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Here are some thoughts on things to do to promote your book. They are not set out in any order of preference. They are merely some suggestions – some or all of which might appeal to you.

• Self-promotion. I once met an author who told me that she would always wait until her publisher ‘remaindered’ one of her books – that is, designated it as ‘out of print’. At that point, she would make the publisher an offer to buy up the ‘remaindered’ copies, for a few pence each. Then, armed with this stock of books, she contacted clubs and societies around the country and offered to give them a talk about her work. She said that it didn’t matter if they paid her a fee – although she always asked for travelling expenses. Her subsequent talk would always conclude with her inviting the audience to buy some of her books which she just happened to have with her – and these would be available at a ‘special price’ below the recommended retail price (so that the offer sounded like a good deal). She maintained that she always sold sufficient books at each venue to make each of her trips profitable. If you have time on your hands, you could follow this pattern, travelling the length and breadth of your country. It’s more likely, however, that you could promote your book, on appropriate occasions, to:
  • students at the university after lectures or tutorials
  • executives at large companies where you have connections – perhaps via a talk or lecture
  • relevant conferences/ events (both those serving the academic world and the corporate world)

• Press release(s). Issue a press release announcing the publication of the book and offering a ‘taste’ of some of the book’s contents. You will need to (a) write a good, readable press release, (b) generate a relevant distribution list (most, if not all, distribution is done online nowadays) and (c) monitor the distribution list to see who has published the press release. Then, you will need to promote this coverage – via social media (see below).

• Promotion via the internet. This includes:
  • Give the book a page on your website – and promote that page on the home page of your website (to refer visitors to the book’s page on the site). This page will include a sizeable excerpt from the book (say, the foreword, contents page(s) and first chapter) as well as some reviews of the book and a ‘reader offer’ to buy the book at a discounted price. You should try to sign-up the reader to subscribe to ‘regular news’ or something similar from you on the subject that your book addresses. This will enable you to build up a list of subscribers’ emails – and you can use these to market to them your works, especially your further, similar, books.
  • Set up a separate website to promote the book – and cross-promote both the book’s site and your website.
  • Pay for Google Ads / Google Adwords to attract visitors to these websites/ pages.
  • Let Amazon sell the book [However, please note that Amazon will want a large percentage of the cover price – at least some 35% – to do this (but, with all the other costs associated with being an ‘Amazon author/ publisher’ this can seem a lot nearer 75%). Moreover, Amazon won’t actively promote the book. So, the only reason to have your book ‘on Amazon’ is for prestige. In all the years I had my books ‘on Amazon’ (and I’ve now removed them from Amazon because it was too costly for me to sell them via Amazon), I never made any money out of the deal – however many copies of the books I sold via Amazon].
  • Let other book distributors sell the book. They will probably offer you better terms than will Amazon – but, in my experience, the results are still the same. The only real reason to do these deals – with Amazon and others – is for the prestige of being able to say that “my book is on Amazon…” (or whichever distributor you’re with).

• Promotion via social media. This would include:
  • Posting stories about the book on, say, LinkedIn and…
  • Posting excerpts from the book on LinkedIn and…
  • Getting other people to write posts on LinkedIn mentioning the book and its contents.
  • Then, promote these stories, excerpts and posts via Twitter (that is, issuing tweets that link to the LinkedIn posts). Remember that the key thing to do here is to use hashtags – but no more than three hashtags per post. The point about using hashtags (for example, #marketing) is that this will ensure your tweet is picked up by the bots that search for, for example, ‘marketing-related’ tweets. People who’re then searching for ‘marketing-related tweets’ will be shown your tweet and, in this way, you will widen the audience for your tweets and, thereby, your book.
  • Like and re-tweet any and every tweet that mentions your book and/or you.

• Promotion via magazine. This is a bit ‘old school’ but there may be magazines (commercial magazines – not academic periodicals and journals) that will publish a feature article on the book, its contents and/or you, as author. This gives you the chance to do a deal with the publication to promote the book – through a ‘reader offer’ (usually, you pay for a quarter, half or full-page advert promoting the book and offer readers a reduced price to buy direct from you. An alternative is that the magazine gives you the advert space ‘free’ but operates the offer and takes a percentage – say 80% – of all money received from orders).

• Direct marketing. This can take many forms, including:
  • Buy lists of ‘marketing professionals’ in, say, the Czech Republic, or ‘Eastern Europe’, or, indeed, anywhere. Then email (or post via snail mail) some advertising copy about the book, with an ‘offer’ on the book’s price.
  • Contact all the senior executives and marketing professionals you know and ask them to buy the book – and to buy copies of the book for all the staff in their marketing departments.
  • Send a (free) copy of the book to CEOs/ senior executives you know or would like to get to know, with a covering letter introducing yourself and the book – and saying why it’s important that every marketer learns and applies the secrets set out in this book. Then follow up with a request for a meeting with this CEO/ senior executive. At that meeting, you sell the idea of you doing presentations about the latest approaches to marketing (and related disciplines) for that organisation’s staff. At these meetings, you promote the book (see the first option above).

