IG Blog/Podcast

The Remote Learning Revolution

Dan Tohill — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 23:44:44 GMT

The Remote Learning Revolution

Kimble Vowless shares his thoughts with Dan Tohill on the incredibly unique year that was 2020, how he managed working 80-hour weeks urgently training people in the health sector, his tips on virtual working and the 'remote learning revolution' sparked by COVID-19.

Listen to the interview here:

Or read the interview summary here:

Dan: I understand you've become an independent consultant as of last year. How has that been going for you during this year of COVID?

Kimble: When I left in December, there were these very minor media reports about this thing that was happening in China and of course by March, we were in full-blown lockdown and this wasn't on the plan, but it wasn't on anybody's plan of course.

I'd fortunately spent enough time getting out to the market, networked and started picking up clients. When COVID hit, a lot of companies immediately started to pull back work as you'd expect. But one of my healthcare clients could see a tsunami of work coming, and they needed to scale their workforce rapidly. They asked if we could help and the work was immense during lockdown. We were doing easily 80 hours a week.

Dan: Obviously your focus was in the learning development space but are you able to share what sort of work you had to do? And how you had to prepare these folks?

Kimble: There were several things. Our clients were running a contact centre and they were just getting flooded with calls, as you can imagine, with the fear and uncertainty that was in the world, as well as New Zealand. They knew they had to scale up their contact centre workforce as quickly as they could.

That meant quite a radical rethink on how they did what they did. So, like a lot of contact centres they rely on quite a long induction process that can be anywhere from a week to a couple of weeks or even longer.

We were in the space where we didn't have that time. We got a day and a half. And then, the other challenge of course was, they couldn't necessarily come into the office. So we had to get really creative, really quickly around how we maintained the standard, so that people were sure they were getting skilled people at the end of the phone line, answering their questions in the right way and at the same time, meet that demand as quickly as possible.

Dan: Yeah. How many folks were you inducting?

Kimble: The highest we got to was 40 a day and we were building towards 300 or 400 a day if we had to in a worst-case scenario.

Dan: Did that extreme pressure help some other departments make decisions just that little bit quicker?

Kimble: Yeah. It was a team effort. The whole organisation had to get behind making this thing work. At the risk of sounding cliched, we were saving people's lives.

So that understanding between the different areas around getting this done and what needed to happen was outstanding.

Dan: Obviously you had to do things at pace, but what are some of the learnings or techniques you used that our listeners could reuse and amplify?

Kimble:

One of our biggest learnings for remote delivery was around the importance of that social connection. How do you get the opportunity to have human conversations and human interactions while at the same time delivering to a fairly pressured kind of timeline?

Teams has been an outstanding piece of kit that we've come to work with very, very closely.

An example your listeners could use could be a channel on Teams that's just for social chat. A lot of those informal communication networks that we relied on in a normal work environment have gone. So dedicated channels for the cat videos and your general chit-chat was really important, having opportunities for people just to kind of blow out a little bit and socialise digitally is really important.

From a learning perspective, creating and maintaining those collaborative learning moments that you take for granted in a face-to-face working environment. Using the technology for things like breakout rooms so that people can go away and do interactive exercises and come back, using platforms like mural or miro that enable and duplicate that post-it experience.

Dan: When COVID and lockdown happened, we were all forced to move things into a digital environment but noticed this actually made some aspects of our workflow easier to manage. Did you experience this?

Kimble: Yeah, absolutely. I think the remote learning revolution, if I can call that, was going to happen anyway. It was already starting. COVID provided us with a beautiful laboratory to just really double down on how we could really make this work. I think the benefits of that, we'll see continue forever and a day because it's forced us as an industry to collectively think very differently around what work and learning can look like.

Dan: Have you got one more tip for our learners?

Kimble: I think the one thing, would be the nature of leadership. Leadership must now adapt like the rest of us. There was a lot of discussion in the social media space and LinkedIn around what is the future of leadership? It's a perennial topic. It's less about a hierarchical thing. We are all being required to show traits of leadership. We’re all being required to demonstrate the ability to shift our mindset, to be more adaptable, to be more flexible. We are being challenged to be more completely human at work and that means being vulnerable, saying “I'm not myself today because stuff has been difficult at home or, I'm feeling ill mentally”. That needs to be okay. These are boundaries now, that we are pushing and moving beyond, in ways that I think we've never really done before and it's gaining momentum. I think it's tremendously exciting.

Dan: Any final thoughts for the learning profession?

Kimble: Yeah. I think the future is bright for the learning profession. I think the onus is on us to step up and to show that we've got some real value, that we can add to the table to help people and the organisations they're part of to go to these new places the environment is demanding of them. I think it's a really exciting time.

A bit about Kimble Vowless:

Kimble has over 20 years' experience in the field of learning and capability. His background includes roles in the government sector, “for purpose” organisations (not-for-profits), and large corporates. He has held senior roles at leading New Zealand organisations, ranging from learning, organisation development, strategy, change management, and product ownership.

In December 2019 Kimble decided to embark on a new phase of his career, launching Be Outstanding Ltd. Driven by a desire to help people and organisations extend their capabilities to meet the challenges of these changing times. Kimble provides thought leadership in the fields of learning and capability strategy, programme management, learning solution design and implementation, and leadership development. He is a keen advocate in the fields of self-leadership, mindfulness, mindsets for success, resilience and purposeful living.

Kimble is an experienced leader, learning expert, engaging facilitator, and accomplished public speaker.

Connect with Kimble Vowless:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimble-vowless/

https://beoutstandingnz.com/about

Being a great virtual leader requires some new skills.

Our Virtual Learning Series will help you and your team close the virtual leadership skill gaps.

Learn more about our Virtual Learning Series Workshops

How to lead effectively through building trust in a virtual world

Dan Tohill — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 22:53:22 GMT

How to lead effectively through building trust in a virtual world

Aidan Stoate interviews Andrew Curtis, one of our trusted associates here at Inspire Group.

Andrew Curtis is captivated by finding the answer to one question ' How do you really help someone?'. This search began in his teens as he tried to find ways to help friends and family members with mental health challenges and has since become part of his journey as an entrepreneur, leadership coach and training facilitator. Andrew's skills as a communicator are combined with his understanding and compassion for the human condition; fostering safe and inspiring environments where life-changing insights are possible.

Listen to this episode to get tips and techniques on how to effectively lead and engage with people in a virtual working environment and how to facilitate great learning experiences and meetings online.

Some of our favourite quotes from Andrew in this episode:

"The only way to get trust is to give trust. If I'm the leader then I have to show trust first. I have to look for ways that I trust you."

"If I have trust I have everything."

"Your energy will follow where your heart is, and you can't fake that long term."

Listen to the interview here:

Or read the interview summary here:

It'd be great to hear about the ways in which you've been helping people in this most unique of years that we've experienced?

