WDR

WDR Forum Summary; June 2010

WDR Forum Morning Summary
30^th June 2010

On Wednesday 30^th June WDR invited a number of Learning & Development representatives from a wide range of business sectors in the South East to a Forum to hear two different presentations on two key subject areas in Learning & Development today.  These were:

Social Media for Informal Learning
- presented by Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies
The Wellbeing Agenda
- presented by Breckon Jones & Tracey Lee Delaney, American Express

Both sets of speakers discussed thought provoking subjects.  Jane Hart captured the importance of Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, in a fascinating presentation, encouraging the audience to think about the use of such media within their organisations.  Many took away from the forum ideas about how to implement some of the Social Media tools within their learning environment.

Breckon and Tracey took the audience on a colourful and motivating journey into the American Express Healthy Living Campaign and shared the company's inspiration, concerns and success.  This topic was close to the hearts of many who needed some tips and guidance on how to begin such a campaign within their own business, as well as those who were looking to enhance similar programmes that are currently running.  A key message from this section was the importance of Healthy Living for people development and ultimately the development of organisations.

We have captured some highlights of both presentations below:

Highlights of Jane Hart's presentation - Social Media for Informal Learning:

• Jane is the founder of C4LPT - Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies.  To look further into the topics that were discussed you can visit her Academy pages for guides such as;  an Introduction to Social Media, Social Media and Workplace Learning, How to use Twitter for Social Learning, and a host of other presentations and resources http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/index.html
• Jane's presentations can also be found online on "Slide Share" http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?searchfrom=header&q=jane+hart
• Jane Works with other Social Learning experts, one being Jay Cross.  Jay was one of the first to use the terminology "e-Learning" in the 1990's. His book "Informal Learning" discusses the value of informal learning in the workplace
• Social Media often challenges the requirement for formal training courses, arguably because new technology can be seen as more stimulating
• Formal Learning is defined as someone else setting the schedule and the objectives and "pushing" the attendee through it
• Informal Learning is described as an individual setting their own objectives, asking questions, trial and error and pulling as much information towards them as they can
• Jane showed a fascinating YouTube video which shows the rise of and questions the use of Social Media.  Link to the video online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng&feature=related

When searching in YouTube use the phrase Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)

• Social Media enhances communication, collaboration and networking

Twitter

• On Twitter www.twitter.com you can search for and "follow" Learning and Development people, get involved in conversations, ask and answer questions
• Key tip; by putting the # symbol in front of key words, the search results will show you all "tweets" that refer to that particular subject
• You can post tips and advice in your tweets and post links to other web pages to share blogs or information
• Due to the small amount of characters you have to tweet with, you can use URL shortening services to make the web address fit your tweet
• Jane facilitates a weekly discussion forum on Twitter called LearnChat.  To follow all tweets relating to this you should search for #lrnchat in your search bar on twitter
• LearnChat happens every Thursday between 4.30pm-6.00pm and the topics vary every week
• You can use secure internal tools if your company prefers not to use external tools such as twitter etc
• Jane commented that lots of companies have banned Facebook due to employees' extensive use of the tool, however she questions this and argues that rather than being banned, employers should encourage it's use in a responsible way to enhance work, much like the way people use Google
• A corporate Twitter-like tool called Yammer is very popular.  It's a simple, real-time communication tool specifically aimed for businesses.  People can connect internally and create groups depending on department, project or location etc.
• Another private social network called Ning is also a free tool
• Many companies are using social networks such as these to create interactive and stimulating induction programmes for staff or new employees
• You can upload videos about the company, photos of managers or directors or even their own team or department
• HR can send the link and login details to new employees before they start their new job. Jane recommends creating a small pilot group to test this first and gather feedback
• Creating inductions such as this helps people feel integrated within companies, ultimately leading to enhanced performance
• Websites such as Delicious are for sharing bookmarks for websites and SlideShare is a great source of information for PowerPoint presentations, Word and PDF documents for a whole host of subjects from thousands of presenters
• Google Docs is a great tool, free to use; for example you may have a document you'd like a number of people to comment on or amend - they all add to one master document.  This can be controlled/private
• Many Learning Management Systems (LMS) now have social media tools within them

Final comments;

• Social media is great to support formal training or to use as a tool prior to formal training
• Jane recommends Social Media for Informal Learning as supported autonomy

Follow WDR on Twitter! www.twitter.com/wdr_training

Follow Jane Hart on Twitter! www.twitter.com/c4lpt

Follow American Express on Twitter! www.twitter.com/americanexpress

Highlights of Breckon and Tracey's presentation - Wellbeing; Healthy Living Campaign:

