It’s 10:00 am and your office building just caught fire. What would you like your employees to do? Define emergency preparedness, describe the risks associated with lack of planning, or quickly and safely evacuate the building? Unless your employees are fire-proof, you are most likely to choose the last option. Our goal at PulseLearning is to create real-world action-oriented training that changes behavior and improves your bottom line. So, how does it work?

First, we work with you to identify a business goal you would like to accomplish through training such as reducing safety incident reports by 75% in 2012. Sounds simple, right? However, most training often begins by identifying the knowledge employees should gain such as the emergency planning strategies and policies. Training for action means better results. We work with you to specify how that knowledge should be applied to improve your organization’s bottom line and day-to-day operations.

Second, we target what the learner will have to do to accomplish the business goal. It is not enough to know the emergency plan. We want employees to apply it. Our Learning Specialists will work with you to design activities that require the learners to do what you need them to do. In a world of sparkling 3D apps, it is often assumed that this can only be accomplished through high budget Hollywood style simulations. However, effective action-based training can also be produced using plain text and a compelling story.

Finally, we identify the essential information that learners absolutely must know to complete the activities. Remember those emergency planning strategies and policies? We include them as resources and design activities that encourage the learner to reference them. Rather than overload the learner with information, we engage the learner by challenging what they know and, more importantly, what they do not know. We design question-provoking activities and are on hand to provide the answers learners seek. Knowledge becomes a by-product of action and not the sole foundation of training.

We believe that training should be memorable, meaningful, motivational and measurable. When a fire breaks out, we want everyone to safely and quickly evacuate the building. You can always ask them to describe the risks associated with lack of planning when they are safely on the ground floor. Rather than creating a workforce that “knows,” we want to help you train a work force that “does.” We want to help you achieve your business goal, because we know that when it comes to business, at the end of the day actions speak louder than words.

Our instructional designers are finding more and more that employers are looking for creative training solutions. The fact is, employees don’t want training that shoves them back into an old-style school desk. It’s not that employees don’t want to learn, they do. As in everything, it’s the ‘how’ not the ‘what’ that matters most.

Employees long for training that is engaging on more than one level. They want it to be creative and even – goodness gracious – entertaining. An added bonus is that the training encourages deep and thought-provoking learning. The kind of training that they’ll tell their friends about.  

The question is, how do you do that? Concrete connections to the real world help. For example, if you’re training staff for customer service, put them behind an actual (virtual) desk and give them everyday issues to resolve.

In line with this, we’ve developed a series of ethical scenarios for one of our clients. In one scenario from this series, an employee dies in a car accident. When cleaning out this employee’s desk, the manager finds a half-written suicide note. The learner, who is placed in the role of the manager, is given three paths to choose from. Does the learner tell others about the note or does keep it to themselves? No one path is more right or more wrong, but each has benefits and challenges. When one pass through the scenario is completed by the learner, they can try another path to see the result.

This kind of learning experience provides for deeper thought. It allows learners to explore the gray areas they have control over rather than dictating what is right or wrong from on high. Employees find this empowering because they face choices in their work every day. To have training that admits this means the company they work for understands their plight.

Creative solutions require taking the time to step back and think through the training a little more thoroughly. By taking that time to reflect up front, we find that the training we develop with our client partners has more depth and strikes a deeper chord with their employee learners.

PulseLearning will be launching its eCommerce site this month for the UK market. Customers will now be able to purchase eLearning solutions from PulseLearning online.

These courses will offer compliance training for the Care, Retail and Hospitality sectors. The eLearning courses are aimed at large or small businesses and individuals.

PulseLearning is leveraging its world-class content and sector-specific experts to create hours of engaging and interactive online learning.

Our courses provide a complete education and training solution that overcome the day-to-day barriers to achieving compliance in a regulated environment. These barriers include dispersed workforces, high employee turnover and non-native speakers.

The courses will cover areas such as Food Safety, Health and Safety, Licensing Law Awareness, Award for Personal Licence Holders (APLH) and Common Induction Standards.

For more information, visit www.pulselearning.com

A team from PulseLearning will be attending this years ANCC National Magnet Conference taking place on October 4-6, 2011 in Baltimore. At the conference, we will be revealing our new PulseHealth “Information Training” solution for the US Healthcare market. The team is happy to discuss this new solution with you one to one. Please contact us at sales@pulselearning.com with a time that suits you to take a call.

