroom. Breakout rooms are virtual rooms where small groups of learners can meet to discuss content, share opinions, or participate in group activities.
- Annotations that enable learners to type an answer or choose from a pool of alternatives and display the results in creative ways.
- Workbook activities for learners to brainstorm on strategy and planning, team building, communication exercises, leadership exercises, and more.
The team could create the 9 PPTs, 9 Facilitator Guides, and 1 Participant Guide in two and a half weeks.
THE RESULTS
The course was very well received by the learners. This is the feedback we got from the stakeholder.
THE REVIEWS
Here are some of the client reviews on CommLab India on eLearning Industry.
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