Performance Support Tools – Tips And Strategies To Boost Employee Performance

Formal trainings are often not enough to obtain the required gains in workforce performance. This article provides tips and strategies on how you can use Performance Support Tools to supplement formal training and boost employee performance.

How To Boost Employee Performance With Performance Support Tools

How do we learn?

70% from on the job experiences (experiential learning).

20% from interactions with others (social learning).

10% from formal (structured learning).

While the exact ratio of how we learn may be debatable, what is evident is that Learning and Development teams need to go beyond the focus on 10% of formal training and must align their learning strategies to encompass the need for informal learning.

Performance Support Tools (that supplement formal training) fit in precisely to address this need. You can integrate them into your learning strategy and see the “performance changing” gains accrue.

What Are Performance Support Tools (PSTs)?

Performance Support Tools or PSTs are just-in-time learning aids designed to assist employees with on-the-job support and enhance workforce performance.

They provide support and guidance to employees at work exactly when they need them.

They are easily accessible and are usually available in the learners’ workflow, serving the purpose of providing the required task support to employees, thereby leading to enhanced employee performance.

PSTs are ideal to bring about continuous improvement in the workforce performance that organizations look to achieve.

Why Does It Make Business Sense To Adopt Performance Support Tools In Your Learning Strategy?

The origins of Performance Support can be traced to nearly three decades ago. In the words of Gloria Gery, a key proponent of Performance Support, “Performance Support focuses on work itself while training focuses on the learning required to do the work. Integrating resources in the workplace is inevitable, and the need is urgent. Filtering resources so people get the tools and resources they need while actively working is the goal. Work process and roles are the primary filters. The mechanisms vary: Portals, performance-centered workflow interfaces, enterprise applications, integration projects, etc, but what’s important is that performer be able to name that tune in one note, to perform in exemplary fashion“.

I think Gloria Gery was ahead of her time but what she predicted on usage of Performance Support is finally gaining momentum today. While the core of what Gloria stipulated is valid today, success can be achieved only when Performance Support integrates cohesively with your current learning strategy. Only then can the training result in enhanced employee performance and impact businesses resulting in a positive ROI on training.

I believe that organizations today are ready to make this change and several supporting factors (mLearning or mobile learning, microlearning, and social learning) will help build momentum in the adoption of Performance Support Tools.

What Is The Difference Between Performance Support And Formal Training?

It is important to note that Performance Support is not training nor does it replace formal training. It co-exists with formal training and actually uplifts the impact of formal training by pushing the envelope from knowledge acquisition to application.

As we know, the gap between knowledge acquisition (through formal training) and knowledge application (applying the acquired knowledge meaningfully on the job to create the required impact) is a huge one. Learning and Development professionals constantly struggle with and find a challenge in demonstrating the impact of training to business. When used in conjunction with formal training, Performance Support Tools achieve this mandate by helping learners apply their learning on the job.

How Can Performance Support Be Integrated Into Your Overall Learning Strategy?

The answer lies in having an approach of Learning and Performance Ecosystem as shown here that integrates components of all three aspects of how we learn.

Learning and Performance Ecosystem - EI Design

How Do Performance Support Tools Help Learners And Boost Employee Performance?

Learners like learning at work and learning informally. Performance Support Tools (PSTs) allow learners to learn and work at the same time.

Performance Support Tools (PSTs) are extremely beneficial in terms of enhancing employee performance as they:

Enable learners to perform tasks on their own without depending on external assistance.

Save time that would otherwise have been wasted in the form of senior employees providing guidance to lesser experienced employees.

Enable new employees to perform tasks quickly with the required quality, irrespective of a formal training being available or not.

Help new employees understand complex tasks in a simple way.

Help learners learn about new systems, upgrades, or a new introduction in the workflow/process.

How Can Organizations Use Performance Support Tools To Boost Workforce Performance?

PSTs accelerate learning as they are part of the learners’ workflow and are available precisely at the time of their need. By design, they are easy to assimilate and easy to apply.

Specifically:

They are a great fit for informal learning.

They can be also be used to support formal training to improve the stickiness of learning and its eventual application on the job.

You can integrate microlearning based strategies to create them and see the application levels zoom.