From this brief outline of how you can promote your book(s) to get some sales, you can appreciate why many authors decide that they have more artistically creative things to do rather than endure the hard grind that is marketing and selling their books. However, no one else is going to do this for you – at least, not for free. So, all would-be successful, best-selling authors need to factor into their creative schedule the time needed for them to promote their books once they have been published.

About Bob Little

Having graduated from the University of Wales with a BSc in economics, Bob Little became a journalist and editor specialising in the corporate training/ learning sector. In May 1990, having founded his own public relations business, he was introduced to what became the corporate online learning technologies industry and has worked in this sector – worldwide – ever since as a writer, commentator and publicist.

Bob has advised many organisations around the world – ranging from niche companies to large, multi-national enterprises, including BBC Worldwide (UK), the Tata Group (India) and Lattanzio Group (Italy). He has spoken at conferences on corporate learning in the UK, the USA, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Germany. He has also chaired corporate learning related conferences in the UK, the USA, Croatia, Germany and Australia.

However, the real origins of eLearning are in the 15^th century, when moveable type printing was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman from the mining town of Mainz in southern Germany. Until then, the skill of scholarship had centred around learning a text sequentially. Indeed, the advent of moveable type – making it possible to print more books than ever before – encountered strong opposition from some contemporary scholars who argued that, in future, a text could just be read and not have to be learned.

eLearning’s recent origins

Originally known as computer-based training (CBT), eLearning had been in use since the 1960s. In those days, it was delivered via the early, ‘green screen’, mainframe computers – where one central computer served many smaller, remote terminals. By the mid-1970s, IBM had produced a CBT authoring language called IIS. Although it worked slowly, it allowed authors to build CBT programs and this completely changed people’s options for delivering open learning materials.

Until then, open learning had been essentially text-based, principally delivered via books and manuals. There was little or no interaction between the user and the materials. Now, however, open learning could be delivered to people as they worked at their computer screens.

At the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s, there were some technological advances – such as the development of the Phoenix authoring language. Phoenix allowed authors not only to build courseware for the mainframe but also to provide user testing and scoring of those tests. This enabled trainers and administrators to keep detailed student records.

The Control Data Corporation developed a similar system, called PLATO. PLATO was a mainframe computer which delivered CBT. Unfortunately, each PLATO machine cost some $5m – compared with Phoenix’s mere $50,000 – and so few companies could afford the luxury of PLATO. But, thanks to PLATO and Phoenix, CBT had become interactive. Users answered questions and those answers were recorded for analysis, enabling trainers to obtain some measure of the courseware’s effectiveness. Throughout the 1980s, PLATO declined – principally because of its cost. Meanwhile, Phoenix made another advance for computer-based open learning by adding computer managed instruction (CMI) to its list of capabilities.

CMI was an automated way of defining each learner’s curriculum – preventing learners wasting time and their employers wasting money taking courses they didn’t need to take. Using CMI, students‘ test scores were recorded and analysed. It was claimed that the software then determined the optimum amount of further learning for each learner.

eLearning evolution

As personal computers (PCs) – each with a graphical user interface (GUI) – grew in numbers and usage, from the early 1990s, CBT courseware was developed for this market. At this time, the term ‘eLearning’ began to take over from ‘CBT’. CBT producers added audio and, later, video, along with animations to their programs – and made ‚multimedia-based‘ open learning, often delivered via CDs. While these enabled more ‘bandwidth-heavy’ programs to be created and delivered, updating the learning materials and then ensuring that all learners had copies of the most up-to-date CDs proved a challenge.

The internet emerged into public use in 1995 from the ARPANET, a US military project started in 1966 which became operational in 1971. The mid-1990s also saw the growth of ‚client/server‘ technology. The advent of the internet and client/server technology meant that CBT programs could now be brought back to a centralised location and distributed over a network, in the same way as CBT had been delivered via a mainframe some 30 years previously. Client/server technology made it possible to use more sophisticated software both on the server and the client machine – and this made communication between the two, via local and wide area networks (LANs and WANs), more efficient.

The internet’s rapid growth in popularity, allied to the advent of client/server technology, meant that CBT programmes could now be brought back to a centralised location and distributed over a network, in the same way as CBT had been delivered via a mainframe for some 20 years. Now, though – for the first time – eLearning could be delivered from one centralised location to any PC on a network anywhere in the world, using the internet or its derivative, the corporate intranet. Moreover, delivering learning in this way became relatively inexpensive. So, investing in a range of electronically-delivered learning modes and materials in this period helped organisations to do new things, to do more things than ever before and to do these things more efficiently and effectively.

So, learning materials could – once again – be put in one location, updated in one location and distributed from one location in the same way as had been done for CBT on a mainframe. This allowed the reintroduction of CMI, allowing tutors and administrators to monitor and manage the open learning process efficiently and cost-effectively. This gave rise to learning management systems (LMSs) (see below).

Authoring Tools

The authoring tools for PC-based CBT weren’t tied to large, mainframe systems. Although they didn’t have the CMI and other administration benefits contained in a tool such as Phoenix, they could exploit the PC’s GUI to develop colourful and interactive programs. These programs were more engaging and ‚exciting‘ than mainframe-delivered, green-screen CBT – especially to users whose visual tastes were being increasingly educated through computer games. Soon, CBT producers were using audio and, later, video, along with animations – and making ‚multimedia based‘ open learning.