PulseLearning has partnered with organizations large and small to assist with strategic communication related to projects. We understand that large scale training initiatives are typically a support to a significant change within an organization. While that change may be very positive and productive for the company, many people may have fears about it or want to instinctively push back against it and reject it.

We partner with our client’s official communication officer to co-create the appropriate communication that explains the nature of the changes, the reasons for them and the anticipated benefits. To encourage acceptance of the corporate change and full usage of the related training, we take several facets of communication into consideration.

Content
These communications serve dual purposes – to inform and persuade. Learners must get the information they need to know what to do – and an understanding of why it is in their best interest to do so. Our style of communication helps learners understand the importance of making the needed changes – without downplaying (or sensationalizing) the consequences of doing it wrong or refusing to do it. Our goal is to motivate – not alienate.

Level
Some communication can be simple and handled with a short email. Others contain specific detail that must be communicated and may be better handled with a supporting document or information on an intranet site or even a meeting with leadership. We can assist (or handle) production of supporting documentation and presentation materials (slides, talking points, answers to anticipated questions, practice sessions for the presentation) to support the client’s leadership with delivering the information.

Rank
We help the client determine which pieces of communication are particularly sensitive and may need to be presented by a high ranking individual in the organization. We partner with our communication contact to co-create that communication – to support the leader who will be sending it out.

Timing
We help our communication contact to determine the best timing to communicate each item (before, during, after the GoLive date on the changes). Ideally, we will want to give learners enough time to take any required actions but do not want the communication so far in advance of the change that it will be forgotten.

Frequency
Changes that are particularly critical to operations or are complex may need to be communicated more than once, or communicated in stages. This helps ensure the learners understand what to expect and provides them multiple opportunities to reach out for help or clarifications.

We consider ourselves not to be just the training provider to our clients, but the ongoing strategic partner. We aim to support you in effecting positive change in your organization. We align our efforts with your goals and your criteria for succcess as a business. If you’d like to speak with us, please locate our nearest office on the Contact page of our site.

The People 1st State of the Nation report released earlier this year provided some pointed insights into training needs in the hospitality sector in advance of the 2012 Olympics. Hotel, restaurant and bar staff numbers have dropped by 30% in the last year – leaving the remaining staff to take on more work. In addition to the overall staff reductions, turnover rates remain high with 31% of employees leaving for new jobs. So, how can your hospitality organization thrive in such tough conditions while preparing for the massive influx of customers that the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics will bring?

Close up skill gaps

According to the People 1st report, employers have greater proportions of underskilled staff than last year (now at 26% or 180,000 workers). PulseHospitality training is ready to use off-the-shelf, but can also be customised to the unique needs of your organization. We can help you close those skill gaps, quickly and cost-effectively.

Support diverse learners

Migrant workers in the UK Hospitality sector were 20% of all workers in the last year. The PulseHospitality training solution was custom-built to accommodate the unique learning needs of all learners – including those for whom English is not their first language. We understand your need to ensure that all workers are fully skilled, regardless of their current English language proficiency. In addition to thoughtful, clear and concise instructional design, our courses can also be localised into other languages.

Make training fit you, not the inverse

Two more important points raised by People 1st are that many staff members will be hired at the last minute – and that all staff members will need to know how to provide great service to customers with special needs. The PulseHospitality solution is modular and online – so training can be completed in small bits when staff members have time – anywhere that they have internet access. Our PulseHospitality Disability Discrimination Awareness course will prepare all staff members to ensure that customers with special needs to be cheerfully accommodated with service that is equal to or exceeds that provided to other customers.

To speak to a member of our team about how PulseHospitality can help you improve team productivity and prepare for the 2012 Olympics, please email us at PulseHospitality@PulseLearning.com.

Reference: People 1st State of the Nation Report

PulseLearning ISD+3D

Click the link above to see a self-running video of an interactive hands-on training module that enables learners to practice maintenance on expensive or dangerous equipment in a safe, virtual environment. If you’d like to play with the actual demo – just ask – we’ll send you the link.