Couple them with platforms for social learning and you will see the impact of your training multiply.

What Are The Possible Formats To Offer Performance Support Tools?

You can offer Performance Support Solutions to improve employee performance in a variety of ways.

At EI Design, we offer Performance Support Tools to increase workforce performance in various formats, including:

1. Mobile Apps.

The very fact that these apps are “mobile” helps learners obtain just-in-time information and Performance Support anytime, anywhere.

2. Videos And Interactive Videos.

Videos have proved to be one of the most sought after Performance Support Tools and the fact that “How-to” searches shoot up 70% every year on YouTube justifies it.

3. Decision-Making Scenarios.

More often than not, learners will be in need of just-in-time support when they are stuck in a complex situation at work. You can offer Performance Support in the form of decision-making scenarios to help them and achieve higher retention of learning and application of that learning on the job.

4. Whiteboard Animations.

Animations and illustrations are one of those things that catch your eye instantly. When packaged as a Performance Support Tool, they can help not just capture learners’ attention but retain it and help them internalize the learning effectively.

5. Kinetic Text/Animations.

Like Ronan Keating and the rest of the Boyzone members, “words” is all you need to have to take your learners’ breath away if you can present them as kinetic text animations. They’re extremely handy when you want to convey concepts that are difficult to visualize.

6. Interactive PDFs.

Save the learners the travails of going through lengthy documents. You can offer them Performance Support in the form of Interactive PDFs with a touch of user-friendly navigation and appealing visuals. They make great PSTs when used to present tips, checklists, fact sheets, and so on.

7. eBooks.

These can prove to be useful Performance Support Tools (PSTs), especially if you’re looking to convert your documents into multi-device and HTML5 compatible resources. They provide the added benefit of converting lengthy documents into manageable chunks. You can also integrate audio and video to increase the impact.

8. Expert Videos, Webinars/Recorded Webinar.

Expert insights are always treated by with respect by learners. Expert videos, webinars, and recorded webinars have plenty of takers in the learner community and they can serve as a useful Performance Support Tool.

9. Webcast/Podcasts.

The ease and flexibility of accessing them on-the-go makes webcasts/podcasts ideal for Performance Support. They come with the added advantage of being brief and entertaining, much to the liking of the present day learners.

What More Is Possible To Engage Your Employees And Boost Employee Performance?

To enhance employee performance and encourage on-the-job learning, Performance Support Tools (PSTs) can be used in conjunction with other learning strategies, such as:

mLearning or Mobile learning (by offering PSTs in mobile-friendly formats).

Designing learning for the millenial generation (innovative formats of PSTs can be aligned to the way millennials learn).

Gamification.

Learning portals.

You can also watch this video to know about the different formats that can be used to offer Performance Support.

What Gains Will Organizations Accrue If They Adopt Performance Support Tools?

Today, with wider adoption of mLearning or mobile learning, organizations have an enormous range of options to provide Performance Support solutions to their employees and boost workforce performance.

Adding Performance Support to your formal training will not only enhance the impact of the formal training but more significantly enable learners to apply the learning on the job. Having access to these learning aids precisely at the time of learner need encourages the learners to use them effectively. The final outcome is “performance changing” learning that Learning and Development teams seek.

Additionally, technology allows us to offer Performance Support within learners’ workflow (for instance, on their smartphones) and in varied engaging formats that appeal to different learner profiles and create sticky learning.

I hope this article establishes how you can use PSTs to supplement your training. Do contact me if you need any specific support.

Source : https://www.eidesign.net/performance-support-tools-tips-and-strategies-to-boost-employee-performance/

How Can You Improve Your Corporate Training ROI Through Interactive Videos – Featuring 3 Examples

Interactive video is being considered the next big thing for mLearning or mobile learning solutions. It appeals to a wider audience (Millennials as well as other learner profiles) and is more engaging compared to videos. This article features 3 interactive video examples that showcase how you can improve your corporate training ROI.

How To Improve Your Corporate Training ROI: How Is An Interactive Video Different From Traditional Training Videos?

In simple terms, interactive videos are videos that provide viewers with an interactive experience helping them be very much a part of the viewing journey through interactive controls.