Unfortunately, these were all stand-alone courses, so there was no way of finding out who was using the courses, how they were using them, how effective the training was and so on. Moreover, since much of this courseware was being produced on CD-ROMs (CDs), once a course needed updating, the whole course had to be revised, re-pressed and distributed – and all the old copies of the course destroyed, to ensure that only the current version of the course was being used.

Two main types of eLearning content producers emerged during the 1990s: those producing ‘generic’ eLearning and those producing ‘bespoke’ learning materials commissioned by clients. Producers – espousing a creative path – developed their eLearning materials using their preferred authoring tools, chosen from a growing range. These authoring tools had developed from the authoring systems developed in the early days of mainframe-delivered CBT.

Learning Management Systems

In the 1990s, the advent of the internet and client/server technology brought the systems side of the industry back to prominence – and gave rise to the learning management system (LMS) and its near-sibling, the learning content management system (LCMS).

LMSs have been around since the mid-1990s – about the time that the internet became available to the public. Before that, they were known as authoring systems and can trace their ancestry to the PLATO mainframe system, developed in the early 1960s at the University of Illinois. PLATO was developed to ‘use (mainframe) computers for teaching’ and this led to products such as the DOS-based authoring system TenCORE, as well as Macromedia’s Authorware, and even Lotus Notes.

An LMS’s key purpose is administrative. LMSs house learning content but focus on learning process management and content delivery. An LMS is software for planning, delivering and managing learning events within an organisation, hopefully encompassing online, virtual classroom and instructor-led courses. It allows learners access to learning materials; records who has accessed what – and what they did with it – and produces one or more reports about it. Its main jobs are to keep track of learners’ progress and performance across all types of training activities and then produce reports for instructors, HR and other ERP systems as well as, ultimately, the main board.

Learning Content Management Systems

The LMS’s near-relative, the learning content management system (LCMS), is content-centric. Emerging around the same time as LMSs – that is, the mid 1990s – LCMSs focus on the authoring and management of reusable content for online learning materials. LCMS solutions are used to create content-centric learning strategies. They support a range of methods for gathering and organising content. LCMS technology can be used in tandem with an LMS or as a standalone application for learning initiatives that require rapid development and distribution of learning content.

Rather than developing whole courses and adapting them to multiple audiences, an LCMS is designed to manage learning content across an organisation’s various L&D areas. It provides developers, authors, instructional designers and subject matter experts with the means to create and re-use online learning content while reducing – and maybe eradicating – wasteful duplication in developing these learning materials.

eLearning Today

Both strands of the eLearning industry – content and systems – are continuing to develop. Although the term ‘eLearning’ continues to be unpopular with its developers, buyers and users, no viable alternative name has, so far, emerged. Nonetheless, eLearning content continues to take advantage of developing technologies including augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. On the systems side, LMSs and LCMSs have been joined – since 2018 – by the Learning Experience Platform (LXP).

LXPs aim to complement – not replace – LMSs by tracking learning activities that take place off the (LMS) platform, such as informal learning discussions and online chats. While LMSs focus on the administration of learning, especially the tracking of learning and meeting compliance regulations, LXPs focus on the student’s learning experience and aim to facilitate personalised learning, allowing users to choose their own learning from a diverse array of personalised content. So, LXPs aim to provide on-the-job learning; allow learners to work on their own timeline; present user-generated content, and address learning goals that are constantly changing as well as, generally, manage learning activities that require less measurement. So, L&D professionals are in control of the LMS, eLearning developers control the LCMS but learners control the LXP, choosing from an assortment of available – often less ‘formal’ and, thus, less ‘measurable’ – learning experiences

About Bob Little

Having graduated from the University of Wales with a BSc in economics, Bob Little became a journalist and editor specialising in the corporate training/ learning sector. In May 1990, having founded his own public relations business, he was introduced to what became the corporate online learning technologies industry and has worked in this sector – worldwide – ever since as a writer, commentator and publicist.

Bob has advised many organisations around the world – ranging from niche companies to large, multi-national enterprises, including BBC Worldwide (UK), the Tata Group (India) and Lattanzio Group (Italy). He has spoken at conferences on corporate learning in the UK, the USA, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Germany. He has also chaired corporate learning related conferences in the UK, the USA, Croatia, Germany and Australia.

Some say the first human resources (HR)/ L&D guru was the Roman, Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella. His tract on agriculture, ‘De re rustica’, written in the first century, could also be the world’s first management book.

Realising that effective people management was essential to make a farm productive, Columella recommended ‘family-friendly’ measures. He argued that happy workers give you a better performance. Unhappy workers might not walk away – not if they were slaves – but they could kill you.

Columella said that people respond best if they’re looked after and promised some reward. Sick workers need care. Cells, he said, should have natural light and workers needed durable, good quality, work clothes in which to perform their duties. He even suggested regular consultations between master and slaves.

