In the latest episode, we had the honour of chatting with Richard Bores, a Learning and Performance Executive and former Sr. Director of Corporate Learning at Sentry.
He’s been in the L&D game for over two decades and spilt the beans on how digital adoption can give you a competitive edge in L&D.
Richard’s story of bringing DAP to Sentry and how the organization adopted learning in the flow of work.
- The Sentry story of implementing a digital adoption platform (DAP) revolved around their claims application. The goal was to minimize the disruption to the call centre’s workflow and customer responses by minimizing the amount of formal learning that took associates away from their desks.
- The strategy was successful and had a positive return on investment, reducing the time needed for new hires to be fully trained. The implementation of the DAP also coincidentally prepared the company for the shift to remote work during the pandemic. The implementation of a digital adoption platform (DAP) reinforced Richard’s belief in informal learning, also known as “learning in the flow of work.”
- Initially, there were questions and apprehension from senior stakeholders, but Richard was able to work through these concerns and show the benefits of a good DAP. The DAP was able to provide the right content at the right time, helping users in their workflow.
- Richard also had to overcome a previous attempt at implementing a DAP at the company, which had not been successful. Richard used a structured template for introducing the DAP to different stakeholders, including Frontline Management and associates. To make the introduction fun, the speaker created online scavenger hunts and contests to encourage engagement with the DAP.
What are the aspects of learning that have stayed constant throughout your career?
- The core aspects of learning include practice, repetition, reflection, and feedback. A DAP allows for a more intentional design of learning assets and can shrink learning intervals.
- Additionally, a DAP can strengthen new user confidence once they have completed formal training, and it is difficult to measure but it has been beyond measure in Richard’s experience.
What are some problems that organizations need to address in L&D?
- He believes that the L&D profession needs to focus on leveraging data and analytics to gain insight into people’s performance and build better learning experiences.
- Additionally, Richard suggests that L&D teams should focus on democratizing learning by having associates participate in delivering, sharing, and coaching. This can help to build a learning culture, where associates feel more connected to the learning process.
- He also mentions that they have successfully built adjunct faculty teams at previous organizations to help deliver training and leadership skills among associates.
How do you measure the ROI of a business from the L&D perspective?
- He believes that the true return on investment (ROI) from a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) is seen in the savings from a particular initiative, cites an example from their time at Century, where they used an online resource and coaching sessions to train sales associates, resulting in a savings of nearly $300,000.
- He also mentions that at Century, they were able to go remote with their claims learning due to the use of Whatfix, which resulted in additional cost savings, he also mentions that the numbers have been published on some websites in Whatfix, which is a DAP platform.