What I found very early on was that although our intentions are good, the strategies we employ are often not particularly helpful. I think it’s important to stop and listen to what people are saying. As a leader, I had to learn that my intention to be the one with the answer to every question was sometimes getting in the way of me helping people, because they didn't feel heard; I was just kind of jumping in. So that would be the place that I start from.

How do you support your team in different ways, without being the person who solves the problem necessarily?

What you're really talking about there is the need for a high-trust environment. An environment where you're allowed to not have the answer. I want my people to be able to tell me when they don't understand and when they don't have all the information. I'm asking them to trust me. When it comes to creating that trust environment, what I realised is that I look for opportunities where I can, and share moments where I haven't understood, moments where I have failed, where I have not lived up to my objectives. It's amazing what follows from that.

What are some of your tips and techniques for how to engender trust and how to communicate effectively when you can't be in the same physical space?

In an online meeting I find first of all I have to be very clear about what I'm asking from people and then secondly how I want people to respond. For example, if I’m trying to get the opinion of 10 or 20 people, then using the chat function is a great way to start that conversation. You can also use things like breakout rooms as well, if you want to have smaller conversations within that. You can then get those groups back, and call on them individually to share what they discussed. Or get everybody back together and ask to see those thoughts in the chat. You work your way through all the comments that way. It's much more planned and controlled and people will feel a lot less stressed when you do that, because they get a sense that somebody has control of where it's going.

What are some of the things that you feel will make for an engaging and inspiring virtual learning experience?

When we're talking about the idea of how you really help someone, one of the most powerful things that I've discovered is that if a person is safe to notice their own thinking about something that's where change can become possible. If I think of myself as the leader, I ask how can I give trust first, how can I give safety first? How can I give a sense of non-judgement first, and then I can build trust from there.

As a facilitator in a virtual environment, what did you feel you had to adapt or change in terms of your typical approach in order to make those sessions successful?

When I started these virtual workshops with people, I would express that this is an unfamiliar time, this is a different time and we're all figuring this out together. We know the goal is that we want to share some really good ideas, and we want to get some really good conversation going. Things might not always go the way we want or there might be something else that we're just going to improve as we go along. As a result, I've always had good experiences within those environments, because that trust I asked for at the beginning gives me the ability to learn and pick things up as I go along.

Leaders and organisations are struggling to re-establish their culture post COVID. What do you feel is the best way for some of those organisations to find that balance during this time of transition and change?

I genuinely feel that trust is the absolute foundation of any successful organisation. One of the best books on this is Patrick Lencioni’s ‘The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team’. What is identified in this book is that we often think of communication as the most important thing. The thing that I would always fixate on first is how am I looking to build trust within my team? I would focus on that. What have I done to show people that I trust them individually? And as a team? And then you can build from that point up.

Being a great virtual leader requires some new skills.

Our Virtual Learning Series will help you and your team close the virtual leadership skill gaps.

Learn more about our Virtual Learning Series Workshops

Transitioning your workshops to a virtual world

rhys@chameleoncreator.com (Rhys Kerr) — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 22:05:33 GMT

Transitioning your workshops to a virtual world

Don’t reinvent the wheel… reimagine it

When faced with the challenge of moving your existing face-to-face learning into a virtual environment, the first question shouldn't be about how we adapt to this new method of delivery. In fact, the method is just the icing on the cake.

Reinventing the wheel may only mean you give your learners a new wheel. Instead of focusing on the logistics of shifting your day-long session to a day-long virtual session (maybe you've chunked it down – slightly better, but still a crime), use this opportunity to ask…

"Can we do better for our learners?"

Whatever it's driven by, the challenge of moving your learning to a virtual environment is an opportunity to stop and focus on what is essential in that learning experience – something we rarely get the chance to do!

If we want to take it, we now have the chance to create variation in the types of experiences that achieve what you do currently in an entire one-day workshop – and enhance these learning experiences.

Reimagining your learning experience

Focus on doing something different and unique. How do we create something new, that achieves the learning outcomes just as well, if not better? We disrespect our learners if we think we can take a one-day workshop and break it into four two-hour sessions.

Instead, consider designing a short-branching or an explore-your-own- adventure style module. Learners can complete these individually, then use a one-hour virtual workshop to debrief and take learnings away as a group. Flipped learning isn't a new concept in itself, but this example shows how it can also be achieved virtually, through a range of learning experiences that achieve the same outcomes. After all, the real value of the workshop is the depth of conversations between participants, not the delivery of the content itself.

Breaking down boundaries

We're talking metaphorically and geographically here. For most of us, geography has been a key driver in the length, timing and attendees to our training. And, it's created, teams. These boundaries no longer exist in a digital world; you can build teams and support networks like never before.

Whatever way you want to slice and dice your people (metaphorically only of course), we now have the power to make new decisions about the learning experience you create, and for who. We can create relationships that build ongoing mentoring, start and foster relationships at ongoing touchpoints, and embed learning that you couldn't do before because you needed to be in a training room.

Contrary to popular belief, you can also use virtual learning experiences to enhance your workplace culture. Learning professionals (that's you!) can check in more regularly with learners and facilitate different learning experiences on-the-fly and in the moment. This might be anything from a coaching call to a series of challenges you set over time, and in groups you've created through this new way of connecting.

Embedding the learning

Virtual learning creates more opportunities to follow up and support embedding. Learning no longer needs to be one single activity, it can be an ongoing range of virtual experiences, activities, meetings, one-on-ones, networking, and support. Moving this learning stuff we do into a virtual world allows you to break it down, put it back together, and build more of a learning pathway that can happen over time, and at time of need. It allows you to create experiences that help answer the question, "How certain am I that learners have learned this thing?"

Whether you're making change because you no longer have a face-to-face option, or you just want to try something new, remember, start with the end in mind. Use your learning objectives to define your learning experience, then decide on the methods of delivery. You will likely find you're not only doing it better; you're also paving the way for a new culture of learning within your organisation.

Want to learn about how our authoring tool Chameleon can enhance your virtual workshops?

Book a demo with one of our friendly team members and find out how Chameleon Creator can be used to create a more engaging virtual workshop experience.

The Top 8 tools for creating highly visual digital content yourself

If you enjoyed this article you'll want to read The Top 8 tools for creating highly visual digital content yourself where we share our favourite tools (most of them free) to help you and your L&D team deliver higher quality digital content quickly and easily.

UX and UI in Learning Design with Todd Hammington

Dan Tohill — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 02:02:05 GMT

UX and UI in Learning Design with Todd Hammington

In this episode Dan Tohill interviews Todd Hammington, a Visual Designer, Illustrator, UX and UI expert and product owner of Chameleon Creator an online learning authoring tool.

Listen to Todd explain how UX and UI principles can be used in a learning design context to enhance learning outcomes.

"A good learning designer really cares about the user experience, they really care about the end user learning something." - Todd Hammington

Listen to the interview here:

Or read the interview summary here:

What is the difference between UX and UI?