His proposals focused on increasing productivity, especially via fostering worker loyalty and obedience. Importantly – when the prevailing approach was to manage by fear – ‘De re rustica’ recognised that people respond well to empathy, encouragement and empowerment.

Some 20 centuries later, similarly enlightened management practices still appear far from widespread. Workers continue to fear – failure, demotion, losing their competitive edge through failing to keep their knowledge and skill levels up-to-date and, ultimately, losing their jobs.

Yet we know that happier workers tend to be more productive and engaged – and you can make workers happier by investing in them by offering them L&D opportunities. They may stay longer with your team or organisation because they feel you value them by investing in their development. That reduces your organisation’s recruitment, selection and induction (onboarding) costs and can improve your organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness. ‘De re rustica’ may be the first management book but there are even older books on leadership – notably ‘Tao Te Ching’ by Lao-Tzu, along with Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’. Both books – written over 2,000 years ago – outline the principles of leadership, influence, negotiation skills and so on. All these books illustrate that there’s nothing new – and, if today’s leaders could apply just ten per cent of this wisdom, the world would be a better place.

Knowledge transfer

Humans had been using printing skills – in China – for 600 years before the 15^th century saw the invention of the printing press, in Germany. These skills – and subsequent refinements to ‘knowledge transfer technology’ – have helped to make knowledge increasingly widely available. But others have used these same skills and technologies to spread disinformation as propaganda or ‘fake news’. This counteracts or, at least confounds, some of the benefits of spreading the lessons of history.

Outsourcing

In a further dip into business-related history, the book, ‘A Distant Mirror’, by Barbara Tuchmann, which draws heavily on ‘Froissart’s Chronicles’, offers HR and L&D-related business truths from the 14^th century. Among these is that the 14^th century embraced – unconvincingly – the case for outsourcing.

At that time, the Italian city states decided that fighting wasn’t their core business. So, they outsourced this activity to groups of redundant knights and other disbanded professional soldiers, known as condottiere. The results weren’t encouraging.

The English condottiero, Sir John Hawkwood, appears to have been unusual in keeping to his agreement with whoever had hired him for the duration of the contract. Others, however, changed allegiance at the drop of a ducat – and even Hawkwood stated that, if the money wasn’t good enough, he was ready to turn out for the enemy in the next fighting season.

Dealing with these outsourced, freelance fighters required both considerable negotiating skills and a large budget. Some employers then – as is increasingly the case now, too – must have wondered whether all this outsourcing was worth the money and effort.

So, outsourcing – a popular option for the L&D function today – isn’t new. It appears a cheap option for something that’s not an organisation’s core business but, as the Italian city states discovered, outsourcing brings its own challenges and costs – and these can become troublesome and unacceptable. If so, it makes the process inefficient and uneconomic.

Downsizing

The 14^th century included widespread outbreaks of the Black Death – an ultimate downsizing exercise. Survivors benefitted because the reduction in the labour supply drove up wages. These surviving workers also began demanding other things – such as increased information. The subsequent invention of the printing press increased the supply of information and prompted challenging the authorities’ long-espoused views on ‘the way things are’. People questioned whether – and how – life could be made better. This led to the Renaissance and the Reformation which, in turn, prompted new technologies and, thus, industries, jobs and skills. The lesson is that, initially, downsizing may seem an unwelcome idea – particularly if you’re part of the downsizing exercise. Yet it can prompt new initiatives, technologies, skills and career opportunities.

Dress Codes

There were even laws about what people could wear in the 14^th century. These ‘sumptuary laws’ were, first, challenged and then ignored, as social change progressed.

So, ‘Dressing Down’ opportunities to be more relaxed in terms of business attire are far from modern inventions. Moreover, for many reasons – avoiding sexism among them – acceptable business dress codes are being increasingly challenged in this century in a similar way to the challenges to the 14^th century’s fashion laws.

History has lots to teach us – so why aren’t we learning these lessons?

We all know 15 minutes of exercise each day keeps us healthier but we don’t do it – because it’s easier not to. It’s the same with learning the lessons of history.

As an L&D professional, it’s easy to get distracted by new models and technologies – but we should ensure we understand and apply the basics.

About Bob Little

Having graduated from the University of Wales with a BSc in economics, Bob Little became a journalist and editor specialising in the corporate training/ learning sector. In May 1990, having founded his own public relations business, he was introduced to what became the corporate online learning technologies industry and has worked in this sector – worldwide – ever since as a writer, commentator and publicist.

Bob has advised many organisations around the world – ranging from niche companies to large, multi-national enterprises, including BBC Worldwide (UK), the Tata Group (India) and Lattanzio Group (Italy). He has spoken at conferences on corporate learning in the UK, the USA, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Germany. He has also chaired corporate learning related conferences in the UK, the USA, Croatia, Germany and Australia.

Where it achieves these things, performance improves and the organisation gains a competitive advantage.

Operational perspective

From an operational point of view, managers want to do and achieve more with less – working faster, better and/or quicker. They want to retain and develop their employees as well as address any regulatory requirements. This should result in increasing efficiency and productivity, reduced risk and increased customer satisfaction.