Training videos as such are known to appeal to learners but in spite of the aura that they carry with them, they still come with the limitation of providing one-way communication to viewers.

Normal training videos fail to meet the learning mandate, especially when:

• They’re long, failing to retain learners’ attention all the way till the end.
• Learners are required to analyze and apply the learning.

Interactive videos negate the passivity of standard training videos and offer learners with an interactive viewing experience besides providing other benefits.

What Are The Benefits Of Using Interactive Videos?

Some of the other benefits of interactive videos are:

1. High impact.
  The impact they have is ten times the impact a normal video     generates.

2. High learner engagement.
   They nudge learners to put their thinking caps on and keep them engaged through a host of interaction points.

3. Meet the required cognition level.
    Learning interactions akin to eLearning, such as knowledge checks, CYU, hotspots, click and reveal, and so on can be used in interactive videos for greater impact.

4. Appeal to varied learner profiles.
   They find takers in the millennial workforce as well as other learner profiles.

5. Enhance the impact of your mLearning solutions and leverage on current trends.
   You can use interactive videos with other approaches such as microlearning and gamification to enhance the impact of your mLearning or mobile learning solutions.

How Can You Use Interactive Videos In Corporate Training?

If we look at the 70-20-10 model of learning, we can map the usage of interactive videos for both formal training as well as Performance Support Tools or PSTs. This is not all. Interactive videos can also be used to support ILT.

Let’s see how exactly you can use them.

Formal training.

Like videos, interactive videos can be used for compliance, soft skills, leadership training, product training, sales training, behavioral change, change management, and various other eLearning needs. Given the higher punch that you can pack with your learning design, interactive videos can provide a very high-impact learning experience.

As Performance Support Tools (PSTs).

As we know, PSTs are just-in-time learning or job aids that are part of the learners’ work-flow. In contrast to formal training or classic eLearning that focuses predominantly on knowledge acquisition, these focus on the learning application. As they are available to learners precisely at their moment of need and can be used effectively on the job, they are very popular. Interactive videos find a significant application as PSTs.

Support ILT.

Interactive video nuggets can be used to supplement ILT/VILT sessions. You can use them to support role plays, complex decision making simulations as well as scenario based assessments.

How Can You Multiply The Impact Of Using Interactive Videos In Your Corporate Training?

Today, you can enhance the impact of your learning design by leveraging multiple learning strategies.

Specifically, you can enhance the impact of Interactive Videos by:

1. Packaging them as microlearning nuggets: For primary training   or supplementing the primary program (as a prequel or sequel to an eLearning course).
2. Using components of gamification to engage the learners.
3. Using scenario-based learning with branching to help learners analyze complex, real-life situations, and practice in a safe environment.
4. Offer personalization (use surveys to ascertain the specific path for each learner).
5. Encourage learning as a continuum by weaving multiple interactive video nuggets into learning paths/learning journeys.

Can Usage Of Interactive Videos Help You To Improve Your Corporate Training ROI?

Most of us are familiar with the Kirkpatrick model of training evaluation.

I use this as a standard measure to determine the potential impact of a given learning strategy. If we look at the model, the usage of interactive videos will certainly impact the first two levels positively.

Impact on Level 1: Usage of interactive videos has shown to create a strongly positive learner reaction and shows better completion rates as compared to traditional learning.

Impact on Level 2: Here the impact is similar to any other learning strategy in creating sticky learning experiences.

Impact on Level 3: Increasing the probability of behavioral change is possibly what sets interactive videos apart. As learners interact with real-life situations, the learning is more relevant and sticky thereby increasing its chances of application. All these factors increase the triggers for the required behavioral change.

Impact on Level 4: Once the required behavioral change is accomplished, the business is likely to see the required impact.

Impact on ROI: If we monetize the impact and divide it by the cost of training, we can arrive at the ROI. As I have highlighted through the impact on each level, a positive impact on ROI is the final derivative gain of using Interactive Videos for your corporate training.

Having seen the power of interactive videos and specifically how they impact the ROI positively, let us look at three interactive video examples.

Interactive Video Example 1: Managing Customer Expectations

This interactive video showcases how we have transformed a scenario-based video into an engaging interactive experience. The video is on Managing Customer Expectations and while the story plays out in a logical flow, viewers get to pause the video at regular intervals and check their understanding of the concept along the way.