UX and UI are just two of the many fancy acronyms these days. I consider them to have very different roles, but I believe they should work symbiotically together. I think, typically a UX designer's goal was to make products more pleasurable to the user. So in the tech community they look at the full scope of the design thinking process, with the goal of enhancing that satisfaction. This can involve anything from researching the audience behaviours to wireframing, prototyping and testing.

So yeah, what's the difference? I think a UI designer could be considered the visual cousin of a UX designer. Their aim is to understand how best to present the work of the UX designer, and then place that into a product of some sort, depending on what the context is.

Why should the learning community care about UX and UI design?

I think there should be a lot of parallels between a learning designer and a UX designer. Obviously you have to please stakeholders and people who have the money, but at the end of the day, a good learning designer really cares about their user experience. They really care about the end user learning something. A UX designer is out there, researching the audience and the personas and trying to apply that to enhancing that learning experience for them. So yeah, there should be a few parallels, you know, if you look at the job and the world we live in, man, I think, they're very closely aligned.

What sort of challenges and opportunities would a learning designer have to apply some of these UX and UI principles?

I think there's the age-old tension between the client and the stakeholder taking the wheel. And you know, that well-worn kind of, "I don't want to design it like this, but I don't have a choice because the particular key stakeholder I'm dealing with really wants it to be this way".

So they're almost saying, look, I know it's ugly, or it feels unusable, or it feels less than optimal, but that's what the client wanted ?

Yeah, I think that's quite a common design problem to have. I think that's where a good UX or learning designer comes into play and they use that research and data they gathered to influence stakeholders. So it's not just about ''what is my opinion on the colour green?', it's did the users even notice the colour? And how much time did they spend tossing and turning over it? Are we just kind of arguing over something that's pointless and are we just wasting both of our time?

Having good habits, sticking to those UX design principles, taking away the subjectivity, around whether or not you like the colour blue is actually bringing in the real data into the conversation because you've gone out and tested it with the end users. And it's hard to argue with that. It's really hard to go out and prototype some validated design concept and come back and say, do you disagree with that? Because you can't really argue with the data and research.

So if you needed to manage tensions between stakeholders and great design, you could get users involved?

Yeah, absolutely. That's why there's been a huge influx of UX design and those sort of big tech companies. You imagine something like Instagram. There are billions of people using that platform so you want to see where your users are tripping up along the way. So they invest a lot of tech and resources into the product experience. So their design decisions are actually purely based off research and not really about someone's opinion.

I would say most of us are going to respond in a similar way to some sort of digital interface. Do you think eventually more and more things will start looking the same? Will there be some common elements that are just the way it's going to be from now on?

Oh, I think that's where it gets really interesting, you know, and when facing that with Chameleon , , you can't always be completely driven by UX design. You have to innovate sometimes to, you know, put you ahead of the crowd or, you know, add that delight. There was this sort of phase actually quite recently with people where using every framework that existed and everything started to look the same. So yeah. I definitely think there's the foundations that you should stick to, and on top of that, that's where a UI designer starts to show their analysis. How do we make this look a little bit different? Or how do we challenge the users in a slightly different way? By breaking those rules a little bit every now and then. But it's a really good tension between those two thing isn't it? Like, what's proven? What's been researched? And also how to innovate on top of that, because you don't want to be completely driven by those old frameworks.

Can you give me an example where Chameleon's done that?

Yeah, I think it's the Gutenberg Z screen format. We've shifted that around a bit with, you know, where the human eye sort of tracks from left to right in Z fashion and then focuses in the middle of the screen and then lowest priority is left to right on the bottom of the screen, but we've certainly tested a lot of that sort of stuff and challenged it quite a bit. I think, we would prefer to be a little bit more visual, I think, you know, through illustration and animation compared to other learning and authoring tools, because I guess one of our principles is we don't really look inside or backwards. We look outside and forwards. So we look outside of our vertical market and we look at what some of the other big players are looking to do, because yeah, we're in quite a good position, I guess, because we're not a huge tech company. We don't have these guide rails so we can actually innovate pretty quickly. So I think we're constantly dancing between what works, what's proven, and how do we innovate to put ourselves ahead.

Because of your challenges, you've got to create an interface for almost anyone in the organisation to be able to build something right? So make it super simple, but ensure the features and the functionality are competitive with other tools, but also the output of that has to look pretty sharp.

Yeah. t's all of those three. And I think where a lot of other tools struggle is the ease of building those things, you know? Something as simple as an accordion, it shouldn't take an engineer to build that. So that's the process that we really focus on and making life easy for that user. We have three design principles, is it easy? Is it efficient? And is it beautiful? So every feature we build, we ask those questions before launching it.

We want to speed up your design process as an author, so we're gonna take away as much of that cognitive bloat as possible when it comes to design decisions. Ideally we want to add some time back into your day, but also, does it actually operate quickly on the web as well. Is it efficient and package size? So yeah, it's both of those things.

What do you think the future looks like for UX and UI?

I think that the experienced designer role is just exploding into different areas and specialties at the moment. I'm hoping that doesn't keep happening to be honest, because it gets quite confusing for them. One thing I think makes someone really employable is an end-to-end designer, you know, someone that is passionate, but not a specialist across the end-to-end design process. And those roles do exist as well. I think there are UX designers that do know how to do UI design and they do understand the development process and coding. And so say, you know, that they're across the entire design process. I think those sort of unicorn roles will start becoming more popular.

Which individuals or companies do you look to for inspiration?

I think people wise I'm a big fan of Melanie Perkins from Canva, I think her journey's been amazing, you know; from building a product in her parents garage with her partner through to becoming a Silicon Valley unicorn. I think as a person she's really inspirational. Product-wises, I mean in the UI world, I find that really exciting at the moment, you know, 'Sketch' completely kind of changed the game in regards to UI design but since they've done that, there's been these products like ''Figma'', that have a fully fledged UI design tool on the web and it just works like a native application. It's crazy. So yeah, I just look at what ''Figma'' are doing at the moment from a tech perspective it's so incredible, it really blows my mind.

Who do you think is doing some great UI stuff that could be of benefit to the L&D community?

There are great products, like Envision. They've always been a great product and service with regards to prototyping, but I actually really liked the community behind Envision as well. They've got some great resources, some great eBooks and audio books around, you know, stepping into the world of UI design for the first time. For some people it's a great kind of knowledge base as well as the tool itself.

I think, you know, we're pretty lucky, the big tech companies out there, like your Google's and Airbnb are really transparent, with their design processes as well. They provide free frameworks for people to use and, they always update the community with what they're doing and how they're innovating. So I think even though they do sound cliched, once you scratch under the surface with their content, it's actually really useful.

If a graphic or visual designer was new to the world of Learning Design what could you tell them about the world of learning and how is it different to working in an agency?

