Driving Enterprise-Wide Employee Enablement

Employee engagement is key to success. It can influence everything from an organization’s culture to its productivity, helping to define its work environment. It is far more likely that an engaged employee base can drive growth and market share since engaged employees are more likely to be innovative and driven. However, what is the main factors that drive employee engagement?

Learning in Pre-pandemic Vs Post-pandemic?

There are quite a few things that now not just organisations are looking at differently, even the learners themselves are looking differently at what they should be getting and how they should be enabled. But this is not new, learning has always been in a state of flux and it is the most human aspect that IT companies can get close to right, or the whole technology. Self-paced learning is the human element that comes in. So what the pandemic has done is just expedited the chase the way we grow. There were times when people were writing on scrolls or leaves from their game books, then came your digital media, then give me your CDs, web GPS, then you had your collaborative learning.

With tools like Whatfix, I think we have been able to cope well if you know, all could adapt and transform and take advantage of the advances of technology as that has helped cope in this era or not many things. With tools like Whatfix, I think we have been able to cope well if you know, all could adapt and transform and take advantage of the advances of technology as that has helped cope in this era or not many things.

Standardising the way of learning in the Organization

It’s a Herculean task to have standardisation across it, you definitely cannot have one size fits, all right, that is for the very reason. As an organisation, the principal is going inward, and seeing what our folks need, and then how we can facilitate that by using all the expertise that we have. So we did have external platforms that we used to work with and we realised that with the kind of scale and change that we are looking at, we need something that’s more versatile and flexible. We did have that knowledge. and so we built an in-house learning platform, then we realised that okay, that was the latest when it was being built. By the time it got implemented, things have moved on the industry is quite fast and then you have newer ways of learning. So then came the integration of social media and the learning experience platforms. By virtue of building this thing in-house, we were able to cope up with that and then, you know, this was if I would say, a Lego kind of a framework. First, I build something that’s available with a brick and mortar and I pulled out one story, then the framework was so strong that when technology brings in disruption, it wasn’t a disruption. For us, it was an opportunity to scale our framework.

We have 500,000 employees but that doesn’t stop us from giving a personalised experience to each and every employee and that is what we try to do for our customers. So this is what mass personalization or mass customization is something where we are moving to. It applies to learning as well. So in learning, you need to understand that, while you are developing a huge learning curriculum, you should be implementing it in a way that, the individual needs of specific learners are catered to. Digital adoption solutions help us to do that. Learning in the flow of work is the key, the Gartner research says each salesperson in an organisation uses almost 15 applications in a day. So it is really difficult for the person to understand the context and follow the entire process. If we can understand the underlying user profile and give them context-based information, that’s, that’s the way to go.

Content creation Vs Content Maintenance Vs Content delivery

Content delivery is the easiest part and then comes updating and management of the content. Then comes the generation of the content. In TCS, we have loads and loads of subject matter experts on any subject within our organisation so we really never find it very difficult to deliver anything in physical format in a classroom format. When it comes to digital mediums these days you notice very technology comes to your help you have learning platform next piece learning management systems, which makes it very easy to disperse this learning and even manage that learning. When comes to the Updation part between update and generation, when you Let it for the first time you have to do need analysis, you have to do an audience analysis, and you have to do a lot of hard work for collecting the raw content. That is something which is, which I believe is slightly easier when you are updating things, you don’t have to do so much analysis. So that’s why it’s delivery, then update, and then content generation. The fourth part content adoption is something which comes only if all the three elements are in sync, if your delivery is not good, the adoption will not happen. If your regeneration is not good, if the quality of the content is not good, but your adoption, you generated very good content, but you’re not keeping it in sync with whatever changes are happening in the environment. Maybe your system has upgraded, but your content has not upgraded. Adoption is the most difficult part between content creation and delivery.
Adoption, and making the users consume the content seems to be the biggest challenge. Whatfix has an analytics module where you could actually learn from users’ insights on how they engage with the application and what are the kinds of percentages at the level at which we can give self-help. Since we have the analytics we can look at how we could modify the content and gives them the right kind of content to enable the administrators to design their content.

