I think we can create a learning and development framework in the BBC that will be genuinely world-class, he gushes, leaning over the table. The BBC prides itself on being an organisation with high-quality output. It wont stay that way if it doesnt have high-quality learning processes going through it. As the pace of change accelerates, and as issues arise that have to be dealt with faster and faster, this is right at the heart of the agenda. I think thats a message Greg has got and will retain as long as we can deliver.
Greg is director-general Greg Dyke who, along with the rest of the BBCs executive committee, was recently treated to the full blast of Paines enthusiasm with an address on the training agenda. According to Dando, the message went down well. All Paine has to do now is deliver results. Theres a little bit of lets hold our breath now, he admits. Weve got the benefit of the doubt, weve definitely got the ear of the organisation, so now were in delivery mode.
Paines main man in the move to make the BBCs wealth of expertise accessible on every desktop is Gareth Jones. His job title is head of innovation and learning and he has been in on the BBCs e-learning efforts (although he prefers to talk about blended learning, a mix of technology-based and traditional methods) from the start. What were endeavouring to achieve is a world in which learning and work are interwoven. The two are not divisible, he explains. What people think at the moment is, Hmm, I have this need. Ill go on a course. Their mind-set separates the two things. They think, Ill park that problem for a couple of months, because theyve got to wait to get on a course. What we want is to create a culture where they say, Problem: solution. They might go online or they might ask a colleague, but its about getting people to make that learning space in their day, in their mental model.
The subject of culture change is one to which Paine and Jones return again and again. When the BBC recently won the Human Resources Excellence Award 2002 for Transforming the HR Function Using IT, some onlookers may have felt that the BBC with all its media resources, had something of an advantage over the average widget-maker or service firm. If it couldnt put together a decent e-learning package, with the interviewing and presenting expertise of people like Michael Parkinson on tap, frankly it would be a poor show. True, but that underestimates the peculiar cultural challenges that the BBC workforce presents. Theyre creative people, says Rosemary Le Bargy, a director of KPMG Consulting, and one of the Human Resources Excellence Awards judges. HR people have to learn to respect those highly skilled individuals and not tie them down with admin and learning programmes.
Paine certainly understands that creative staff have their own priorities. Its a very individualistic mind-set. As someone said, you dont win BAFTAs by being a good manager and a good team player. You win BAFTAs by being a complete bastard and a control freak and driving it through.
That mind-set presents its own problems. The BBCs workforce is very bright, very highly qualified and very bolshie. And we want to see that as a great strength. Theyll say, Look, if I put Panorama out and its not the very best I get kicked all the way from here to High Wycombe, therefore what you do has got to be of the same quality. It has got to be the best, it has to be thought-provoking and it has to meet the needs of the audience.
Its fair to say that on all three fronts the BBCs e-learning passes the test. Le Bargy talks about a real wow factor in the materials on offer and shes got a point. For a start, everything is easily accessible from any terminal in the BBC empire, at any time, 24/7. Branded as learn.gateway, the training site is one click from the front page of the BBC intranet, and its personalised for whichever of the BBCs 24,000 employees (plus 10,000 full-time contracted staff) logs on. Over 5,000 have already made use of the Personal Development Plan (PDP) tool at the site, which lets users assemble a PDP based on their ambitions and on the results of questionnaires they complete online about their career and values.
So if youre working as a PA but you have always wanted to be a sound recordist, you can build a picture of the skills you need to acquire and then line up the relevant training modules. Some of them will be simple page-turning units, some will include Flash-based animations, some will be full-motion video, and some will be good old-fashioned face-to-face courses in a classroom. But progress towards your goal and any scores or incomplete modules along the way will all be right there in your online PDP.
Even more powerful is the systems ability to connect employees with other people in the organisation who may be able to help them, either through coaching and advice or because theyre in a similar position, with similar aims. An initiative called live and learn enables users to pass on specific tips. For instance, browsing some material on how to organise events, you stumble on a link to a short video clip of a man with a flipchart offering advice on how to handle sponsors in the aftermath of an event and the importance of involving them in any celebrations. Simple but effective.
Essentially what were doing is enabling conversations across the business, explains Jones. Anybody can deliver a module. Were trying to drive sharing of good practice across organisational barriers through stories, by getting people to use this medium to tell each other about what theyre doing.
The man with the flipchart is the exception, though. Mostly, as you might expect, the content of the modules is carefully crafted. A unit on how to use hand-held microphones features a cute animated character and, curiously, a cartoon condom. Why the condom? Because apparently theres no better way to shield a mike on a rainy day than slipping a Durex over it before you put the spongy little wind-cover on. Just the kind of old-timers wisdom the system is designed to share around.