So in the world of learning, I think we're actually pretty spoiled sometimes as visual designers because, we get a lot more room to innovate, because you're not public facing your work immediately, if that makes sense. So if you are working with a big corporate company and have brand guides for their public audience, they really do lock the designers down into working within their brand.

I think also the reason why you're doing the work's really cool. It's not just about making money. It's not just conversion design, it's actually enhancing someone's life, which is a pretty cool reason to design something and a nice motivator for a lot of designers out there as well. I think when you do join a big design shop, and I'm definitely not saying this is the case for all of them, but a lot of shops you're dealing with a big organisation, they've already got a pre-existing brand. You're kind of just moving assets around.

Thank you, Todd. Are there any other parting words of wisdom?

Yeah. I think, as someone that's worked in this particular role for quite some time, one thing I have noticed is that if you are passionate about design, it's not like you have to go and re-study. I definitely find a lot of learning designers are; they become really passionate about the visual design. Yeah. It's all a really tangible thing to get into. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean we hire people with the degrees only as well. Real experience and a great portfolio can outweigh someone that's gone through university. So, yeah, I think it's a really exciting world.

Learn more about Chameleon Creator

Learn more about how you can use Chameleon Creator to improve the user experience of your learners.

What next?

Meet Business Needs Faster with Rapid Prototyping

If you enjoyed this, you'll also want to read Meet Business Needs Faster with Rapid Prototyping where we share tips and steps on how to prototype your digital content.

Top 8 tools for creating highly visual digital content yourself

rhys@chameleoncreator.com (Rhys Kerr) — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:51:32 GMT

The Top 8 tools for creating highly visual digital content yourself

When you look at your learning strategy this year, it's likely to have a heavy focus on creating new content. But as we all know, great content needs to engage the learner for it to be impactful.

Making your digital learning highly visual is a great way to do this, so that your learners don't feel like they are reading a newspaper or clicking through a PowerPoint.

This does however raise new challenges for L&D. Creating content quickly is one thing (check our blog on rapid prototyping here), but creating highly visual content can be difficult if you don't have access to graphic designers.

Sometimes you might feel like you're trying to create champagne learning on a lemonade budget!

So, to help you take your digital learning to the next level, and make things a little easier for you, we’ve pulled together a list of tools to help you create more visual content.

1. DIY Graphic Design - Canva

Canva is an easy-to-use graphic design platform that allows anyone to create visual graphics without the need for a professional designer. The platform enables you to create bespoke content quickly and easily, even if you have little or no graphic design skills.

It's free to create a new account and does' not require an ongoing subscription. Canva has an impressive library of fonts and graphics that don’t cost anything to use, but even the paid options are very reasonably priced and there are many pre made templates for you to chose from.

If you need to create bespoke visual assets quickly and easily, Canva is a great option.

We recommend Canva because it:

is easy to use
is mostly free but paid options are very reasonably priced
has a great range of templates, illustrations and photography
requires a low learning curve
has an excellent UX and intuitive interface
can be used on PC and also really usable on mobile devices.

2. Digital Content - Chameleon Creator

Designed by Learning and Graphic Designers, the easy-to-use and intuitive platform allows you to create beautiful digital learning content faster and easier than ever.

Chameleon is fully responsive, meaning it works on any device, allowing you to put beautiful learning content into the hands of your learners.

We recommend Chameleon Creator because:

it's quick and easy to learn and use
you can create modules without assistance from a developer
you can create highly visual modules without assistance from a graphic designer
modules work on any device and browser
it's easy to collaborate with your team online
it has a built-in illustration library
it has a great range of interactions
modules load faster than traditional tools.

3. Free Photography - Unsplash

Unsplash is a platform powered by an amazing community that has gifted hundreds of thousands of their own photos to fuel creativity around the world.

Unsplash boasts a huge collection of free, high-resolution photos and it really delivers. With new categories constantly being added, the images here are always up to date and fresh. Just remember it’s kind and considerate to reference the photographer where possible.

We recommend Unsplash because it:

has over 2 million high-resolution images
is free!
is better than any royalty-free or stock photos
has a great user interface
is really that good. It’s GOLD, we can’t recommend it enough.

4. Illustrations Part One - unDraw

unDraw has a great library of free-to-use SVG images. The minimal illustration aesthetic will suit many brand styles and you can also change the colours to be an exact match to your brand. Definitely bookmark this website for your future projects.

We recommend unDraw because:

the illustrations are completely free
you can change colours to suit your brand/aesthetic
it has 500 illustrations available, searchable by context
it's a simple and easy-to-use website
the minimal style is fun, simple and engaging.

5. Illustrations Part Two - Blush

Similar to unDraw the illustrations in Blush are also customisable with your brand colours. However, the fun thing about Blush illustrations is that they come in collections of varying styles from different artists from around the world. So choose a style you like and have fun adjusting and customising the images for your project.

We recommend Blush because:

it's highly customisable
all files download in vector so you can resize without losing any quality
with so many different artists and styles, you'll find one that perfectly suits the design story you want to tell in your learning project.

6. Screen Recording - Loom

Screen recording is a great learning tool to capture quick-and-easy ‘how to's’ by recording the entirety or portions of your computer screen or mobile. The recording can include everything from cursor movements to typing into search bars, and also the instructor’s voiceover to help people learn what to do and how to do it. Particularly useful for systems training or introducing new software and processes into your organisation.

We recommend Loom because:

it’s free for short videos
there's an option to include your voice/video
it has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface
it has great options to edit immediately after recording
you can store 100s of videos on your free account
sharing videos is super quick and simple.

7. Animation - LottieFiles

Animation can make your content a lot more entertaining and dynamic. Lottie animations give non-tech people the ability to choose, customise and download their own unique animations for their project. They even have a free course to help you get started on creating your own animations.

We recommend LottieFiles because:

there are thousands of free animations available
there's no need to understand code
it's easy for anyone to use
it's easy to tweak the size, speed, colour and text to customise animations.

Their short video below best summarises why it's great:

8. Icons - Flaticon

Icons are super useful across all sorts of learning and communications assets. Flaticon is great as they have collections of icon designs to keep your style consistent with your brand. All icons are free as long as you attribute the author, but the licence is also very affordable if you didn't want to do that.

We recommend Flaticon because:

they have the largest database of free icons (over 3 million!)
you can customise icons colour, size and download in all formats including as SVG, PNG or EPS.

Want to learn more about Chameleon Creator?

Meet Business Needs Faster with Rapid Prototyping

Paul Mahar — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 01:53:42 GMT

Meet Business Needs Faster with Rapid Prototyping

Ever heard of the phrase "don't let perfect get in the way of better"? Or variations of it? It's a dilemma we face in the learning world where we are seeking perfection, all while trying to also be responsive to the organisations we are working with. Should we be focusing on creating the perfect learning experience or rather, is it better for us to just deliver something to our learners and be productive. Of course, we are still suggesting that our goal should be to improve the status quo, however, maybe the focus should be on incremental tweaks rather than huge shifts. In this article we challenge the traditional way of developing digital content and propose that we move our thinking from seeking perfection, to being productive.

