Chris Ford, Digital Marketing & Loyalty

The Information Commissioner has been pretty busy lately, and by the end of May, he’s likely to be busier still.  That’s when the new EU laws about cookies come into force (for more information on how and why see this great article in The Guardian).

As both a consumer and service provider, I can only see this as good news. As a private individual, I totally agree with permission marketing, and want to filter out junk or irrelevant messages in my in-box.  And as a professional in the digital marketing industry, my focus is on enabling our clients to harvest relevant contact data, with an emphasis on quality rather than quantity.

The smart thing to be doing right now is to be putting in place an opt-in engagement strategy for online prospects and customers.  This isn’t a ‘terms and conditions’ issue for hiding in the small print – it’s an opportunity to seize the initiative and establish trust, credibility and loyalty with the people who visit our sites.  And if you’re looking for ideas on just how to do that, drop me a note – we’ve got loads!

Every change means pushing through a pain barrier, yet rather than seeing it as a negative, let’s recognise this legislation as an other opportunity to strengthen customer engagement - the end result will mean long term gains all round. So bring it on – and pass me the cookie jar.

Barbara Bezani, Prepaid Cards

One of our part-time employees stopped me in my travels the other day, to say how useful she was finding her new prepaid VISA card.  “It’s made such a difference,” she told me.

I asked her what she meant, and was not entirely surprised to find that the real benefit – to her – was having a set amount loaded onto the card direct from her salary each month, which meant it was automatically put aside for supermarket shopping.  After only two months, she was already seeing a difference to the household finances, and a significant reduction in her credit card bill.  And over the Christmas period, to boot.

Sometimes the simple things don’t get the attention they deserve. I’m a long-term proponent of prepaid cards as a mechanism for reward, and for giving employees rebates through partner retailers, and yes – sure – I know they can be convenient, too.  Yet my colleague wasn’t talking about any of the added value:  to her, it was all about the practical advantages of using the card itself.  Budgeting is easy.  Making that budget work is the hard part, never more so than now.  If having a prepaid card can help households out in such a simple way, I’m more of an advocate than ever. Move over scissors, paper, stone – there’s a new winner in town.

Francis Goss, Reward

Bad weather, financial austerity, and failed resolutions...  winter can be tough.  For employers, this can mean reduced productivity and employee engagement, too - not good news for business prosperity.  So here are some easy-to-action tips to get the year off to a stronger start, and brighten the engagement outlook for January and beyond in your organisation!

1. Share your objectives for 2012. Do you know what you want to achieve this year? Do your colleagues share that vision and do they know how important their role is in achieving it?  Set team goals and rewards to focus the team and provide a common direction.
2. Recognise. One thing everyone has in common this year is a birthday. Have you got the reminders in your calendar? Whilst your singing may not be appreciated, your sense of occasion will be. A little gift that means something to them as a person will work wonders for their motivation.
3. Rap with your team. If your attempt to show you care about colleagues still only extends to asking about how their journey to work was, then you are a long way from the rapport that you need to foster real team spirit. Find out what really charges their batteries - outside of work - and take a genuine  interest.
4. Celebrate! Are you good at celebrating success? If not, then the year of the Olympics in Britain is a great time to start.  Regular bronze medals, a good sprinkling of silver and the occasional gold for helping the business to win, is not just good practice, it will give your company a competitive edge. Never neglect a personal best.
5. Pass the baton. You don't need to be in control all of the time. You don't even need to be the fastest runner. Share the baton around (be careful not to drop it). Give your colleagues a chance to show what they can do. Who is up for it?
6. Clear the hurdles. If it takes five forms and six signatures to get the project off the ground then the race will be over before you started. Don't make life more difficult than it needs to be. Break the unnecessary red tape.
7. Be visible. Walk the floor, spend time with your colleagues, be accessible. Offer to make the tea.

Ian Luxford, Learning

From Ian's recent article in Training Journal.