Chief executive officers want:

•             Revenue generation

•             Customer retention

•             Increasing market share

•             Competitive advantage

•             Reduced time to market

•             A lower number of ‘product recalls’

•             Reduced risk

•             Reduced costs

It’s helpful to align the organisation’s learning management system (LMS) to one or more of these factors. For example, you could show that ‘doing things better’ because workers are better trained will help retain customers and, by spending less time away from their desks doing training/ learning, the workers can serve more customers and increase their satisfaction with the organisation and its products.

The key is to align the learning business plan to the business’ goals – otherwise the business won’t put any money into an LMS.

But which comes first: the system or the content? Any system – such as an LMS, learning content management system (LCMS) or learning experience platform (LXP) – without learning content is like having air traffic control without aeroplanes, filing cabinets without paper, bookshelves without books or a fully fitted kitchen without any knowledge of how to cook.

Until you have learning content and people using it to learn things, there’s no point in trying to manage it.

LMS return on investment

Agreeing an accurate return on investment (ROI) from an LMS is difficult, principally because it’s impossible to measure the LMS’s ROI in isolation from every other factor.

There are only three ways to make money – and realise a positive ROI. You can buy things for less; sell them for more – or steal them. So, is learning content ever going to produce an ROI? Is ‘management’ going to bring an ROI? Is there even a breakeven point for ‘management’? Management is indivisible and, like premises, is a fixed cost of operating. Its costs can’t be apportioned fairly to different aspects of the business, such as learning.

An LMS is only ever part of making your organisation operate efficiently and effectively. It is not the entire solution. However, if you take any one of the seven factors that impact on a business – sales force productivity; customer and partner training; developing and retaining employees; regulatory compliance; enterprise software implementations; quality initiatives, and strategic communications – an LMS should be shown to pay for itself within a year.

Moreover, having bought an LMS, how do you decide whether it was money well spent? Do you evaluate this in terms of the cost per user or the cost per lesson? How do you measure the ROI? And do you merely want the system to ‘break even’ in terms of an ROI or to do more? Maybe you should look at the number of learning events in the system rather than the number of users?

If you have, say, 500 users doing ten learning events a day, you can manage this without having recourse to a ‘system’ – but 500 users doing thousands of learning events each day will be unmanageable without a system.

Acquiring a ‘system’

A typical decision process to acquire a management system involves having the evaluation of the requirement, a request for information (RFI) and a request for a quotation (RFQ). You go to shows, get brochures and, mainly, do research via the internet, reading articles such as this one.

If you ask vendors – and every one of them is always a ‘leader in the field’ – they’ll say that you should buy their product. But vendors are really saying, ‘buy my product because it’s the only one I have’, rather than ‘buy my product because it’s the best’. Of course, any system is the best there is if it fits exactly with what you want it to do.

You should go to the market with an RFI; yet many buyers make the mistake of going for an RFQ first. Once you have the information, you need to match it to your requirements and then – once you’ve found a product that matches your requirements – go for an RFQ.

The question is, which vendor do you trust?

There are four types of vendor in this market: those which are product-led; consultancy-led; ‘manufacturer-offered’ and ‘independent-offered’. Each will have a different ‘angle’ and it’s worth bearing that angle in mind when dealing with each of them.

You could make your buying decision on how many industry awards these vendors have won. However, you need to remember that, in this field, industry awards go to those who propose themselves for them – and other ‘league tables’ are based on revenue. This means that the most expensive companies are at the top!

You need to decide whether the most expensive companies are the best and whether the best instructional designer is the one with ‘the most colours in the box’.

Top ten purchasing mistakes

The top ten purchasing mistakes in the learning sector are:

• Skirting senior management until it’s too late (and so failing to get management ‘buy in’ to the project)
• Failing to spell out exactly what you need the management system to do.
• Comparing ‘apples’ and ‘oranges’.
• Excluding the in-house IT department until it’s too late.
• Focusing on price rather than value – the ROI focuses on price, whereas you should be asking what value is attached to the project and, so, assess the ‘value return’, not the return on price.
• Overlooking scalability.
• Ignoring LMS interoperability – in other words, falling into the trap of having more than one LMS in your organisation and the systems not communicating with each other, thus reducing the value of having these LMSs.
• The vendor’s track record – you should ask to speak to a vendor’s dissatisfied customers as well as their satisfied ones.
• Automating dated business processes – you need to understand whether you’re merely automating what already exists or are introducing a system that will enable the organisation to make progress.

A checklist

A checklist for getting the ‘right’ management system for your organisation is:

• Decide what’s available to you.
• Involve everyone.
• Learn the industry jargon.
• Speak to those who’ve implemented other systems and find out what benefit they expected – and what they actually received.
• Design your own RFI. Ask yourself: ‘does this system already do what I want or does it have to be created? If it has to be created, you’re at ‘version 1.0’ again and you would be right to become cautious.
• Compare like with like.
• Create your own RFQ.
• Speak to the clients (those who’ll actually be using the system).
• Re-evaluate from the top down – then ask yourself, ‘is this the right thing for us?’ If it is, sign the cheque.

About Bob Little

Having graduated from the University of Wales with a BSc in economics, Bob Little became a journalist and editor specialising in the corporate training/ learning sector. In May 1990, having founded his own public relations business, he was introduced to what became the corporate online learning technologies industry and has worked in this sector – worldwide – ever since as a writer, commentator and publicist.