How can we deliver faster and not have to compromise on the long-term business impact of what we are creating?

The traditional development process

The traditional development process gives us a level of comfort that we have become accustomed to, knowing that what we deliver is going to be near perfect. It involves multiple drafts, rounds of build, stakeholder sign-off points and is generally not built with speed in mind.

It's a tried-and-tested approach that delivers on quality, but it takes time. Time that we have in less supply these days. Throw a global pandemic into the mix, and these challenges are amplified dramatically. How can we deliver more with less?

The usual challenges around learner engagement, assessment and evaluation, learning culture etc. still exist from a strategic perspective. But what we are seeing is almost a state of constant firefighting right now, as an ever-increasing pace of demand is being put on L&D functions to provide new content.

These demands leave L&D teams in a bit of a pickle. Do we continue in the same vain, doing what we know best and stepping our people and our clients through the same process? Or do we pivot and try a different approach that will meet these business needs with the urgency that is required? I vote the latter, and I think we can do so without compromising quality (in the long term).

Striving for perfection is time consuming and costly. You've probably seen some version of the above diagram where time, cost and quality are factors contributing to the sort of content you will produce. Balancing these competing demands while trying to address the big challenges is tough, and central to it all is quality which is inevitably compromised! Or is it?

The answer is both yes and no! It is dependent on the authoring tool you use. With the right authoring tool there is another option and it can open us up to a different way of working - rapid prototyping.

What is rapid prototyping?

Glad you asked! Rapid prototyping is a process that comes from the manufacturing sector. Traditionally, a computer aided design (CAD) is used to create a 3D model or 'prototype'. The ability to explore a concept quickly and cheaply allows engineers to move products into the hands of their stakeholders for feedback, meaning they can speed up the design process exponentially.

So what can we take from this in learning? Well, quickly creating a working prototype or online module means you can validate your design and content with your stakeholders much more efficiently and quickly and means the feedback loop is tighter so we know if we are hitting the mark.

The advantages of using a prototype approach are:

rapid solution development
stakeholders involved early in the development process
a more efficient use of time and resources
getting feedback and insights early to update and refine in real time
building engagement with users through pilot groups
reducing design and development costs
freeing up resources.

How can I rapidly prototype?

Another great question!

Simply put, if rapid development is important to your business then prototyping is the way of the future for online learning and digital content. Prototyping is building and refining as you go, eliminating the need for storyboards and reducing development time. However, you need the right tool for the job. Traditional tools which can be heavy on development and take far too much time to modify and make changes, big and small, are not fit for purpose in our experience when it comes to prototyping.

The new generation of authoring tools are setting the benchmark for:

ease of use
rapid digital content development
making it look great (in your own brand).

What are the steps to rapidly prototype?

Collect insights/understand the need from stakeholders and learners.
Storyboard directly into your authoring tool.
Create feedback loops to improve content over time.
Develop a minimum viable product (MVP) for testing.
Get feedback from your learners/stakeholders and implement changes.
Continually improve and update your online learning given input from your feedback loop.

With many online assets, there is no such thing as "set and forget". A website. for example. is a living, breathing entity and will be constantly updated and improved over time. With new learning tools now available, that have the ease of updating digital content similar to a website CMS, learning can now also be easily updated to be continuously up to date and relevant.

Having the RIGHT technology is key to enabling rapid prototyping

Having tools that allow you to rapidly prototype is not the way of the future, it's the necessary method of right now.

Tools like Chameleon Creator allow you to:

storyboard directly into your authoring tool
collaborate remotely with stakeholders and designers
quickly iterate and respond to feedback instantly.

It is the most efficient way to ensure your online learning is the best it can be, and also delivered at pace to respond to business needs.

Does your authoring tool enable you to rapidly prototype?

If you'd like to see an authoring tool in action that enables you to rapidly prototype, click the link below to learn about Chameleon.

Career Coaching Conversations and Networking with Alyson Garrido

Aidan Stoate — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:06:26 GMT

Career Coaching Conversations and Networking with Alyson Garrido

In this episode Aidan Stoate interviews Alyson Garrido, one of our trusted associates here at Inspire Group.

Alyson is an established Career Coach with a number of years’ experience in helping her clients to identify the right career path, hone their leadership strategies and present themselves in the best possible light for their job search and career advancement. Alyson is an ICF credentialed PCC, Professional Certified Coach and also trains fellow coaches in systemic practices as the co-founder of the Systemic Coach Academy of New Zealand.

Listen to the interview here:

Connect with Alyson Garrido:

https://www.alysongarrido.com/

https://www.systemiccoachacademynz.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alysonloeffelgarrido/

What next?

Learning and Development Contracting Trends in New Zealand, Post COVID-19

If you enjoyed this podcast you'll want to read/listen to Learning and Development Contracting Trends in New Zealand, Post COVID-19. It is essential reading if you are:

Thinking about becoming an L&D contractor?
Looking for L&D talent?
Want to know how recent events have impacted the L&D contracting market?
Want to know what key L&D skills organisations are looking for right now?

The future of learning and development with David James

Dan Tohill — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 01:56:05 GMT

The future of learning and development with David James

Today’s podcast guest is David James. David has had a long career in the L&D industry, most notably with Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Now, he is the Chief Learning Strategist at Looop. Inspire Group CEO, Dan Tohill, chats with David about all things learning and development in the world right now.

Listen to the interview here:

Or read the summarised transcript of the interview below:

Welcome and thanks so much for participating in the podcast. Many people would love to know what's happening in L&D in other parts of the globe, especially during the outbreak of the pandemic.

Very similar to elsewhere in the world, there was an initial push to help with a shift to more remote working, leaning heavily on digital solutions, then moving quickly, once people settled to what the new rules of engagement were. For example "How do you know people are working and how do you continue to get results?" It seemed safe and optimistic that there was going to be this trust that people could work from home.

The new normal also needs to be trying to make up for lost opportunity in harsh economic circumstances, a health crisis, recession and likely, a no deal Brexit with the way things are going. So, we're in for a tough time. The learning and development journey since then, I'd say optimistically, has helped them to recognise the critical path in their organisation towards helping with that lost opportunity.

I’m fearful that we're just going to be sticking stuff on an LMS or in eLlearning and thinking that we have digital solutions. I'm afraid that often, it’s subtle.

What challenges did you have, where you had to influence your sponsors and your stakeholders to not do a certain thing?

I mean, everybody knows that dance. They said that L&D is a dance everybody thinks they can do, but it's not a tango, it's not a waltz, it's a conga line, and our stakeholders look at it and they can jump on board and they think they can do that dance. Stakeholders often say that they would like some communication-skill training, team training, or email training. What you’ve got to realise is a lot of the time when they've come in and asked you, they've already sold it to their team so they're not willing to have a conversation about what they want to see differently as a result. It’s a dance that everybody wants to do and employees will come along as well. They look at the conga line and it seems like it will be fun for a short time. That they can go along, enjoy meeting colleagues, they're not working, there's a bit of a lunch, it's a bit of an easy day, because they’re attending training. Then they go back and nothing's changed.