To keep learners engaged, it includes review questions, click and display, hot spots, drag and drop, and other interactivities.

The scenarios in the video help learners relate to the subject and provide a realistic feel in terms of how they should be treating customers and what they should be doing to meet customer expectations. The interactive video being a short microlearning nugget also helps learners learn the bite-sized way.

Interactive Video Example 2: ILT Experience Made Interactive

This interactive video solution showcases how we have converted an ILT session into an engaging Interactive Video learning experience.

In this video, we have an instructor demonstrating the features and benefits of eBridge, our review and collaboration tool.

We’ve pepped up the learning journey with interactivities such as click and learn, info highlights, and drag and drop.


This solution is a classic example of how you can multiply the impact of your existing videos and convert the recordings of ILT sessions to rich, interactive format. Although the core is still the Instructor’s recording, the approach is now more learner-centric.

Interactive Video Example 3: A training Video On Financial Subject Made Interactive

This video showcases how we have brought a relatively dry financial concept of Japanese Candlesticks to life with the interactive video approach.

The video features eye-catching visuals in the form of illustrations, icons, graphics, photographs, and animations with a voiceover explaining the subject playing out in the background.

The interaction points in the video come in the form of options to take notes and voice controls to navigate through the video. Learners can either type in their notes or provide feedback by recording their voice.


Learners can also learn using the drop-down interactivity to choose the right options in a simulation designed exclusively to explain the concept of Japanese Candlestick charts.

Take a look at this video to know how we use our Interactive Video framework to flip viewer passivity to interactivity:




I hope this article has provided you with insights on how interactive videos can enhance your learning strategy and improve your corporate training ROI. If you need any further assistance on how you can integrate Interactive Videos in your learning strategy, do contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.

Source: https://www.eidesign.net/interactive-videos-improve-corporate-training-roi-3-examples/

How Can You Use Microlearning To Increase Employee Engagement And Performance? - EI Design

To achieve high employee engagement and performance gain, your training must be precise, and easy to assimilate and apply on the job. In this article, I will outline how microlearning can be used for formal training and performance support to achieve higher employee engagement and performance.

Increasing Employee Engagement And Performance With Microlearning 

In this article we will discuss how to increase employee engagement and performance through the use of microlearning techniques. But first...

What Are Some Of The Challenges That Learning And Development Professionals Face?

1. Pressure On Training Budgets. 

This is a challenge we all are familiar with. With variables in the global economy, there is an increased pressure on training budgets. This leads to an increased need to maximize the impact of the budgets you get.

2. Demonstrate Impact On Business And Positive ROI On Training. 

Budgets are hard to come by and when they do get allotted, they come with the related commandment – “Thy shall make the most of these and generate the required ROI”. It’s a double whammy that Learning and Development professionals are up against so often – obtain budgets and then make sure that every penny spent results in a better return on investment for the organization.

3. Dwindling Attention Spans. 

Employee engagement and performance has a lot to do with employee attentiveness. Organizations today face the challenge of capturing and retaining the attention of employees. The short attention spans of employees notwithstanding, there are distractions at work too adding to the trouble. The spoilers come in many forms – untimely interruptions, information overload, social media activity, and so on. Organizations are therefore under pressure to address this challenge and deliver their trainings in formats that can capture employees’ attention and keep them engaged throughout.

4. Increasing Millennial Workforce And The Challenge Of "One Size Does Not Fit All".

Times are changing and so is the learner profile. Millennials are becoming a significant part of the workforce in several organizations. This learner group in particular has a short attention span and traditional learning methods do not quite resonate well with these learners. Their preferences and expectations are different. With this learner group coming into the picture, there is a consensus growing in the learning industry of an overhaul of learning strategies and the need to design learning approaches that appeal to them.

5. Innovative Approaches - Quick To Deploy And Update. 

To bring about higher learner engagement, Learning and Development professionals need to keep investing in training approaches that are not only innovative, but quickly deployable. Also, the solutions should offer the flexibility of quick updates.

What Do Learners Want?