• This campaign is relatively new and it's been rolled out in USA, India, UK and Mexico
• They started in the USA where they launched the programme and established an ongoing wellness offering before rolling out to other countries
• Key to the initiation of such a programme for USA in particular were costs of private medical insurance and how such a programme can potentially reduce the amount of claims, thus reducing health care costs
• The programme aims to promote a culture of health.  They use health as a key differentiator and they aim to promote prevention and access to care
• Interestingly for a rollout in India - there is no strong infrastructure for health insurance so this was another key country to run the campaign, particularly because it was so different to USA

Examples of the types of promotions for activities and launch programmes:

• Many ideas and activities can be developed globally or at least adapted locally
• Based on the wellness opportunities identified in the UK, programmes were to be designed primarily around exercise, nutrition and resilience
• In the UK they had a "Healthy Living Launch" in January - 1309 attendees; 81% of building's population on the day.  Sessions attended included Massage: 234 recipients , Nutritionist: 161 consultations, Smoking Cessation 1:1: 35 people, Yoga & Pilates 1:1: 45 sessions, Personal Trainer: 120 consultations
• They have introduced healthy meal-deals in the canteen and are considering offering free fruit
• American Express have done global walking programmes where staff were given a pedometer and for launch events they use experiences such as these to collaboratively share their stories about healthy living
• ROI in the UK; there has been no clear return on investment yet, they estimate 3 years until they see a return on employee health statistics etc.  This is really seen as an opportunity to give something back to staff during current climate and to engage employees as there has been so much emphasis on cutting benefits.  This programme is seen as a gesture rather than an economically motivated event
• Key statistics in the UK; within Europe the UK has the fastest growing obesity problem, 29% of men and 25% of women smoke, 16% of the UK workforce suffer mental health problems, 1 million UK workers suffer from musculoskeletal problems
• They'd like to focus on high risk employees but these are often those that wouldn't volunteer involvement in such events.  Ways to engage these staff are to share stories - for example an employee that may be overweight telling their experience of healthy living to others
• Senior Leaders are leading by example - easy example is to take the stairs rather than the lifts
• Keeping momentum going for the programme - it's a two-way dialogue, the programme is not forced on people
• They have Health Champion's within the business - these employees develop personal relationships with other staff so that they can feedback to the Healthy Living team new ideas and things that they would like to introduce into the programme or things to do differently
• The Health Champions help to keep employees motivated and they are often part of other training events to continue putting the message across
• The Healthy Living team work with HR Leaders to reinforce messages, they use the internal intranet where there is a discussion forum, they direct email to employees, use print media and often put together informal discussion groups to pick up fresh information and trial ideas.  In the USA they also direct mail to employees' homes.
• Work-Life balance is a key area for concern, especially for those that travel a lot.  Things like video conferencing is a good way to tackle environment and work-life balance issues
• Incentives to encourage staff to get involved in activities.  They have offered Wii Fit's and iPods, they ran a cycle to work scheme and offered half price bikes, discount gym membership etc.

Final comments

• There is a lot to be said also about sleep and how this affects wellbeing, however this is another whole topic in itself to discuss

We asked forum attendees to complete a short questionnaire to give another opportunity to share any further thoughts or ideas.  Some of these results are detailed below:

Which areas of the morning discussions have you found the most useful?

• All, I now have a better insight into Social Media and it's uses
• Resonance of social network sites and wellbeing programme with KPI's
• Everything, I have found both topics informative and insightful
• Both sessions, thought provoking
• Different tools and uses for social media platforms
• The Wellbeing experiences of American Express.  I was very interested in the Social Learning section as well although I hadn't expected to be
• Enjoyed both parts but found the morning session stretching, informative and energising as Jane led us into the "brave new world" of Social Learning. I found Jane to be a knowledgeable and engaging speaker
• Both sessions very thought provoking.  Wellness more interesting than I expected!
• Social media - didn't know there was so much out there.  Wellbeing - lots of food for thought

What type of learning has achieved the best results for you?

• In general as most of the training I deliver is technical - classroom or on-the-job has worked best for our environment
• Classroom and informal on-the-job
• Short, interactive sessions that engage and enthuse people
• Practical and interactive

What key ideas will you take away with you from today's forum?

• Induction and use of Twitter and various sites
• Twitter - training forum and collaborative websites
• Social Media - how we could implement a solution to accompany the learning environment we have
• To get started with using social media for supporting line managers to learn informally
• Introductory ideas for both Wellbeing and Informal Learning
• The use of Twitter for Learning
• The variety of approaches in online/social learning
• Lots of tips on social media - must get on Twitter!  Reinforced the place of developing the "whole person"
• I must dabble more on social media and look at integrating further with other processes.  Subtle interventions around wellbeing/occupational health developments