There is a big difference between doing what's popular and what's expected and then making a difference. There are two sides to that. When the Finance Director (FD) says: “I'd like a MBTI session run.” You might think MBTI has been debunked, but you also realise that these are the FDs from across the region and they want to come together. Really, it's a platform for the FD to show that he's investing in them and wants to have a conversation broadly about how they perform and wants them to leave knowing clearly what he wants them to do.

That said, there are opportunities in every organisation when there must be change. When I was at Disney, there was perpetual change. We were hamstrung, like a lot of organisations, on a clunky LMS no one wanted to use with generic content that wasn't useful. Getting people to use it, if it wasn't mandatory, was close to impossible.

I have a theory that we grow trainers and plant them in classrooms and then we grow training. So the expectation is that a lot of the time in organisations, no learning and development exists when everybody is working and knowledge-sharing. The idea is to get people in to do some talks, then there's some training and that requires some full-time administration.

So, it started as a little bit of a helping hand to do the stuff that was working. But as soon as you think, let's do some of this in-house you go from sourcing experts, to relying on people who can read a book to deliver stuff, which has to be delivered because it doesn't stand up under scrutiny a lot of the time. When people are doing some research to create courses or e-learning, there isn't the depth of know-how. The delivery model is fatally flawed in learning development. We are hamstrung a lot of the time by the language that we use, but the expectation a lot of the time comes from the stakeholders themselves.

They want training and so you've got in-house support. We get bound by the expectation, then you rattle around a little while. I hear this so much, especially from younger L&D folks today, that they had this epiphany. They're delivering this stuff, people in the room looked quite pleased, but when they close the door afterwards, they know they've made such little difference. These are 12 people who are going to take so little away from this, if anything, and then they've got to jump back on the hamster wheel the next day. They had the epiphany, which is, this job that I've been sold, and I've become great at isn't working, what do I do? Then you have a look and you go; you've got to have a different conversation at the outset. You've got to do some performance consulting. Instead of developing training or e-learning as your first port of call, what about some performance support that helps people where they're working.

Fill all those gaps and then take a step back and have a look. The major things need to be working, it's largely automated. What's the big stuff I need to get on with? L&D jump straight in and they've got programmes and curriculums and they can't even invest in their own digital capability. They'll tell you that it’s because 'I'm too busy delivering these courses that I've built to satisfy demand. I can't invest in it' I think this is a cycle that we've got that needs breaking.

Let's get on to digital learning, not just e-learning. It can either be the most awesome or most awful solution.

I'll give you an example where it’s worked brilliantly: guitar tuition. I love learning songs. If I think back to when I was first learning in the 80s, I had one book, it was called: Play Rock Guitar. I had that book for a good year and could only play two songs from it. But now, after years of playing in bands, and being competent, I can access video tuition and I could learn that song in minutes. I find the learning frustrating a lot of the time. As in, you know your brain is trying to tell your fingers what to do and your fingers can't do it and sometimes it takes a little bit of practice. Sometimes it takes a night’s sleep and sometimes it takes a few days, but when you get it, it makes it worthwhile. You've got sore fingers, you've had a temper tantrum, you probably had to apologise to the wife a couple of times, but the satisfaction you get in playing, is incredible.

Now, that's the power in digital. You have access to true experts who, if they're able to show you what they do, break that down for you to make it accessible. It’s not for everybody. If you don't play guitar and you have no intention of playing guitar, or you don't want to play that song, that's not going to be worth it. Even if I made that mandatory, you'd finish the video, but you'd still not be able to play it. This is what digital learning is. It isn't about the learning, it's about the doing. If you think about the journeys that people will have into any organisation, induction for example. The best way we think is to bombard them with as much information as possible to tick the box. We need you to notice, they don’t have a hope in hell of retaining it. You know why? Because they can't even remember the name of the person sitting next to them that they were introduced to a couple of minutes ago.

Imagine that you understood what it is that we're really trying to do. Then you surface digital resources that guide and support them in real-life experiences that they're having. Then you save all the heavier stuff like bringing people together to connect, share a few stories, but don't show them the intranet, right. There's some guidance there. For me digital gives you the ability to give access to the people that they should have access to, and in service of what it is that they’re trying to do.

Not just the right stuff, but the right time. We've been rubbish at that. We've either bombarded people with too much information before it makes any real sense to them or we've neglected them long after they've faced the challenge and solved all the problems. Yet, we think what we're going to deliver, is still going to be transformational, but it's not. The power of digital is so much more than delivering our stuff. It's understanding their world and making their world easier to use in an organisational sense.

To me, that's the crucible, where effective leadership and management is formed. There's no better place to learn that, than in a start-up.

In many organisations you have existential problems, whether it be cash flow or customers, there's all sorts. In a larger organisation what contributes to whether you're successful or not, is your ability to play the game and to vie for resources to position yourself as valuable.

I think the crux of it is that every single organisation is very, very different and learning and development, a lot of the time, is by generic solutions and borrowing content from their peers elsewhere. I think that because it's been delivered and it's been deemed “successful”, then that can be 'successful' where they are. The problem is, that there are expectations, norms and practices. The expected and rewarded behaviours within any given organisation, and within any department within any given organisation is critical to both the individual and the collective success. This is where learning and development can see the potential for their role. Google cannot help you with doing enough of the right stuff at the right time, within your role in your organisation, but that is what deems a lot of people successful or not successful in any organisation. So, what is it that we can do to help that?

This is where data is our friend, I'm a big fan of data and evidence-based practice. You see a critical point of failure in any given organisation, something that's costing money or costing opportunity. The data will lead you to who is involved here. Then you collect evidence on what it is that's happening or not happening as it should be? What can we do together to help you to perform? Which is do enough of the right stuff in a way that is expected and rewarded in your organisation.

You then work together in order to solve that problem. A great deal will be solved with facilitated conversations and bringing the right people together. Some of that will be performance support, which is giving people what they need in order to do enough of the right stuff without having to collect it all in their heads. There might be something structural involved there. There might even be the need for some training. You don't know unless you're acting on data and having the right conversations at the outset.

The opposite to that, for me, is what learning and development do often, which is they collect learning needs. You can have two types of conversation with stakeholders. What training do your people need? So, you can collect your list of stuff. What can I help you with? Which can then be, what I think is seen as a skill in learning and development, but I think is a failure, translating what people need to do in their jobs into learning needs. So then what you do is you're largely using these analyses as a resource allocation exercise, because programmes and content have traditionally been expensive and time consuming to grab hold off. So you can't do everything.

