Make engaging learning experience without superpowers!

If you want that to happen, first, there are a few things to understand—for instance, the evolution from e-learning to what 2021 generation solutions like Mindbox offer. 

During the last decade, e-learning and LMS technologies were just reshaped following the move of the technologies.  Driven by technology novelties, those solutions were not challenging because e-learning was not as engaging for employees as expected.  

All those were made at first to satisfy the company’s concerns to have: 

  • easy dispatch of the training, 
  • data analytics, 
  • content management, 
  • and later the mobile delivery thanks to the development of smartphone technologies. 

But results show that only a tiny percentage of employees use LMS. 

Is it due to a feeling of replicating the classroom dynamic? Lack of interaction? The list of reasons could be extensive.

 

 

And mainly what money, time, motivation and energy are wasted…  

So, at MindBox, we took the challenge to RETHINK all that. 

Yes! RETHINK how to approach employee development and interaction between companies and their employees. 

Our brains were in a kind of ‘Star-wars mode’, bringing our experiences of ex-trainees, having sent employees to training, making strategic decisions on company employee development, etc.  

But then, we went wilder. Thinking about: 

  • What engaged us the most in digital environments? What do we like about that? 
  • What inspired us to transform the learning theory into an authentic experience? 
  • What could be the best out of our VR video game experience as engaged players and creative designers? 
  • What do we trash in our business bins after a quarter-century of management positions?

And surprisingly, we came up with simple results: to make four pivot criteria the core of our new app. 

We speak about: TO CONNECT / TO INSPIRE / TO ENGAGE/ TO DEVELOP 

Everything made to develop MindBox were articulated around those four pivot criteria. All that is true for the way we engaged in MindBox development, how we designed the app, and how we projected the future user experience… 

Here we speak about ‘perspective’. The perspective of the persons who want to learn and are ready to move from theory to authentic experience. 

 

 

Allow your employees to enjoy learning! 

At Mindbox, we conceptualised what you and we all like, meaning: 

For the employees/trainees/users 

  • on the move access 
  • mobile app 
  • Voice recognition – I reply verbally to the avatar. The reply is transcript into text and recorded as well. 
  • Micro-learning session (see our blog: This is the secret of micro-learning). Whenever and wherever I want – it is more exciting! 
  • One easy access to learning sessions and documents together 
  • to have the great feeling of the learning experience with tailored-made avatars and 3D environments. 

… it is simply NEW! 

For trainer / HR/marketing, sales management or any admin of the learning strategy: 

  • Friendly user web-platform – accessible by any authorised persons, no need to have IT background to understand! 
  • One-look overview of the company’s global learning strategy: trainees, training follow-up, trained skills and roles… 
  • Text-to-speech technology allows writing questions and texts to be transformed into verbal speech by the app. 
  • Easy text entry allows to prepare questions for training, feedback, or simply speeches to communicate about new services and company strategies… 
  • Access to replies in text format and as well recorded ones if needed. 
  • Individual follows-up, with a possibility to download session results in PDF – The best way to file and compile assessments results in case of onboarding session, security training etc. 

This is MINDBOX, micro-learning technology for a better communication experience! 

 

Enjoy the experience 🙂

Christophe Beaujard – happy to connect 🙂

Our future word called Metaverse

This is not a dream: in a very near future, you will use your avatar to have a social life, to meet your friends and relatives, to work, to go for culture event. All that in a virtual world… 

This virtual world is called Metaverse.  

You may have no clue what this is about: me too until I watched Ready Player One written by Ernest Cline and directed by Steven Spielberg. This was my first time to see and understand what it means a virtual world (The Metaverse). A world where people socialise virtually, spend time together, have a virtual life. In this film, forced by the destiny of what happened in the Metaverse, people realise and appreciate again their true, real lives… 

Funny enough, at the end of the film for my wife and me, that raised a lot of existential questions about this virtual reality, which was in fact science fiction, for what we knew at that time… 

But Metaverse exists.  

It was originally made for game players where avatars play the game for you, or better to say, you control your avatar and see him/her in the virtual world of the game. One of the examples of Metaverse universe is REC ROOM on oculus.com.  

