Video Recordings on every learning occasion creates the learning organization

This article is probably a 5 min read that will save your company millions of dollars and make you as an HR Manager, a hero. Well: this might not be entirely true, but let us start at how a typical company works today when it comes to how the staff learns and educate themselves internally.

Ask a colleague for advice is the Nr 1 Education at the Office

The most common way for people at the workplace to learn something is by asking a colleague on how things are done or work. Person A ask person B. Person B interrupts his current focus and work and switch to person A and try to help him or her. Person B then assumingly knows the question that person A had and explains to person A the fact, the procedure, or show the skills needed for A to continue his work. We can call this transfer of knowledge, Session 1. When Person B finish and Person A has understood or solved his lack of understanding by acknowledging and participated in Session 1, person B then is gong back to his current focus. He returns to the state he was in and was interrupted by person A. After a short or long conversion time, he slowly getting back his thoughts and all the mindpower thinking he was in the flow of when person A interrupted for Session 1.

If we look at this from the perspective of productivity, person A buys a service from Person B. Person B invests in Session 1 by aborting his current work; he has found most valuable for his work. The alternative costs for B are the productive work not done (X) in Session 1 had person A not disturbed and interrupted, plus the lack of productive time used during the conversion time (Y). So if the explanation person B conducted for person A or Education Time (ET) is equal to X+Y. If the session lasted 5 (X=5) minutes and it takes 2 minutes (Y=2) to get back to full focus for person B, the Education Time (ET) of 5 minutes for person A equals 7 min of Productive work time (PWT) for person B. The investment in Session 1 can be said both be the sum of 7 min PWT for B as well as 5 min ET for person A.

For the Company paying salary, the education investment for person A is both 5 min of person A and 7 min of person B. Note as well the plain fact that this example of education is all unplanned.
Person A just asked person B, and session 1 was produced and consumed at the same time without any HR department had planned for this. No feedback or structure to make sure the education was adequate, necessary, or had value for the organization was given.

It has a high chance that Session 1 was very valuable for person A and made great sense in his ability to solve a problem and make a contribution more substantial than the investment done by the 12 min of company investment. Let us really hope so for the benefit of all parties. But feedback of this spontaneously Session 1 is not there to analyze.
Yet: this unplanned action is an everyday task, and all of us reading can recognize this situation while we read it. Lets for simplicity reasons call this education Next Door Education. (NDE)

Nr 2 most common education at work is to google it. 

Apart from asking a friend nearby, the Googling of a topic is the most common way of education in a working place. It has two advantages. Everything you need to know is at your fingertips with some keywords skills of a relevant search phrase and a computer or smartphone that are online, which means practically all the time. The googling is resulting in a related, and for the work issue relevant article making the person A receives correct and valuable information or it could either lead to a nonrelevant report person A reads to learn.

The googling can also result in a focus displacement, and social media gets involved, or person A in his surfing finds another article not relevant to the problem. In short: the wrong education needed is read and consumed. For youth, YouTube is the most popular site to visit after googling. Wikipedia also ranks among the top places for the information hunt. This platform is used 6000 times per second around the globe, making it behind the 5th after Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. 

This education does not involve person B as the educational teacher in the example above. It might have used person C from outside the company making the knowledge available in an informative video on YouTube or Vimeo for public use. No HR department had sanctioned, validated or approved the information and education transfer. The feedback about the educational relevance for the employee is absent. Best case scenario: Person A search and find the information in this micro-course and raise his skills for the benefit of the company at the Education Time (ET) invested.  Worst case scenario: No information found. Social media or irrelevant time consumed. And person A might use the colleague education above since he did not find what he wanted on his search on the Internet and "has to" ask his colleague next door and an NDE takes place. ET is then the sum of session 1 for Google Education (GE) and session 2 for the NDE. 

Well: you can go on and on in making great examples of when it works perfectly and example of when it works less good and is just a time waste for everybody involved. We leave the decade of social media addiction out in this article but that is a serious issue at most companies today. 

Planned education from the HR department with Onsite training

The third way of education is a planned education for the staff by organized events sanctioned and prepared by the Company through the HR department. Staff education is directed either by external instructors on-site or off-site at conferences or the facilities of the companies. We can call it On-Site Training (OST) 

The cost involved is the external costs for conference speakers, the travel of staff to locations, the fees for attending summits, and the accommodations for hotel stays, overtime, and the board and lodging. The standard practice is a deep acceptance for all of these educational costs, and there is no following up, no assigned validation of learning. When using an external speaker, there is hardly any mandatory feedback on the content and quality assurance that is taking place. Like it is in the feedback loop with a learning management system like the KLMS. It is, to be honest, from a management ROI perspective, most of the time, a paid holiday for a chosen few to make social mingle in between sessions and some inspiration for the employee to be off work with full pay.

Yet, the vast majority of companies invest heavily in this type of education. Of course, you travel and meet interesting people that lead to business opportunities and learn many new insights during the events. But the quality assurance of the quantity of education that is useful and the cost/ benefit calculation is rarely done.  