Another module consists of a specially shot and edited interview with Michael Parkinson talking about how to research interviews, illustrated with clips from his shows. Theres a whole bunch of interviews with other presenters and experts on different subjects and, with each one, you can bookmark sections of the video you want to return to and that clip will be stored as part of your PDP.
Tapping into the experience of someone like Parky is central to the project, says Paine. The BBC has got some real stars, people who are icons that every household in the country knows. And within the BBC there are icons that everyone in the BBC knows. And we never ask them how they got there and what their advice is or what they would say to someone coming into the organisation. We see them like you see them, through glass or on television or down that corridor. Part of what we want to do is draw on that huge collective knowledge base that exists in peoples heads. We want everybody to see themselves as a teacher and a learner and a coach. We dont want anyone to think, Oh yeah I was trained 20 years ago. I know everything. We want people to realise that part of their duty is to put something back.
As much as anything, the whole project is about opening up access to information which traditionally has been hoarded or seen as part of a kind of priesthood to which it takes years to gain admittance. Once knowledge is freely available, individuals can drive their own destiny, rather than waiting for a managers blessing. The old world was a world of scarcity, says Jones. You had to put yourself down for a training course and there was limited supply, so to a large extent your progress through the organisation was reliant on patronage. Now for those people who find that patron, the system works incredibly well but for those who dont, it puts restrictions on the opportunities to develop themselves. To my mind, the amazing thing about e-learning or blended learning is that it democratises the opportunity to develop yourself, which culturally is very in tune with some of the underlying ideals of the organisation.
You need just for me learning: something that is completely customised for your particular needs, as granular as possible, argues Paine, and just in time learning: when you need it, its there. Theres no formal, face-to-face programme in the world that can adapt that fast.
Granular is a word that crops up frequently in the conversation. It is about mass customisation, says Jones. It is about being able to take the knowledge you require for a role and break it down to a very granular level and then allow the individual to reconstruct those elements to make a training programme that matches where they are today. Thats been the biggest selling point of learning management systems for the past few years, but theyve failed to deliver.
That may explain why the BBC has spent time and effort building its own system. It began with a pilot programme in 2000 called Learning Online, then evolved into learn.gateway in May 2001. At the end of July this year the site was given a makeover to improve the usability of the interface. When we developed the system and most others are similar we went for the Microsoft model of drop-down menus, says Jones. Were now moving to an interface which is more based around stories. Before, if, for example, I wanted to be a researcher, I went onto the system, entered researcher and it gave me a list of things I can do. Now, it will give me two or three stories of researchers who have got where they want to go, so I can read their stories. Embedded within those are links to learning opportunities.
All this has meant a big investment the BBC puts around 100 million a year into training but its one that should pay off in terms of important things like staff retention and morale. And as Dando points out, the effort is central to the BBCs avowed aim under Dyke of becoming the worlds most creative organisation, via a change process called One BBC.
A really world-class organisation should be looking ahead at how to create something thats healthy and sustainable for the long term, he says. Weve got this amazing well of talent. But theres a real opportunity for us to become a much more collaborative place where we transmit learning and expertise across the organisation. Whatever youre trying to do, the chances are that theres someone else somewhere who is trying to do the same thing. Opening up that collaborative potential is very important. And if that means a few more cartoon condoms, so be it.
Top tips from the BBCs e-learning experience
- Each organisation is different. Focus on your organisational culture and be sensitive to that. Build an approach that fits your companys values
- Dont shirk the transformation you require. Even at a place like the BBC, technophobia can hamper your best efforts, so you need to win hearts and minds
- Anticipate your users needs. Work out the competency profile of a role and understand the curriculum you need to create to meet those requirements
- Make sensible judgments around what you put online, what you do face-to-face and what you do in a book or through a link to material on the wider internet
- Be granular. Break your learning material down into small chunks that can be reassembled in different ways
- Avoid making your training materials too generic. Relate them to the practical, everyday needs of the particular business youre in
- Make e-learning fun to do. It doesnt have to be a chore, it can be something employees look forward to
- Dovetail e-learning with other company systems: with a business platform such as SAP, with HR processes such as appraisals, with your knowledge management system, with the company intranet
- Find synergies with internal communications. When Greg Dyke holds a management conference, the internal news story offers links to relevant training material
- Make e-learning a fluid process, so that it leaks into conversations, bulletin boards, phone calls, buying books but keep structured learning at its core
- Let your employees drive their own development, with input from training practitioners and line managers where necessary
- Make e-learning accessible everywhere and at all times from a laptop while travelling or from home