Yep, that's time management, that's communication skills. When I haven't got stuff, I aggregate all these common needs often up to a level of abstraction. Communication presentation, I might have to take to my global leaders as well and then it gets even further into abstraction. Then it comes down to standardised learning content that bears absolutely no resemblance to the performance context. When people turn up to training courses and they don't know why they're there, we blame the line manager. Should we not look at the very first conversation that we had and realise that translating performance needs into learning needs, is distorting it to an unrecognisable level? They're not going to recognise what they're experiencing.

It comes down to the importance of context.

Ask questions, run experiments. It seems crazy to me, in an industry that can't demonstrate its value. The Great Training Robbery, the report that was published in 2016, suggests that only 10% of expenditure on training is effective. They paid a figure of $162 billion spent in the US that they were working off there. The training industry published last year that just shy of 300 billion pounds was spent on training last year. If only 10% of that is effective, we are talking $270 billion of waste.

We don't experiment. I've tried to do light touch stuff. We invest in heavy sheep dip, clunky systems. These are big bets, where you make big expensive investments on huge contracts, with enormous day rates and then you're unable to show the value. If we were a little bit more experimental, a little bit more light touch, and more data driven, we’d probably find that we're not just throwing money away.

One of my questions: What's the most impactful learning that you've ever experienced?

I would say that the most impactful learning I've seen...there's been a couple. We work with a company called Sanoma. They are a European media house and they had appointed a new Head of Digital Capability. Like a lot of media organisations, in the last decade, they had to digitally transform all their diet. Like a lot of media organisations there was close to zero churn, so you must develop people or sack them all. The way they went about it was that they assessed everybody on their current level of ability to perform the new roles as required. What many people, even in L&D don’t understand is that digital is not about creating digital content. It’s a way of achieving different ends, by doing stuff differently.

Digital marketing is the perfect example. Marketing could’ve been more of an art before digital marketing came along and now it’s a data-driven science. You could do enough of the right stuff, and it could be methodical. If you can set up and automate your digital marketing, you can turn up the dial in terms of spend and get more leads; you can turn up the spend a bit more and get more qualified leads.

So, Sanoma had to digitally transform. They firstly assessed everybody working in this new way. Everybody got their own personalised report and they’ve shared with them links to digital resources that showed them how to do the job that way.

They went on and created thousands of resources. They realised that this was a lazer-focused approach to solving the organisation’s problems. The least risky way you could possibly do this. It’s solving people’s working problems. That was hugely impactful.

It wasn’t necessarily just about the technical task; it was about engaging with partners. In a media house, there are the following aspects: this is the thing we sell; this is what that thing is in the digital world and this is how we sell that. You have everything the organisation does, broken down into digital resources.

They had what they called their local maximums, and these were the people in the organisation who were the pillar of that expertise. These weren’t just SMEs in an L&D sense, these people’s pictures were in a digital frame all around the building, they were like celebrities, everyone knew them. They were running seminar sessions. There was clearly opportunity for them to share what they knew and for people to engage in conversations and workshops. When you sat at your desk, you knew that this is the new frame of reference and set of deliverables. It was quite incredible.

The organisation was smart and thought 'well I don’t know any of this stuff, let me find out who knows all this stuff? You want to build the shortest distance between where we are and where we want to go. They brought in Looop, which was the platform, but they also used Typeform for the questionnaires and an interface provider. They had a clear vision and willingness to experiment and pulled all these resources to achieve that vision. At the end of all of it, everyone will have to be able to do this, otherwise you’ve been unsuccessful. It took hustle. There was a huge screen as you walked into the building, talking about what the priority for the week was and how it was being supported. We used to take clients there and tell them, this is how you should do it? One client asked when we were walking through: “How do you know what the biggest priorities for the organisation are?” They would respond by saying: “You need to get out of the classroom.”

What really helps is to expect a lot more from your technology. I see limited expectation in L&D, when people replace one clunky LMS for another one. It’s low expectation if you think your job is administering an LMS or trying to drive traffic towards it, because people don’t see the inherent value.

I’m afraid that as people are transitioning into and through our organisations, they’re trying to solve the same problems inefficiently that have already been solved thousands of times before.

If you take an optimistic look at the future, what are the big things that you think we’re going to learn within the next 5-10 years?

Eliminate the administration in L & D, there’s just no need. If the current LMS requires an administrator, that person should be doing much more impactful stuff. Eliminating the administration will help to elevate the status of learning and development.
High levels of automation, focus on the employee experience, their working experience, not trying to create some parallel learning experience.
Get closer to the point of work in terms of situation and timing. It means that we are greatly affecting performance and results.
The use of data and the expectation that we will be data literate, we will be making smaller bets on the stuff that matters. The leaders, without even being in the room, will be looking at the dashboard and thinking that is money well spent.

Data is our friend in a formative sense. L&D will take data and look back at whether it worked, when in fact we should be taking it to show us where we need to focus our attention. Knowing which areas are not working and who could help with that. Everything you do, you have to look at whether you’re having a positive uptake on the results.

Too much learning and development is in by-products. You spend half a million dollars, sales didn’t go up, but then you think please let the employee engagement data show that people enjoyed the training. So, it’s all about by-products. There’s this tiny little hope that it’s done some good, because we don’t know what we’re trying to solve.

Need help with your organisation's digital learning?

Get in touch to see how we can help.

7 things to look for when hiring a Learning Designer

swan@inspiregroup.co.nz (Shaiza Wan) — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:52:42 GMT

7 things to look for when hiring a Learning Designer

Shaiza Wan has placed hundreds of Learning Designers in organisations, and with over 13 years’ experience in talent acquisition, she knows a thing or two about what to look for when hiring a Learning Designer.

So you need to hire a Learning Designer (Instructional Designer) to join your team, but how do you spot a really good one from an average one? First port of call is always their portfolio and investigating their past projects and experience. But beyond that, what are the key things you should look for? Also if you’re reading this as a Learning Designer, it’s your chance to get insights into what we’re looking for when hiring, so get that inside knowledge and see how you align with these ideas.

Here are my top 7 things to look for in a strong learning designer and also a few tips on how to spot these things or good questions to ask to determine how someone may rate in these areas:

1. Learner focussed

A good learning designer needs to be people focussed and put the learner first. They should keep the learner at the forefront of their minds throughout the design process. The best way to go about this is to imagine themselves as the learner and the ideal learning experience they would want to have and then design according to that mindset.

How to spot this:

Ask them ‘what’s the first 3 questions you’d ask when being given a new project brief?’ Answer – you’d hope the learner would come in the top 3 questions they’d ask if not the number one question – who is the learner? Or Who is the audience for this project?

2. Solutions focussed

Having the ability to come up with creative solutions to problems, is gold and a must-have skill to look for. They need to be open-minded to try different approaches to find a solution that works best. Out-of-the-box thinking is highly encouraged.

