Royal Mail: A Case Study

Article in the UK
February 2003

Organisations that want to provide e-learning materials for their staff need to decide on the most effective and efficient way of doing this. Recently, Royal Mail plc revealed both its thinking and experience in this matter.

Post haste for e-learning

Speaking at this year’s Learning Technologies conference, held in London’s Olympia, Nigel Marsh, e-Learning Lead Project Manager at Royal Mail plc, and his colleague, Jane Deed, outlined the key issues and factors that any organisation must take into consideration in deciding the most effective and efficient way of producing and delivering e-learning content for its employees.

Putting his comments into the context of his organisation, Marsh pointed out that the Royal Mail currently employs some 238,000 people, 45,000 of whom have access to personal computers (PCs) at work. He added: “Connectivity – in terms of the Internet and corporate intranet – is fairly broad but, among the employees, there is a wide range of ‘IT experience and expertise’. There are some people whose IT knowledge and skills are highly sophisticated, while others take a ‘low tech’ approach to working life.

“Providing e-learning materials for both IT experts and those who have never used a PC presents an interesting challenge,” he said. “And, of course – in terms of determining the ultimate ‘effectiveness’ of the e-learning materials - the end result has to be put into the context of both the learner and the organisation.”

Marsh believes that there are three key principles that every would-be commissioner, buyer and deployer of e-learning materials must keep in mind:

• You can buy, modify and create technology but what will make e-learning work is relationships.
• Don’t make the whole process more difficult than it already is.
• You are really dealing with ‘learning’. E-learning does not have to be that ‘different’ from ‘learning’.

Deed explained: “Our experience with e-learning materials has taught us that the processes that are put in place at the very beginning of the project dictate whether or not the project will be a success. In this respect, there is no difference between ‘e-learning’ and any other form of learning. The training needs analysis that is undertaken at the start of any project should be no different – whether or not the solution is to deliver the subsequent learning via technology.”

Turning to the process of learning, Deed outlined a number of key issues – beginning with motivation.

“You need to find out what the learners’ needs really are,” she said. “You need to discover such things as why they need to take that particular course; what will make them complete the course; what is going to be the most effective delivery method for those learning materials; how the learners are going to be supported and who will support them? You also need to identify the learners’ personal objectives and their current culture – as well as where they are geographically and organisationally.

“You also have to look at the project from an organisational point of view,” she added. “in other words, you have to be certain of the business’ objectives in developing and delivering the learning. Moreover, you have to decide on the criteria for success – and how these are to be measured – as well as determining how the deployment of the learning materials will be managed and tracked.”

Deed also pointed out that, before commissioning new learning materials, you need to know what learning materials already exist. Then you must decide whether or not these can be incorporated into the new programme.

“In the excitement of researching and producing new learning materials, it’s often forgotten that these materials must be introduced on a ‘business as usual’ basis, with as little disruption to normal organisational business life as possible,” said Deed. “Then again, you also have to take account of the likely ‘life’ of these materials. You have to address questions such as ‘what will happen to these learning materials when they have been rolled out to the initial group of learners?’, ‘who will then “own” these learning materials?’ and ‘who else can benefit from these learning materials in the longer term?’

“All these issues apply equally to any learning materials,” continued Deed. “But there are two other issues that are e-learning-specific: technical dependency and the cost of development.

“Any e-learning materials have to be able to be run on any of the delivery technology available within the organisation – and, within the Royal Mail, that is a wide range indeed!” she smiled. “If this is not the case, the learner will have a ‘bad experience’ with the e-learning materials and will never want to attempt them again.

“Where e-learning materials are concerned, you also have to be aware of the cost of technical development,” she said. “The cost of re-working e-learning materials can be expensive – so you can’t afford to ‘tinker’ with the materials up to the point at which they are rolled out. It’s vital that you ensure that the initial specification is correct.”

Echoing Marsh’s view, Deed went on to stress that relationships are the key to success where e-learning materials are concerned. She explained: “Having identified the need for an e-learning product, the next job is to get that product’s content ‘right’. That means establishing a relationship between relevant subject matter experts and the product’s developers.”

Addressing the issue of whether organisations should opt for generic or custom-built e-learning products, Deed explained that generic products could be cheaper but may not ‘fit’ as well with the organisation’s delivery platform as custom-built e-learning materials. However, she said, the factors influencing an organisation’s choice between generic and custom-built e-learning products are:

• The availability of existing content – if it already exists there is no need to commission it.
• Is it possible – and cost-effective – to add organisation-specific content to generic material?
• Costs – the Royal Mail’s experience suggests that custom-built e-learning materials are more cost-effective than generic products where the number of learners exceeds 200.
• Is there time to develop custom-built e-learning materials?
• The size and geographical distribution of the learners.
• The culture of the ‘learner audience’.
• The compatibility of the content with the needs of both the learners and their organisation.
• Experience of dealing with the e-learning materials’ supplier(s).
• The ability of the existing IT infrastructure to deliver the e-learning materials.
• The consistency – in ‘look’ and ‘feel’ - of the e-learning materials: this can be easier to achieve with custom-built materials.

According to Marsh, the key features of successful e-learning materials are:

• Learners need to make only a minimum number of ‘clicks’ to get help when they need support.
• E-learning materials that are ‘intuitive’ create confidence with learners, especially in terms of navigation around the product.
• Subject matter experts should be available – at least via email - to offer support to learners. However, he said, if you are rigorous in your design of the product, it should generate few learners’ questions.
• They contain content that is not only ‘right’ for the learners but is also ‘modular’ so that it is malleable and re-usable via a learning management system.
• They are produced by fewer suppliers – and, preferably, only by one supplier. That way, there are fewer inconsistencies between the styles of the various products and the supplier-client relationship becomes easier to manage.

Marsh commented: “Initially, we had the idea that we would build our e-learning materials entirely from in-house resources. At the time, we possessed a rare individual who was both an HR professional and highly IT literate. Eventually, we decided to commission an external supplier to produce the e-learning materials, with advice on content from in-house subject matter experts.

“This has produced a number of important advantages,” he added. “We have moved from the position where 75 per cent of the costs of developing these materials were fixed costs to a position where 75 per cent of the costs of developing these materials are variable costs.

“Moreover, it has proved to be more efficient in terms of timescales and resource availability. In one instance, we had 90 developers from our external partner working on one project. It would have been expensive if we had used in-house resources on this scale.

“Outsourcing the development of e-learning materials means that you don’t have to worry about technical configuration problems, or even the quality and compatibility of authoring tools: these are the responsibility of the developer.

“Working with one developer makes it easier to ensure consistency of style as far as the e-learning materials are concerned,” he went on. “Overall, we have found that it is much cheaper to outsource our e-learning development than to produce it in-house – especially since you can never measure the full, real cost of developing these products in-house. In addition, it is easier to devolve responsibility to a specialist developer for producing the materials, ensuring that they are compatible with our delivery technology and ensuring that they meet our requirements,” he said.

“We chose one supplier – Tata Interactive Systems – and they have gone on to produce some 30 e-learning courses for us in the last two years,” Marsh revealed. “Over that time, what has proved to be most beneficial for our business is not necessarily the quality of what they produce – although that is high – but the quality of the relationship we have developed with them. Indeed, they respond quickly to our requests – sometimes the turnaround is within 24 hours, which could often be quicker than you might expect of an in-house development department.”

By Bob Little