A strong, effective learning culture driven by technology and innovation is definitely a sustainable competitive advantage for the organizations.  But creating such a learning culture can be difficult especially when the organisation has a deep-rooted face to face culture at its core. Hence, in this blog, my short mission is to analyse the barriers or the challenges in companies with strong face to face learning culture to adopt e-learning and suggest ways to overcome them.

So where do you see a strong face to face culture?

With the advancements of modern learning technology, organisations have already started to embrace online learning or e-learning as their favorite corporate learning strategy. But there are still many organisations where face to face culture still strongly exists. A case in point are organisations where the learning is decentralized and informal and industries like hospitality and manufacturing, the face to face culture is strongly prevalent.

As seen generally in the hospitality industry, a face to face culture can be seen as the element of human interactions is more. When booking family holidays, many people may not prefer to talk to a robot or another machine to plan your itinerary, instead one wishes to interact with a human or human voice. This becomes part of their working culture and let’s not get surprised when the learning culture of the organisation mirrors it.

Similarly, in a manufacturing organisation, the employees have regular 8-9 hours of working hours and most of the employees on the production floor are blue collared workers. A lot of learning happens here ‘on the job’ and is driven by the immediate floor supervisors. Hence it’s mostly human interactions or a face to face culture that exists in such organisations from past many years and has become an integral part of the organizational culture.
So, how can we convert the face to face learning culture to e-learning?

My answer is -Don’t expect an overnight miracle to happen as it requires time to tackle many barriers or challenges. Hence, let us understand what are the barriers or challenges in companies with face to face organisational culture to adopt e-learning

1) Unwillingness To Embrace E-learning

What if the management says NO to technological upgrades and does not support the technology-based learning like implementing e-learning, mobile learning or interactive videos. E-learning is using technology to aid learning and it is replacing traditional classroom training. An unwillingness may be seen among many organizations to embrace the technology in the corporate learning space.
To solve this, the process should start top-down i.e you need the top level executives to support the new initiatives or technological changes.

With organizations looking to shift from face to face culture to e-learning, the role of the top level executives and the senior management to welcome and support the new learning initiatives cannot be undermined. But this is not easy if the top level executives resist it. Hence it becomes the responsibility of the learning and development team in winning the trust of the senior management to initiate the technology-based learning strategies in the organisation. What makes it more complex is the varying challenges that you can experience with the different levels of management. For example, the work supervisors may not embrace e-learning as they might feel a sense of insecurity or loss of the job. Whereas the top level executives might be concerned about the cost factor or ROI of e-learning.

So here are some quick tips to overcome the unwillingness of the organisational workforce to embrace e-learning

For the top management

• ROI- Present a proposition to the top/senior management and other stakeholders which tells them the ROI of e-learning

• Spend time in collecting data and insights to help executives to understand why they should care about the learning needs of the organization and why is the shift essential. Present the success stories and case studies of companies who shifted to e-learning.

• Survey the employees on their learning habits. How and what do they like to learn? Inquire with the managers/supervisors about key skills their teams are lacking or about the learning gaps they have identified. Submit the final findings to the CEO and other stakeholders.

• Once you gain the confidence of the top management, I recommend starting promoting e-learning from the top-down. For example, have the CEO or other top-level officers to share their learning experiences, post key articles and write blogs on the importance of e-learning etc.

For the middle-level management

•Middle-Level management is responsible for executing organizational plans as directed by the top level management. These managers act as an intermediary between top-level management and junior level employees.

•Assign the duties and responsibilities to enable a smooth transition to e-learning. Give them the required authority as well as ensure accountability.

•Choose a group of learners from the middle-level management and train them on e-learning

2.Employees Resistance To Change

”About twenty percent of the people are against any change.” – Robert F. Kennedy

While I mentioned the resistance of the management towards e-learning, one should be cautious about the next big challenge of overcoming the resistance of the learners or the employees. Resistance to change is a common barrier to a new initiative as the employees tend to say NO to the new changes. Some of the important factors that make the employees resist the changes are:

•Fear of the unknown
•Organizational politics
•Fear of the loss of control
•Lethargy and lack of motivation etc….