 

Will Metaverse impact your personal and social life?  

Maybe not tomorrow but it is right in the corner. Because the development of the Metaverse is moving fast into what Ernest Cline described in his novel.  

The big steps are for sure in terms of quality and how close the reality the images are becoming. For example, avatars as we know today will give the place to digital humans. So, the aesthetic aspects with us will become closer and closer. Will this be the trigger pushing us to identify ourselves to our avatars? Or one more trigger could be exactly the feeling people have today during the lockdown: the need to escape our daily life routine, escape from our home, or even from our home office… and we will see that the step to move into virtual world will become so simple.  

That’s why technology corporates like Nvidia invest in solutions to enrich the Metaverse with more than playing game scenarios. 

Is this worrying? There will always be the ones pro who will jump into the Metaverse to search or create what they could not get in their lives. And there will be the ones who will be reluctant by fear of losing their own identity. 

I would say it is in a way like Facebook, when it arrived, the early adopters were already registered when people like me were still ignoring it because of this feeling it was not part of our generation or part of our needs… and today I am on Facebook regularly, and it is part of my life.  

So, coming back to know if Metaverse could impact or not our respective lives, I believe we will still have time to think about that.  

And as humankind, without the help of AI, we should be able to know how to balance our both lives, real and virtual. But I am not sure to be correct here, not knowing what will be considered as real, shall we say physical and virtual? 

 

Metaverse mindbox

 

This is not a dream, it is coming. It is like a projection into the future on how human interaction will be.  

Human interactions which are the foundations of corporate DNA. Does it mean that corporates will just be virtually represented, hiring your avatars as employees?  

I have recently heard that the lockdown due to the COVID creates big challenges for corporates to keep their DNAs and team spirits. Not because employees have to work and communicate remotely, but because employees don’t have no more chance to gossip, no more chats in the company corridors, at the coffee machine. Gossips are said to be a great vehicle to keep or at least to participate to company DNA, information, creativity and team spirit.  

Is it old fashion to think that without physical and unformal meetings in the company corridors, at the lunch break, we will lose the habit to gossip and share knowledges?  

One may think we will have special courses to train on how to spontaneously chat in Metaverse!! 

At least, we can imagine, in few years that it will not matter to be in lockdown as we experience today, because you will just go shopping, to the cinema watching films with friends in the Metaverse? Enjoying your life differently. 

 

Are you ready?  

One thing is sure: the existential questions we had after watching Spielberg film, were just the first ones of a long lists of existential questions we, you will have. 

 

All the best! 

Christophe Beaujard 

 

PS: Thinking of that, we may have to hire a team to develop the next generation of MindBox for the Metaverse, where we will have an entire virtual training centres, with dedicated trainers and coaches… sorry I mean avatars who will be great at helping others avatar? /people? to become great at what they do or want to be… 

Using training how you can turn ordinary into extraordinary? Part #2

Having in mind that employee’s training is worth the investment, what to do next? 

You need to develop a training plan, with options for customization to match situations faced by your team members. The flexibility as well, allows you to better match the persons’ skills, experience and even the gaps among team members.  

Conventional or technology–based training, this is your choice, but the training solutions you will use has to keep the pace with changing market. When I say, changing I also include the fact that HR people and teams have front of them employees, colleagues with changing expectations, in phase with their lives and living styles. That’s maybe why, I naturally tend to use the word ‘learning’ over ‘training’… an interesting perspective to have 🙂

The leverage, companies have with an inspiring learning strategy can’t be neglected, there are so great benefits. Often underestimated, your asset is your people, and they have to be at the centre of your business strategy and not just a cost in your P&L. I know what you think when reading that but believe me I have met and discussed with many HR directors and CEOs in different industries. And unfortunately, many of them considered really HR and even employee’s fluctuations as simple figures at the bottom of their P&L. Once, I met the ‘frustrated’ HR director of a company with 7500 employees in CEE and 35% employee fluctuation who clearly said: ‘we have it booked in our P&L, the board take it as cost, but not as an issue to solve! ‘…. This is a reality, and this one was only few years ago.  