The wish list from learners is:

1. Flexibility to learn on the go (trainings must run on their smartphones and tablets).
2. Must be fun (not preachy or boring).
3. Must be short and effective.
4. Must be packaged for easy application on the job.

What Do Organizations Want? 

Many of us may be familiar with the exponential nature of forgetting. As shown in this diagram featuring the "Forgetting Curve" (by Hermann Ebbinghaus), adult learners forget 80% of what they learned in 30 days!

Organizations look to implement approaches that can flip this Forgetting curve to a Retention curve (that is, increase stickiness of learning and improve its application). They need a learning strategy that can increase both employee engagement and performance.

So What’s The Solution? 

One of the approaches you can use is microlearning-based training. With microlearning, you can create a sticky learning experience, which goes a long way in turning the "Forgetting Curve" to a "Retention Curve". You can achieve this by offering microlearning nuggets:

1. As a supplement to the formal training (to reinforce the primary information).
2. In the form of Performance Support Tools (PSTs) as an extension of formal training.
3. To bring about behavioral change (leading to a transformational gain).

Here are further insights to help you understand its strength and how you can use it to increase employee engagement and performance:

What Is Microlearning?

Microlearning is often referred to as bite-sized learning. It is a short learning nugget (3 to 5 minutes long or shorter) designed to meet a specific learning outcome. While it can be used for formal training, it is majorly used in informal learning (with a focus on performance gain).

Download free eBook on Why You Should Adopt Microlearning

Microlearning nuggets are designed for and delivered in rich media formats. Their brevity and accessibility on multiple devices (including smartphones, tablets, desktops, and laptops) makes them an ideal fit for just-in-time training.

How Can It Be Delivered?

You can take a pick from several innovative formats. All of these are multi-device formats (supported on desktops/laptops as well as tablets and smartphones). Some of the popular formats are:

1. Mobile apps for learning and assessment.
2. Videos.
3. Interactive videos.
4. Whiteboard animations.
5. Kinetic text based animations.
6. Interactive PDFs.

Where Can It Be Applied?

You can use microlearning for formal training as well as for Performance Support (learning aids/job aids that are within the learners’ work-flow and facilitate easy application of this learning on the job). We have created microlearning nuggets for varied training needs such as:

1. Soft skills/behavioral change.
2. Compliance.
3. Professional skills.
4. Application simulations.

I am sharing 5 examples on how you can use microlearning. Going through these examples isn’t going to take much of your time because they’re being shown as a microlearning nugget (told you, they’re brief and to-the-point!). View it and see how you can use similar nuggets to increase learner engagement and performance.

Gains for the organization: Organizations have a lot to gain by adopting microlearning-based approaches. Apart from increasing employee engagement and performance, microlearning:

1. Can be developed and deployed quickly. It also provides the flexibility to make frequent updates and make them easily.
2. Can be used for formal as well as informal learning.
3. Helps organizations achieve higher learner completion rates.
4. Not only creates high impact learning but also results in better application of that learning on-the-job.
5. Combats the challenge of dwindling attention spans.
6. Is ideal for the millennial workforce.

Besides being short, fun, available to learners on-the-go, easy to internalize and apply; microlearning based training can be applied easily to most of your training needs. I hope this article provides the cues on how you can use microlearning-based training to increase employee engagement and performance. If you have any further questions, do contact me.

For more insights on microlearning-based training, you can go through my articles The Microlearning Solution: Is Microlearning Right For You? and How You Can Use Mobile Learning Apps For Microlearning-Based Training. You can also refer to my eBook Why You Should Adopt Microlearning Based Training.

Source - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-can-you-use-microlearning-increase-employee-asha-pandey?trk=prof-post

Improve ROI of your E-learning solution through Performance Support Tools

What are Performance Support Tools (PSTs)?

Organisations worldwide face the dual challenge of enhancing performance and increasing productivity. Clearly, learning and performance gain are inter-linked. On account of this, L&D professionals are on the lookout for measures that can increase application of learning at work.

Training has long been the traditional approach to improve performance.E-learning in particular has been extremely effective in providing this “anytime-anywhere” support to learners. However, formal training is often not enough to ensure that the acquired learning indeed gets applied at work.