The above factors are the major influencers in creating employees resistance to change and it becomes more complex when the targeted learning group comprises more of the modern learners.  Many of us would have heard about Rogers, who  identified the important personality traits that help us organize how people will accept a new innovation into:

Innovators (2.5%) – Innovators are the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Innovators are willing to take risks, youngest in age,
Early Adopters (13.5%) – This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation.
Early Majority (34%) – Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters.
 Late Majority (34%) – Individuals in this category will adopt an innovation after the average member of society. Late Majority are typically skeptical about an innovation.
Laggards (16%) – Individuals in this category are the last to adopt an innovation.
A cultural change programme has a better success rate if it is aimed at the early majority and late majority who form the major proportion of the employees.

Here are some tips to tackle employee resistance:

• People resist the changes until they recognize the benefits of the change. Hence, explain to your employees why the change is necessary and how it will benefit them in the future and in their career progress.

• What is in it for me?
The learners need to understand what is in it for them. Hence it becomes very important for the organisation to make sure to address the question of WIIFM. Announce the benefits of implementing e-learning, try including rewards to motivate the learners to participate in the learning process, tell them how does the learning experience differ and can benefit the learner.

• Build the curiosity
By building the curiosity among the learner, the organisation can bring down the level of resistance among the employees. The organisation can plan a launch event for implementing e-learning, which can ignite the curiosity among the learners to expect something big. Create an event and welcome the employees to the launch of the e-learning initiative.

• Make the employees feel recognized
I have felt that resistance becomes more strong when we start to feel that it’s forced upon us. Hence, when the organisation is looking to convert a face to face culture to e-learning, I recommend the organisation to ensure that the employees are not left alone in the decision process and is forced on them. A small tip -Conduct Surveys and take the opinions from the learners about what they need to learn and collect their feedbacks on implementing e-learning. A participatory decision making makes the employee feel recognized and at the same time helps in taking the ownership of learning.

• Mentor the employees into e-learning
When shifting from a traditional learning culture of face to face learning to e-learning, there are can be instances when the employees need assistance and guidance to ensure a smooth transition. Hence, I recommend to test run the e-learning within a group of a target audience and board them first to the e-learning platform. Take the feedback from them and understand what can be the difficulties faced by the learner if any as it can help the organisation to ensure a smoother transition.

Tips

•Train the target group and motivate them to be the advocates for e-learning.

•Use the target groups as key learners and as influencers to motivate the peer learners and provide guidance.

3. Perception Of Incurring High Cost

An organisation with a strong face to face organisational culture considers cost as a prime challenge or barrier in implementing e-learning. For example, an organization might need to buy LMS, develop/ buy the e-learning courses. This makes e-learning a costly affair to a small organization.

Tip: The total cost involved in implementing the e-learning course has come down and these are only the usual one-time costs. Submit a detailed proposal with proper cost breakup to the management. Make a quick comparison chart that details the benefits of e-learning over the other traditional learning  

4. Excessive Reliance On Human Connect

A traditional classroom training involves an instructor with whom the learner is easily able to establish a human connection and there are the peer learners with whom the learners can easily interact. This can become another important barrier or challenge in converting face to face learning to e-learning. With the developments in e-learning, there exist ways to overcome these challenges as the organization can use the modern strategies or techniques in e-learning like including the social chat option, enabling the learners to interact with other peer learners. To promote the feel of a classroom instructor, the organization can include talking heads in the e-learning module.

5. Technological Barriers

Technology is one of the critical problems in using e-learning. It requires adjustments not only from the organization’s side but also from the learner’s side. For organizations to effectively use e-learning, the e-learning technology needs to be integrated with existing systems, taking serious consideration of software and hardware compatibility and capabilities.

Organizations need to ensure that they have the appropriate capacity to run e-learning systems, train staff on how to use them and upgrade or customize them accordingly.

Some tips to remove technological barriers:

•I recommend emphasizing on the trial run or a pilot e-learning program.

•Ensure that you remove the fear of what if I make a mistake? by allowing the learner to enjoy and experience the learning.

•To remove the fear of adapting to technology, the organisation can seek the help of the millennial in the organisation. Give the charge and responsibility to the millennial in your organisation to help the baby boomers to easily board or adapt to new technologies.

•Provide active technical support for your learners to help them to on board the technology platform.

Thus, if you are looking to implement e-learning at your organisation with a strong face to face culture, make sure that you identify the different facets that are unique to your organization and start slowly and steadily. Habituate people into using technology and then make the quantum shift.

I would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations using the comment box below or you can mail me at hello@playxlpro.com