Imagine the cost of employee’s fluctuation!  

With one fewer worker: 

  • Your company’s productivity slips.  
  • Sales decline.  
  • Your current staff members are required to work more hours.  
  • Morale may suffer.  
  • To find a replacement, you spend time screening and interviewing applicants.  
  • Once you hire someone, you need to train that person.  

The cost of staff turnover adds up. Figures vary, but that is a heavy price to pay for not training your employees. 

Therefore, it is a key and priority focus to make sure your employees understand your company promise and visions. Often described as the company ‘WHY’. This concept developed by Simon Sinek was inspiring any strategies from HR, PR and sales we implemented in our company. I have to say that it helps to clarify why you do what you do, why employees work for you, and more than everything: it fosters a common and spontaneous team engagement for the benefit of the company. 

A book I highly recommend reading.

This concept, when used to explain the company DNA, core values, visions and business approach during talent onboarding sessions will decrease your fluctuation of the first hiring months. Because the ones who stay are the ones who match your company ‘WHY. 

With that approach which helps employees to better engage in the same direction you still need to be sure that every employee understands what their role is about. Mainly what their role is in every situation, every encounter, and every action making the company life. Your learning strategy will ensure your employees know how to deal with your targets whatever they are i.e. your company global vision, sales figures, product development, brand recognition etc… 

 

 

This is the typical example of a sales strategy between the companies which are able to increase concretely their sales after implement learning strategy and the others with minor or no success at all. 

Yes, of course the working environment, market pace, products or services have to be taken into account, but PEOPLE make the differences.  

So, you can help your sales team to build higher confidence in reaching higher expectations with short learning sessions, structured (see our blog Don’t be a bot! – here).  But keep in mind that learning is not about books memorization; it’s about listening to your clients, using complaints to train on issues resolution and delivering outstanding service in every encounter. Therefore, the key is how your employee understand and how they could exceed your client’s expectations, so you truly create the best client’s experience. 

For that when creating your micro-learning sessions. 

  • Be the company ecosystem keeper and driver. It means your message content, the way you build your questions and speeches need to reflect your company core values, DNA, visions (explained above with the ‘WHY concept’). All that is possible thanks the technology–based learning solutions. 
  • Help your employees to understand at first what your client’s expectations are.  
  • Create experience. By themselves, employees can learn how to exceed client’s expectations and that is possible. Using communication methods, simulation-based scenario, your employees will experience to go out of their comfort zone, better manage their stress to face client’s meeting/calls. What a frustration to hear from salespersons that your client hasn’t answer to their emails. ‘Hey! Here, why you haven’t called the client? ‘ Any recalls of such experience?  
  • Indirectly and naturally, they will learn how to exceed your client’s expectations, thus you truly create the best experience for them 
  • Encourage your employees to resolve issue on the spot when possible. By experience, we all know that employees who are empowered are able to take action, to respond confidently and quickly to complaints or concerns (client, supplier or from team members) 
  • With better understanding of client typologies, make your employee experience client’s side of business life. Include what their typical day is like, how and why they enter into discussion with your company, the business barriers they face and the reasons why they would choose your competition. 
  • In addition to understand how to communicate, design learning sessions on listening and caring. The complaint diminishes in importance when someone listens, cares about the details and identifies an agreed upon plan of action. Simple to create role plays between your employees with the avatars of your eLearning solutions. 
  • Show your employee that caring means as well to follow-up with your clients. You can include that as the last part of a learning session related to ‘problem solved’. Unfortunately, client follow-up is often associated by employees as ‘time consuming for nothing’.  Learning and experience will hopefully show them that, follow-up will help them to build a trustworthy client relationship.  
  • Use lifelike descriptions in learning sessions, using different immerse environment, creating situations and even making the avatar acting with different personality types. 

Nowadays thanks to what technology offers the best in learning solutions, we are facing so great opportunities to make better, to improve and create employee’s true learning experience. 

 

All the best! 

Christophe Beaujard