Bob has advised many organisations around the world – ranging from niche companies to large, multi-national enterprises, including BBC Worldwide (UK), the Tata Group (India) and Lattanzio Group (Italy). He has spoken at conferences on corporate learning in the UK, the USA, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Germany. He has also chaired corporate learning-related conferences in the UK, the USA, Croatia, Germany and Australia. His current clients include eCom Learning Solutions (https://ecomlearningsolutions.com/). eCom, which produces the eNetLearn LMS, creates innovative learning solutions – aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity – to help organisations achieve their goals.

Uncovering the agreed evidence that demonstrates meeting minimum standards should be neither complex nor cumbersome, believes Linda Steedman, Chair of eCom Learning Solutions, one of the UK’s leading digital learning and assessment specialists. One key step in this is to take – and agree – a view on job roles, recruiting, professional development and stages in professional or academic attainment.

“While those who decide the valid level of competence required don’t need to understand the entire process, they need to sign-off on the minimum level of evidence acceptable,” Linda explained. “This doesn’t need to be a perfect measurement. It merely needs to be sufficient to make a reliable decision and effect the necessary changes over time. So, taking each role in turn, create an action plan.”

“While those who decide the valid level of competence required don’t need to understand the entire process, they need to sign-off on the minimum level of evidence acceptable,” Linda explained. “This doesn’t need to be a perfect measurement. It merely needs to be sufficient to make a reliable decision and effect the necessary changes over time. So, taking each role in turn, create an action plan.”

To do so, you must:

•    Know what you’re measuring

•    Know the evidence you expect

•    Write the tasks to accumulate the evidence

•    Amalgamate the tasks into competency definitions
(statements) and competency frameworks 

Frameworks of competency definitions can vary – from a few tens of specific definitions to hundreds of definitions with extremely detailed requirements. Linda argues that neither approach is necessarily “wrong” but, whichever approach you take, it’s essential – for the framework to be adopted – that it’s the “right fit” for the organisation. If you’re using a competency management system that can pull frameworks from registers, ensure you have the capability to omit some items and add your own. You should also remember to base your competency framework needs only on evidence that, in all practicality, can be collected.

“Just because you see other organisations – such as large Government departments including, say, the US Department of Labor, having 384 statements for a job role doesn’t mean you have to apply all these in your organisation too,” said Linda. “This is especially true if any of these statements don’t result in a performance improvement. Many of the statements will not be relevant for your purpose.

“To help you determine the statements that will be relevant to your organisation’s job roles, there are several open registers of competency frameworks available. You can search these and find a basis from which to start.”   

Clarity is king. So, Linda advises, pilot your framework of competency definitions with a group of subject matter experts who already exceed the minimum required standard. This will highlight any concerns in understanding what’s required and provide you with feedback on areas for improvement. This is essential because, once things are “out in the wild”, understanding terms and expectations can be misconstrued. So, tackle any possible misunderstandings and misinterpretations at a very early stage.

Linda stresses that, “Creating the competency management process can find people trying to create something that will last, unaltered, for many years. So, they aim for scale. This is often where problems arise. Experience shows it’s best to start small and be prepared to add-on or scale-up over time. Competency management should be a living process, engaging in continual and constant improvement. Like any other quality process, it must be reviewed, expanded or adapted as required. Scale will come naturally. So, it’s a sensible strategy to get started with pilots rather than wait for a big transition.”

In Linda’s view, from all the thinking, questioning, and experimenting as well as evidence-gathering, you should now have an agreed understanding of what’s to be achieved. This needs to be shared across your organisation to help others understand the scope of the competency process. From the boardroom and senior team to the individual contributors, the process must be agreed with people who have influence.

In Linda’s view, it helps if you determine:

•    What’s the key driver for applying competency management?

•    How’s the organisation expecting to achieve it?

•    Who’re the champions who are going to support the people?

•    Who’re all the people involved in this process and what evidence are
they able to achieve in their day-to-day role?

•    What kind of reporting will be useful to track evidence and
improvement?

Leaders in organisations may see how competency management will bring improvements and provide confidence in capability but they need to know that it’s worth the effort. To convince them, Linda believes, you must:

•    Show why building a culture of competency should be a part of your
performance improvement strategy.

•    Explain strategies and tips to help identify evidence.

•    Generate activities to build an environment of competency and drive
behaviour change.

•    Adopt an integrated learning and performance approach to transform
and enhance your current performance delivery model.

Importantly:

•    Organisation performance will fail to improve if the workforce doesn’t contain people who’ll champion the cause of competence.

•    Competency management will help you measure culture change and organizational improvement.

•    Avoid the disconnect between competency definitions and a demonstration of organisational activities.

•    Stop competency being merely a tick-box exercise.

•    The whole competency management issue is complicated by the appearance of new skills that people need to master.

