Fiona Leteney and Marc Harvey, Learning Consultants from Bupa, presented at a recent TrainingZone webinar.  In the space of an hour there is so much to say, so I thought I would blog a few of the useful tips they gave from having implemented ‘Bupa Learn’.

Learning from each other
If your organisation is large and/or global you may find that business units are at different levels of maturity in terms of implementing an e-learning strategy.  Easy to say but you have the opportunity to learn from each other!   Sharing best practices across the business units becomes quite key.

Celebrate success
L&D sometimes is perceived as a nice to have.  Being able demonstrate the value that L&D can create in an organisation is really important.  Demonstrate how it can improve productivity or how it can grow the organisation etc.  The more you can celebrate the successes across the organisation, the better.  This helps to engage people to want to have meaningful conversations with HR or the ‘people teams’.  HR needs to be a partner with the business, to be a commercial part of the business to help them grow.  So share the great stuff that you’re doing!

Appreciate each other’s style of working
IT might think differently to L&D which is why sometimes it is difficult to work together.  However you are working towards the same goal and have a common purpose, in terms of delivering world class learning, developing a learning culture etc. all for the benefit of customers ultimately.  It is very easy to focus on the differences.  Try and focus on the similarities and what you have in common.  Focus on something that holds the organisation together such as the mission or the purpose. This will enable you to have the right conversations and to contextualise them. 

Business buy in
If you are going to implement any system enterprise wide then you have to ask is it going to create value, and if it doesn’t then why are you are bothering? 

Listen to your stakeholders
A lot of what we think we know, that is ‘factual’ isn’t actually true.  This can be the same with IT and large organisations, some people might have negative experiences, or positive experiences using particular software, and you end up with ‘rumours’ like it ‘won’t work in this environment’ or ‘it this part doesn’t work’.   You take it as a given and it becomes difficult to challenge.  The point being made is to ask questions.  Listen to your stakeholders and what they are saying/the language they are using so that you can start to unravel some of these assumptions and rumours.  This will help to have conversations about how systems could work in certain circumstances.  Keep challenging people’s perceptions and ask questions more deeply.   Questioning can uncover new things. A key thing also is preparation before having these conversations.  Take the time to think about the situation, what are the people you are about to speak to trying to achieve?  What might be some of the rumours, so you can prepare beforehand as much as you can. 

Collaboration
You need to remove geographical barriers to enable people to work together more effectively and to collaborate.  This might be via a social platform or virtual classroom for example which can help facilitate this kind of working.  But you need to give people a hook ‘what’s in it for me?’  Look for ways to encourage cross functional/business working, but understand ‘what is in it for other people as well?'  People love to solve problems together…people can flourish in this situation.  Often in a ‘crisis’ people work more effectively, they work towards a common goal, they take more risks, they think more creatively towards a common outcome.  Humans need to feel ‘connected’! Without advocating sabotage, but ‘creating’ a problem that isn’t actually there can create a different style of working.   Share best practices AND issues across the business units.

Unified learning delivery
A benefit of having a core learning management platform is being able to use it as a unified source of learning.  People can access all types of media, course registrations, webinars, videos, audio books, traditional e-learning etc.  You can then also have access to data and analytics and this can link to other activities such as talent and performance.  The people data is all in one place as well.  Using a unified platform you can share content.  This helps in the decision making process and value creation.

Fiona and Marc gave so many more tips that it is hard to blog them all, so take a listen to the recording.  And the clock beat us during the webinar and we’d like to have taken more questions, so feel free to ask Fiona and Marc questions via twitter using #bupasuccess