What does minimalism have to do with end-user training?
Minimalism is all the rage these days from living in tiny houses to owning just enough to carry in a backpack. There are always extremes but to me, the ultimate goal of minimalism is finding just the right balance so we can live life with more intention and purpose. Perhaps it is best described by the Swedish word Lagom which is defined as “enough, sufficient, just right”. There is no connotation here of insufficiency or excess rather harmony and balance. Your end-user training needs to have balance as well.
At Sedona Learning, that perfect balance is what we strive for with every learning solution. Not covering enough about your new system can lead to chaos at go-live. If you cover too much, it leads to confusion. Here are a couple of scenarios we often encounter:
- Analysts who are very busy building, testing and fixing are asked to create learning materials. Because the build/test/fix is so urgent, training is an afterthought that is squeezed in at the end. Often an outline at best is provided to teach from. Classroom training is expensive–poor classroom training is even more expensive!
- An alternate scenario is the use of generic training. Generic training often comes across as irrelevant and a waste of time to end-users. Physicians are particularly frustrated with this approach.
In either of these scenarios, the right balance has not been found. A true minimalistic or balanced approach would be to provide the right amount of training to the right people, at the right time and place at an affordable cost.
- Right training for the right people – engage your participants with interactive training that is specific to your site and specific to the individual role.
- Right amount – If you try to teach everything about the new system and three ways to do each task, you will overload your learners and learning will be reduced.
- Right time and place – It is proven with learning research that a three prong approach promotes the best performance outcomes for major system changes: preparation or prerequisite learning, a follow-up learning event for hands-on practice and then performance support at the point of need.
- Right Cost – many vendors either remove eLearning solutions after go-live or strap you with costly licensing and contract fees year after year to continue to use. That is just not sustainable. With Sedona Learning Solutions, the client owns the training and can continue to use it for new hire month after month at no additional cost!
Call Sedona Learning Solutions today for a free consult on how to obtain just the right balance for training your end-users!