Some years ago, after attending one of my weekly language classes at the City Lit, (a Central London adult education institute with a great heritage), I shared dinner with a language tutor who had very clear views about the application of e-learning in his own field.

“You will never,” he said (“never” is rarely a safe word to use) “be able to teach a foreign language via e-learning.  To learn a language, you have to be able to produce the language. E-learning cannot have a conversation with you.  It cannot guide you on whether you have produced it correctly…”  He had spoken.  My contention is that it is dangerous to claim that a subject or any subject cannot be taught through e-learning, not because e-learning can be used to teach everything (and I don’t know that it can) but because:

1. to claim this is to take a limited view of what e-learning is and how it works – to get the most out of e-learning we need to take a broader view
2. mastering most subjects requires us to learn different elements of them in different ways – e-learning is, like any other tool, only part of the solution
3. among the dissenters on any technological advance there will always be people who failed to predict what it might be able to do in the future.  Computers are continually proving to be cleverer than we had thought. 

The idea that e-learning can only handle logic and preciseness is of course a myth.  The rich range of media available to us now allows e-learning to present all sorts of scenarios and possibilities, allowing the learner to apply their own perceptions and judgements.

I was recently asked to review a suite of e-learning courses which included a module on emotional intelligence (EI).  The module was structured very much according to the model described above and it would be fair to say that it did not take learners very far down the route of developing high levels of EI. What it did very well, however, was to provide learners with the resources to understand what EI is, and what it isn’t, and how it can make a difference in their working lives and what the key areas are that they need to focus on if they are going to develop it.

If I were running a course on EI, or any other discipline related to soft skills, I would be very pleased to have a group of learners who I could be certain were coming to the event with a sound understanding of the first principles. Underpinning knowledge is a critical building block in most areas of learning and there are a number of ways in which it can be acquired.  This illustrates a core role that e-learning can play when it is part of a blend of techniques that contribute to development. 

Any idea that e-learning is not about interacting with others is also missing the point.  Many practitioners in the field of e-learning are committed to developing its potential as a tool for promoting collaboration between learners – and the vast reach of the web allows great possibilities for collaboration with people who would otherwise be out of reach. For example, after observing the demonstration of behaviours that exemplify certain soft skills (or not), learners can exchange views via fora or email, on what is productive.

The interaction with others does not stop there.  Another stereotype applied to e-learning is the self-paced idea (practitioners still use the term “asynchronous” to mean that learners are not all learning at the same moment). Technology now allows us to meet and interact with others using live audio and video. We can therefore also record the interactions for review and feedback, which is another technique often used in face-to-face interventions in this space. 

The improvements in assistive technologies can also make it easier than previously for people with certain disabilities to participate in this type of training – my view is that we have more work to do here, but there is at least a discernible way forward.

Finally, there always comes a point where the learner needs to move on from the learning activity, get out into the world and apply their learning.  Anyone who has passed a driving test will remember that they actually learned to drive once the licence had been issued and the person practising their mental arithmetic with the computer, will presumably (at some point) want to use this skill in anger.

But the power of information technology, to store data and build wisdom, should not be underestimated.  To return to my language tutor’s argument – look carefully at the reality of software being used to ask a learner a question in a foreign language, record their answer, play it back to them, compare it with a model spoken answer, provide feedback and then give an appropriate response using meaning and context of what the learner has said.  Text-based translation software is available freely on the web and while it might not yet be perfect, we still are moving on all the time.

A key success factor for any learning intervention is the suitability of the methods used to support learners in constructing their knowledge and skills.  E-learning suffers at both ends of the suitability spectrum. In some cases people are beguiled by the possibilities of the technology and want to use it for everything because it’s there. Whereas elsewhere, they close their minds to the possibilities it offers and refuse to benefit from them. In other words, it has been used where it is not suitable and not been used when it is.

Its suitability for a particular area of learning content, such as soft skills, however is something which is changing with the general progress of technology. Keep an open mind, take a broad view and watch this space.