This is exactly where PSTs fit in. These are just-in-time learning aids that are available to learners within their workflow.

How are PSTs different from trainings?

As we know, trainings are designed after carrying out the Training Needs Analysis (TNA) and identifying a need or gap. They are structured to meet the defined objectives and provide people to pick up or master a specific knowledge and skill. Trainings can be rendered in a classroom or online. In contrast, PSTs are just-in-time learning aids that help people accomplish tasks so we are not looking at learning objectives but support to get the work done. Unlike trainings, they are not disruptive and are available to learners within their workflow.

When exactly would the learners need Performance Support?

Designed by Dr. Conrad Gottfredson, a leading expert on Performance Support, the Five Moments of Need© is a very effective framework that can be used to map varied learning and performance support needs in any organisation.

According to him, learners seek support in “Five Moments of Need” as indicated here:

When they are learning an aspect for the first time
When they want to deep-dive and learn more
When they want to apply or remember something
When they need to solve a problem or fix something that has gone wrong
When something changes

If you review this model “Five Moments of Need”, a couple of important aspects emerge. The first two moments focus on knowledge acquisition and hence map to formal training (classroom or online).  On the other hand, the next three moments focus more on Performance Support. They are aligned to help learners apply their knowledge within their workflow.

So, an effective learning and performance strategy must factor for both measures that are necessary to acquire learning (through formal training) and more significantly, apply this learning (through Performance Support intervention).

On account of this, an effective Performance Support Solution will have a direct bearing on the gains for business; thereby impacting the ROI on E-learning positively.

How do PSTs improve application of learning?

Unlike formal training that tends to be disruptive (pulls the learner away from work), PSTs can be easily embedded in the learners’ workflow. The key is that they provide the right amount of support and guidance that the learners need at work (and within their workflow). These can be provided in varied, interesting formats ranging from Mobile Apps to eBooks, Interactive videos, eBooks or Interactive PDFs.

The typical PSTs focus on checklists, ready reckoners, guidelines and so on and can be designed to complement or support formal training. They can also be provided as stand-alone learning aids focusing on performance enhancement. The key is that these aids are available to learners exactly “when and where they need” it.

A case study

Let us look at a case study that illustrates how a PST (as a checklist) that complemented an online course enhanced the application of learning.

Audience: Instructional Designers

Formal training: An online course on “Writing Effective Storyboards”

PST: A “checklist” summarising the workflow to be followed and the key aspects to conform to during storyboarding available as avideo featuring Kinetic text/Text animation

Outcomes of the online course

The aim of the course is to ensure that the learners imbibe the basics of storyboarding and gain an insight about the key focus areas of a storyboard creation.

The gaps (in application)

When we rolled out these courses to our internal Instructional Design team, we found that the conformance to the prescribed workflow to develop storyboards was rather patchy. Since the team had individuals with varied backgrounds and with different proficiency levels, they tended to use individual approaches that they were most comfortable with. We needed to ascertain how we could instill the discipline of following the prescribed approach.

How did we bridge the gap?

We developed a PST (a micro learning object) that served as a “checklist” for the Instructional Designers. This just-in-time learning aid was designed as a video featuring Kinetic text/Text animation with audio that provided a precise and sharp input on the workflow to be followed.

The impact

The checklist is now available to our Instructional Designers on their desktops/laptops as well as tablets/smartphones. Access to this aid within their workflow increased their probability of using them and applying them at work. We see an increased focus in conformance to the mandate now.

The business impact is on account of gains due to:

Improvement in “first time quality”
Reduction of review time
Reduction in time to turn-around each storyboard
How can PSTs improve ROI in E-learning?
As we saw in the case study, having an effective training program is often not enough to meet the organisational mandates of enhancing productivity and reducing errors. Using Performance Support to complement or supplement formal training will certainly impact the “returns” for the organisation positively and increase the ROI on E-learning. There would be a direct gain on account of competence gain that will translate to higher performance and productivity levels (as compared to training alone).

It is important to note that Performance Support may not generate all the “returns” but is an extremely effective contributor in enhancing them and improving the ROI on E-learning.

Source : http://www.eidesign.net/blog/improve-roi-of-your-e-learning-solution-through-performance-support-tools/