How to spot this:

Give your candidates a theoretical brief or learning challenge. Compare solutions and give credit to those that provide a non-traditional approach that also demonstrates effectiveness.

3. Curiosity is key

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it is an essential characteristic to look for in a learning designer. An inquisitive learning designer will go out of their way to fully understand the content they are working with and to discover the best solutions to achieve the outcomes. They are lifelong learners and eager to discover new methods of conveying information.

How to spot this:

Do they ask interesting questions in the interview process?
Do they continuously upskill to keep up to date on trends in the industry?
Ask the question – ‘What are you learning at the moment?’

4. People skills

A good learning designer should be adaptable, able to communicate and work well with different members of the team. They shouldn’t be shy to reach out and ask questions to get the information needed. They will also take on feedback in a positive light to modify their learning design according to that.

How to spot this:

You should get a good ‘feel’ for this in the interview process, but also their references and reputation will be key to understanding how they communicate and manage their relationships.

5. Manage time effectively

Time is money. Look for someone that can manage their time efficiently and stick to deadlines as far as possible. A learning designer that is self-driven will have that intrinsic motivation to get the work done to a high standard.

How to spot this:

Did they turn up to the interview on time?
Ask them how they currently manage their projects.
Ask them if they’d ever needed an extension on a project.
Ask them how they feel about working towards a deadline.

6. Working with ambiguity

A good learning designer can work with a big chunk of information and organise it in a way that makes sense to the learner. They will be able to work with uncertainty and will be flexible. It’s the kind of person that’s able to find the needle in the haystack.

How to spot this:

Ask them how they manage working in uncertainty
Ask them how they’d approach a project with moving parameters

7. One of a kind

Find that spark of greatness that will add value to the team. Every learning designer will have a different skill set that will set them apart. Think about the specific requirements you are after and make that the focus. Whether it is creative writing, branching scenarios, technical content or a combination of it all, make sure that you find that specific stroke of brilliance.

How to spot this:

Ask them – what makes them stand out?
What’s your point of difference to other learning designers?

Need to find a Learning Designer to join your team?

Book a free consultation with Shaiza Wan, our Learning and Development Talent Specialist who can help you find the right person quickly.

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8 things you need to know if you want to become a Learning and Development Contractor

swan@inspiregroup.co.nz (Shaiza Wan) — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:52:15 GMT

8 things you need to know if you want to become a Learning and Development Contractor

Having placed hundreds of Learning and Development Contractors in organisations, and with over 13 years’ experience in talent acquisition, Shaiza Wan knows a thing or two about what helps someone transition into becoming a successful L&D Contractor.

Check out her top 8 tips below on what to think about when considering taking your career to the next level by becoming a L&D Contractor:

1. Know what makes YOU stand out

Ask yourself:

What is my point of difference?
What are my strengths?
What aspects of L&D do I enjoy the most?
What strong project examples do I have in my portfolio?

Getting clear on your point of difference in the L&D contracting market will help you to shine and get that next contract when things get competitive. For example, it could be:

I’m strong in change and transformation projects.
I can confidently work in highly ambiguous and ever-changing environments.
I’m highly technical and am competent in the most important eLearning authoring tools and LMSs.
I’m experienced and passionate about human behaviour and learning culture.

2. Portfolio, Portfolio, Portfolio

This is probably the most important thing you need to consider and focus your attention on when looking to become a contractor. The first thing most of my clients ask to look at is a contractor's past projects and portfolios. They want to know what this contractor can bring to the table that’s different. We are getting more clients saying, if I'm going to outsource this piece of work, if I'm going to bring on a consultant or contractor, I want them to bring something different and extra than what my internal team has to offer. I want them to bring new ideas on how we approach these things that my team might not think of.

Having an up-to-date portfolio showing your range of work helps position you as an expert in certain areas. A great portfolio also provides potential hiring organisations with that confidence and trust that you can help them with their unique challenges.

3. Reputation and references

Managing your reputation may be tricky when you’re starting out, but it’s so important, especially here in New Zealand. There have also been a lot of changes to the L&D industry in NZ since COVID-19 impacted everything so you may want to listen to our podcast on that topic to get insights into how that has affected the industry.

Learning and Development is a tight-knit community, so your reputation in the industry will spread through word of mouth. Many of my clients will consult with a few of their L&D colleagues to get that informal and objective opinion to see if they know you, have worked with you or have heard of you. So think about your work relationships and your projects and keep in mind that in our country of 2 degrees, we are all connected at some point.

Ensure you have some strong references and make those connections wherever you work so you have senior managers and credible people ready to vouch for you and your quality of work.

4. Be flexible and its okay to start small

If you’re starting out it's important to be flexible. No project is too small or too basic to help you build your portfolio. Your first contracting role may not be your dream job, but it all adds up to get to the next level. Remember, it’s not just about portfolio but reputation and references, so cultivate those relationships wherever you go and let the quality of your work and service help sell you into your next contract.

5. Don’t forget taxes

When you’re a contractor you need to pay your taxes. I needed to make this a specific point all on its own as many contractors forget this important task.

Make sure you get some advice on how to manage your invoicing and accounts and be aware that this is your responsibility. You won’t have to pay your taxes in the first year of business, but you need to remember to put a percentage of your earnings aside to pay for your taxes in the second year of business. You don’t want to be stung with a big surprise bill, so keep this in mind and get some expert advice.

6. Get support and get connected

Just because you’re going out on your own doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. Ensure you get the advice and support you need to help with the transition. For starters I’d recommend you get an accountant (see point 5), talk to your peers that have already taken the plunge into contracting and get their tips and advice. You may even want to think about hiring a mentor or business coach to get the extra professional support to take your work and services to the next level.

Connect to relevant professional meet-up groups and L&D professional groups in your community. Also ensure you have met with the appropriate recruitment agencies that specialise in L&D talent so they can find opportunities for you. I’m always here to support you too if you want free and specific advice on your unique situation. Book a meeting with me anytime to chat about your contracting questions.

7. Know your WHY

It’s important to understand what your motivations are for becoming a contractor.

For example, is it because:

you want the flexibility and work-life balance
you want to make more money
you want variety and want to work with different clients on different projects
it’s the logical step to take with where you’re at in your career?

When times get tough it’s important to know why you’re doing this and get clear on your motivations. Having this clarity will help you to get through the ups and downs that can come with contracting.

8. Be brave and keep positive

There can be a lot of fear and uncertainty when you make that leap into the freelancing or contracting world. There are always risks; there are pros and cons. However, if you really are serious about going into freelancing or contracting, you need to make sure that you've got a strong portfolio, something that you can show to potential clients. You’ve got to be really passionate, be able to manage your processes and not be afraid to put yourself out there.

It’s an exciting time full of possibility and potential, so I would advise you to do your homework and if you’ve taken all these steps, be confident, be brave and take that leap of faith.

If you want any help or advice, or want someone to represent you in the market, book a time with me and we can look at working something out. I’m more than happy to help you out.

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