In Linda’s view, “While many leaders believe their organisations use competency processes as useful tools, those organisations’ behaviour reflects the opposite. This is because these processes overwhelm the staff involved with frameworks requiring hundreds of tasks to be evidenced in minute detail. By contrast, the most effective way to instil a culture of competency is to integrate it as part of a comprehensive recruitment, learning and training strategy. Additionally, any learning or training must be presented in an engaging and immersive format and designed to achieve the required change in thinking or action, as well as creating the evidence that matters.”

Author biography

Bob Little PR’s Specialist Re-imaginer, Bob Little is a UK-based writer, commentator and publicist, specializing in the corporate learning industry. Introduced to the corporate online learning technologies industry in May 1990, Bob now works globally. He advises organizations, including the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Learning Solutions, which creates solutions aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity to help organizat

Building a culture of compliance is a core part of any modern learning and development (L&D) strategy but, believes Linda Steedman, Chair of eCom Learning Solutions, one of the UK’s leading digital learning and assessment specialists, it’s important to agree the terminology – and its meaning – that your organisation will use.

Linda explained, “Many words – such as ‘attainment’, or even ‘competence’ and ‘competent’ – have similar meanings but can be construed differently. Using different terms across systems, processes, teams, and departments can cause confusion. Understanding what you deem to be the minimum level of evidence your organisation is willing to accept to have a person identified as competent is key to ensuring that your competency definitions and resulting framework will be successful.”

Linda advises that, when writing competency definitions, first determine the evidence required. Create a list of the evidence that will determine if a person meets the requirements that someone in their role/learning needs to achieve. Then figure out how they’ll acquire this evidence by identifying tasks, activities, and sets of knowledge in their day-to-day activities. Ask:

•   How would a person practice these activities to
improve their performance?

•    What programs, policies, and procedures are involved
in generating evidence?

•    Are there any pre-determined standards or
accreditation body, legal or government regulations
that apply?

Understanding how to measure 21^st century skills performance has become a hot topic since we now understand how important psychological safety is for hybrid working and collaborating with others.  As technology takes on repetitive tasks, people are more likely to work in teams requiring 21^st century skills such as cooperation, collaboration, communications, and so on. These are becoming known as transferable skills as they can be used in most job roles.

“It’s not unusual these days for people to work on projects in small teams,” said Linda. “In these cases, individual measures are important to quantify because each person makes a big difference to how the project progresses. Evidence is required for two types of measures to get a full picture of the person’s contribution: functional skills and transferable skills. Functional skills are where knowledge and technical skills are assessed by collecting evidence of an individual’s level of capability. Transferable skills are where behaviors and attitudes are evident. This can be more complex – as people have good days and bad days – so using evidence from a single instance might be unfair. As with all competencies, working out what’s expected is key to understanding what type of evidence you’re willing to accept.” 

According to Linda, one way to assess these factors is by using the Talent Transformation Pyramid. This holistic model offers a shared vocabulary for discussing the 12 factors that support competencies. It provides a means of evaluating individuals, teams, and organizations to assess their current performance, identify appropriate interventions and determine their readiness for the world of work. Working with this model offers clarity and direction for diagnosing skills deficits, harvesting actionable evidence, improving performance, and optimising organisational effectiveness.



In Linda’s view, the main questions to consider for a job role are:

•       What learning experiences are, or need to be made, available?

•       Have you expressed the set of values you expect the person to aim to meet?

•       Are your processes of review or feedback open and transparent?

•       Are individuals prepared to accept and understand expressed emotions?

•       Do your support structures underpin your workplace culture?

•       Do your support structures support psychological safety?

•       Do your reviews identify where complex ideas, planning, reasoning, problem solving and abstract thinking are taking place?

Answering these questions helps identify when and how evidence can be gathered. Focusing on the evidence to be collected can help you discard old practices that don’t provide value and will encourage new, simpler methods that focus on getting results.

Credentials – usually offered by an accrediting body – provide formal recognition of evidence for completing a set of tasks relating to knowledge, skills, abilities and/or behaviours. Informal and formal micro-credentials are becoming popular and can be taken as evidence that a person has met an agreed and approved standard. This might be recognized by a digital badge or in-house certificate for completing a course, or passing a test, signed-off by a qualified individual.

Linda explained that, during the process of tracking individuals’ competence, multiple pieces of evidence will be collected to establish and demonstrate performance. One piece of evidence may be mapped to many competency definitions or their associated individual tasks. Types of evidence are:

•       Observations

•       Witness testimony

•       Certifications

•       Credentials

•       Performance tests

•       Reports

•       Publications

•       Feedback

•       Self-generated notes, blog posts.

•       Customer and employee satisfaction surveys,
360 questionnaires

•       Financial and production data

•       Safety records

“It’s important to create competency definitions and competency frameworks that give reliable results every time,” said Linda. “Your organisation must be confident that using the framework is not just a ‘tick-box’ exercise that brings no value to anyone.”

Once you’ve established a reliable process to gather evidence of competency, you can turn to the rest of the competency framework. This is covered in the next article (“Making a Framework for Competency”).

Author biography

Bob Little PR’s Specialist Re-imaginer, Bob Little is a UK-based writer, commentator and publicist, specializing in the corporate learning industry. Introduced to the corporate online learning technologies industry in May 1990, Bob now works globally. He advises organizations including the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Learning Solutions, which creates solutions aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity to help organizations achieve their goals.