Online training move in like a pie the natural circle as part of a blended learning solution 

Online training is for a decade or two a part of the educational budget for most companies.  The investment in an internal Academy is taken and accepted by 95% of the companies today. The education online is today a natural part that did not exist earlier. A management system is not something unfamiliar anymore. It is due to the fact it is a sound investment a great way of saving money on the HR budget as well as a progressive way of educating the company individuals more effectively.  The EdTech industry and eLearning are growing globally at a healthy rate and is expecting to do so for some foreseeable future. Klick Data is a part of this process and has been in the industry for more than three decades. The arguments are to be found on nearly every page on this site. Just drag the bars at the http://klick.site and check the speed of how fast you will get an investment in the Klick Data LMS back with some assumptions of the effect of systematic staff training. Most arguments are comparing the on-site one-one-one training cost in comparison with online education. 

This article is aiming beyond this fact and assumes you as a reader already knows about all the cost-effectiveness of investing in an online system for knowledge. Let us suggest an even more aggressive action plan of getting the most common way of learning: With a Video Learning Process Plan (VLPP) the Next Door Education (NDE) and the Google Education (GE) are to be addressed as well as On-Site Training (OST). This Video Learning Process Plan (VLPP) is a step-by-step system for making all sessions of training recorded and systemized for the staff to learn. 

As you might have noticed, video consumption is exploding in the World. The rate of which YouTube is growing is massive. The way companies invest in video marketing and video training is also booming. Everybody needs a video training on how to act in front of the camera. The need for editing video is growing. The Powerpoints are moving into animations and so on. The video as a concept is hot. 

If the Company systemizes the staff knowledge by letting them record any transformation of information between person A to person B or an instructor records a piece of knowledge and publish it in the KLMS system with a systematic syntax: practically all information in need for the company staff to know will be accessed. And when new learnings are fond out by any staff members; a recording will be in place and published for internal use. It may sound like an impossible task to implement due to the few who practice it today, but let us give you the step by step tool and inspiration for this great strategy to work. An investment that will pay off BIG TIME: This is the path forward for a company that is gathering the knowledge from its most valuable asset: the Human Capital in a structured, fun and progressive way. 

Step by step Guide for making video recordings of every Learning Session 

1. Set up a target for every employee to record an instruction video on something he or she does for two minutes. Here are a list of many great video recording apps!

2. Make all of the staff have access to a KlickData Management System and let the staff publish these first recordings as a Course Plan. 

3. Make every employee understand the need for this by having the management explain the why, how and what is it about a video he or she did herself. 

4. Set a date for everyone to have finished the task. We recommend a workweek maximum. Set off the mission on Monday: Let everyone make their first recordings to Friday. Give the laggers an extra day over the weekend and close the task for Monday morning week 2. It can be as simple as Person A records a Skype or Zoom demo for Person B. 

5. With a staff of 400 people, you now have 400*2 minutes= 800 minutes= Its a more than 13 hours of eLearning produced that everyone can use in the first 5 days. Yes: You need to instruct the staff on how to name and systematically save the recordings. In order for other people to use the content. Yes: Depending on the plan and the weight you put to the efforts; You can give more specific details on what they need to teach. But the basic thing is for everyone to get involved in the eLearning process. The content that is valuable for your Company is now being produced by the staff that actually knows stuff. 

6. Inside the KLMS we have tolls for point system and encouragement. Sticks and carrots. Is no class taken? No training produced? Well. let us wait with the annual raise, shall we? The HR department can track efforts made in producing. They can track the quality of the education done. They can set up internal competitions with After Work Prize Awards. It's a lot the HR department and management can do to encourage the company employees to systematically produce instructions on how things are done in order for other new employees to learn quickly. WITHOUT the Knocking on the next door or google things. Of course, not all facts can be covered. At once. Its a process. But the idea of making all the steps in need for a factory to work on every station and made accessible for all staff to see and remind themselves on things they knew but has forgotten.

7. The HR department can modify and review and upgrade some content more than others in the KLMS system. They can add quizzes and tests to make sure that the right knowledge is assessed and validated and certified. 

8. The internal studio of higher class recordings are going to be installed and a natural room for every company just as the facility of a conference room, a kitchen or a reception desk. The video room for the VLPP  will within a few years be the natural place for learning. All organizations swill have made Excel or Google Sheets calculation and will see the benefit of the VLPP strategy and enforce the system to work. 

If you contact Klick Data we can give you more details on how it works and how the Onboard process for getting investment in the Klick Data LMS back in a very short time for a massive attack on the unnecessary and unproductive way of the internal learning process. There are a lot of issues that the social barrier will hesitate and all organizations are not yet ready for the strategy to be implemented. But the way forward in the decade that just started in 2020 will prove: This is the way forward and Klick data will lead the development for your organization to go video with profitability in mind.