What difference in the way learning between public sector & private sector organizations?

The difference is now narrowing a lot. A lot of government organisations are moving to digital adoption platforms. The recent pattern is a lot of public or government enterprises are moving to new ways of imparting learning. Think of something like unemployment, reinsurance or unemployment insurance rates For that matter, any service that government provides through an e-governance portal and if you put a DAP on top of it a digital adoption platform. DAP’s has the power to reverse revolutionise the way we avail of these services or the way the government provide these services. If you really want a transformation to happen, we need, we need to move there, you know, we need to, we need to start putting that kind of support, we need to put DAP’s on top of the platforms that are available to citizens.

Private organizations are definitely, looking for digital adoption, as it’s going to be the way of the world. So let me take one example, Why do we have support teams? Why do we why are we having learning enabling folks? all of this is so that we can do our services better? And why are we doing the services so that there is a beneficial outcome? Sometimes revenue sometimes valuable if it’s from a nonprofit organisation or government. So if we were able to get the people who are providing the outcome and in the revenue stream, it is the customers are going to pay money. If we make it easier for them to buy our services and products, then not only are we cutting down on all the investments for your head tests and other things, but at the same time, the customer feels more empowered. There is a train of thought that follows whenever someone tries to buy something, and if they are hindered by an option that they can’t go through it, it may not be a deal. But that’s where the digital adoption solutions come in. It’s not a personal assistant, but also your personal sales guy, who would give you real-time information. Had you known that upfront? Definitely, some money was saved and your Whatfix subscription has proved its worth. We were able to analyse or make their decisions because they did not have to disrupt their train of thought with the regular activities that can be done with the help of assistants like Whatfix and a great boost in the sales.

End-user perspective on traditional learning Vs digital self-learning

Can’t say with the advent of digital technologies, the older ways of learning have lost all their relevance, they’re still relevant in many cases. Still, we have scenarios where the motivation to learn is not there. So you have to make people learn. They still need your classroom, some interaction and the other scenario which needs a lot of discussion between the facilitator and the learner. The traditional ways of learning are still relevant. It has both pros and cons. You have to invest energy and time as many times you want to do a specific subject, you will have to get into a classroom again and again. So that’s a con and a lot of time is consumed, you don’t have the flexibility to attend those classes at your own time and will. When it comes to digital formats. The first thing I have observed is we were able to reduce the time of training which is very good I would say Pro and then, of course, yeah, you know, nobody is able to imbibe everything at the very first go. You need to revisit those courses. You need to refresh your learning for that. to something which is very easily doable, when you have those selfies, you have those digital modes. So that is something which is very difficult in your traditional classroom training. Digital learning, misses the personal touch, people still enjoy being taught and being mentored by somebody in person. So that’s a very big disadvantage.

So in the traditional ways of learning what you’re doing is learning somewhere and applying somewhere else. So for example, let’s go with the analogue. If you want to grow a tree, that’s the revenue tree, right, you’ve got to water it daily. And this watering is your knowledge and effort. With traditional modes, your bird is a well filling the water in your cup hands, and trying to run back and water the plant. This is how you’re learning somewhere else trying to load everything in here with cognitive learning and all of that. Ultimately, it is you have to retain it out here, and then bring it to the application space and implement it out there. Right. So imagine carrying the water, how much is going to remain in your palms? That’s how the formal learning retention is there, right? You’ve got the 70 20 10s. And all not getting into the detail of that. In digital learning, you’ve got a cloud that gives you on-demand rain whenever you want, every time you want it. So you’re not running, you’re not doing that’s what the app is doing. Digital adoption is the quick shot that you need for the adrenaline rush, adoption of applications going live, everybody has to perform 100% that’s where DAPs jump in.

Gajendra Palni

Gajendra Palni is the head of learning services in TCS. Gajendra has helped TCS achieve 60% in just 1.5 years and established learning services as a trusted partner to implement learning platforms, and enterprise authoring tools and develop training artefacts for customers.