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Introduction
Why Did They Choose an e-Learning Solution?
Global organizations experience unique challenges in educating their workforce. To compete successfully in highly volatile, increasingly sophisticated global markets, companies must align the entire global workforce to the highest standards of service, knowledge, and capability, as customers and clients expect a consistent level of value, no matter where they come into contact with the company’s products and services. To attract and retain customers and clients, companies competing with a global strategy must harness the advantages of locations, but skill all the individual workers with similar content, learning, and coaching to achieve the requisite capability levels. In the traditional approach to training and learning, it has been found that a globally diverse workforce poses a variety of implementation barriers. However, recently, the dramatic operational improvement to be realized by using the Internet and e-learning to support delivery of high-quality learning to a diverse global workforce has been validated. Deploying consistent, valuable e-learning to a global workforce, while allowing for localization of content to meet cultural norms, provides significant competitive advantages, such as:
Rapid, global new skill development on mission critical capabilities
Standardization of customer brand experience, wherever they are in the world
Localization of content to meet specific cultural requirements
Improved customer satisfaction through better qualified employee capabilities
This chapter presents three case examples of organizations with a global learning roll-out challenge that they addressed through an e-learning solution. They include: Deloitte Consulting, the world’s largest, privately-owned management consulting firm; McDonald’s Corporation, the world’s leading food service retailer; and Austrade, the Australian Trade Commission, a small but highly global organization.All three organizations found that an e-learning approach clearly provided important support in the deployment of skill development for their global workforce, whether the learning involved knowledge workers, customer service associates, or governmental employees.
Achieving Consistent Global Capabilities through e-Learning
One of the major challenges of global organizations is to ensure that their global workforce provides a consistent level of experience to their client or customer. To accomplish this using the traditional, classroom approach was practically impossible, as expense and time costs were insurmountable in a global roll-out of learning. To overcome these obstacles, Deloitte Consulting utilized a blended model of e-learning to skill their practitioners with the new suite of SAP extended enterprise products. These knowledge workers already were highly skilled in SAP applications; however, having the new capabilities was mission critical for Deloitte Consulting, to strengthen their on-going competitive global market position. Using a e-learning portal, all practitioners were able to access three levels of learning: vision and strategy, localized where relevant; an overview of the mySAP.business suite of products; and e-learning on each of the products, where Deloitte Consulting-specific content was combined with content provided by SAP AG. This e-learning was rapidly deployed to 5,000 learners in 33 countries with an estimated cost savings of 70 percent.
A similar experience employing an e-learning solution was realized by Austrade. Australian businesses anticipated quick, professional responses to their inquiries about opportunities to conduct business around the globe. The traditional approach to IT training at Austrade for their globally dispersed offices was expensive and slow, too slow to meet the quality standards expected by, and the requirements of these clients. With the use of the intranet, and a suite of e-learning programs provided by SkillSoft, Austrade was able to provide globally accessible training on 34 modules, leading to certification in Microsoft IT skills and competencies. The outcomes have benefited the clients as well as the bottom-line. Annual client-satisfaction surveys indicate that Austrade’s approval rating has improved from 75 to 90 percent, while the IT training costs were reduced from AU$1 million to AU$225,000.
Relevance of Localization and Rewards for Engaging in Global e-Learning
Importantly, the ability to localize content is easily factored in to an e-learning solution. McDonald’s Corporation has a global, largely transitional workforce, made up of many young people who need crew training to do their jobs competently, with a standard of service excellence expected by McDonald’s customers worldwide. Efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to track completions in delivering this training were paramount to McDonald’s in the pilot of their e-learning strategy. However, the learning designers also knew that the global enterprise would need to accommodate translation of the content, and localization of the e-learning. Thus, a deliberate choice was made to utilize off-the-shelf development tools and software, so that the training content could be easily translated and localized by representatives in many countries. In addition, to engage workers in the learning, they instituted a reward and incentive program. Inexpensive prizes and restaurant- to-restaurant competitions gave the e-learning experience a local context. Results after the pilot in the countries of Canada, Brazil, Taiwan, Australia, and the United Kingdom indicate that 85 percent of learners found e-learning had improved their overall training experience. All three organizations found that they were able to reduce costs, speed the time-to-capability, and accommodate local requirements by using an e-learning solution for global workforce training.