As we know from our general experience as well as our work, some workplace institutions seem to place a low priority on workforce competency. As their customers, from time to time we experience their incompetence and inefficiency – and we wonder how and why these institutions can function in such an inefficient, unproductive and unhelpful way. In ‘the old days’ there were such things as ‘jobs for life’ regardless of the worker’s competence level. People were given jobs because members of their family worked for those organisations and ‘put in a good word’ for them, regardless of their aptitude for the job they were to do. Moreover, people who were unquestionably incompetent were allowed to keep their jobs because “one day, you’ll want someone to allow you to keep a job when you’re ‘past it’”.

Competency-based work standards began to be introduced in the UK from the late 1970s. Workers then needed ‘certificates of competence’ – initially based on ‘grandfather rights’ but later based on assessments. That idea has now permeated most crafts and professions.

Competency – along with ideas about what constitutes competency and how it can be measured and assessed – change with time, technology and fashion. New generations entering the workplace need to understand and accept the rationale for building a competent workforce in all areas of the economy. The accepted competency standards for any given job continue to be refined, as working conventions, technologies and attitudes develop. This provides the rationale for much of the training / learning and development activities that relate to the modern workplace.

In addition to on-going legislation and other regulations requiring workers to prove their competence, the principal justification for all this is ‘safety’. Training for, assessing and ensuring competence should make life safer – for workers and the customers they serve. Competent workers should also be more productive and efficient. In turn, this should benefit the business for which they work and provide value for the organisation’s stakeholders. The argument is that it’s vital for the entire staff of every organisation to be (demonstrably) competent because that benefits the organisation, its customers and, thereby, the whole economy.

Nowhere is this more important than in the energy industry – not least because this industry is currently at the forefront of the world’s climate change debate and it forms a hugely significant part of the global economy. It includes non-renewable forms of energy, such as petroleum products and oil, natural gas, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and nuclear, as well as renewable energy via hydropower, biofuels such as ethanol, wind power and solar power. The oil and gas drilling industry alone affects the life of every person on the planet and comprises some 3.8% of the global economy, with revenues of some $3.3 trillion in 2019. Add to that the renewables sector, which is growing strongly in the wake of the climate change debate as well as other world issues, and it becomes obvious that the energy industry needs a constantly competent workforce – from the points of view of safety (for its workers and all of us on the planet), efficiency and productivity.

Susan Gearing, a senior energy sector specialist with eCom Learning Solutions (https://www.ecomlearningsolutions.com/), a leading independent provider of digital learning and assessment to key energy industry players, comments that, “Those in the energy sector have an energy transition document and an energy transition target to make their activities more environmentally friendly. The change projects, new processes and procedures that will come from this will create a plethora of learning. eCom aims to support the industry to get that right first time and put employee learning and development front and centre of those projects.”

Among eCom’s recent and on-going energy-related projects are a major eAssessment programme, in conjunction with the International Well Control Forum (IWCF), the only independent body focused on oil and gas well control planning and accreditation. Introduced at the end of 2016, this programme has already assessed some 30,000 candidates online. The online assessments, which include both knowledge and practical elements, are available in 17 languages.

According to eCom’s Managing Director, Wendy Edie, “The programme – known as FORUM and delivered via eCom’s assessment management platform, eNetAssess – allows invigilators to monitor student progress, automatically mark online tests, record practical assessments, manage and verify certificates, as well as deal with question authoring and multiple translation versions. FORUM also provides IWCF administrators, centres, assessors and invigilators with a single platform for reviewing candidate details – and enables external users to authenticate and check the validity of a certificate.

In addition, FORUM issues successful candidates with electronic certification (eCerts) – significantly reducing waiting times for candidates to get their qualifications.”
eCom has also helped Operations Geoscience International Competency Assessment (OGICA), a UK-registered, not-for-profit collective of experienced energy industry professionals, to create an online self-assessment tool to benchmark individuals’ skills and identify skills gaps within the international operational geoscience community, notably for those working operationally in upstream oil and gas geoscience. OGICA’s Christine Telford commented, “Historically, employers and professional organisations appraise practitioners’ abilities based on education, references, continuing professional development (CPD) and work experience, together with organisational membership. While these are important components of a Competency Management System (CMS), they don’t validate the proficiency for the practitioner to work to a recognised standard.”

eCom’s work in the renewables sector includes developing bespoke eLearning materials to help make offshore wind turbine maintenance technicians’ jobs safer – especially when they are working in rough seas. eCom has researched and produced these eLearning materials for the engineering innovator, Pict Offshore – part-owned by Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer.

To increase adoption of its laser-guided, active heave-compensated personnel hoist, called the Get Up Safe (GUS) system, Pict wanted its customers around the world to have a cost-effective way to realise the system’s benefits as quickly as possible. The GUS system’s applications now include it being deployed off the North-east US coast – at the 132-megawatt (MW) South Fork Wind offshore wind farm, as well as at the Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects. This trio of offshore wind farms are producing a total capacity of some 1.8 gigawatts (GW).

“This initial training needs to be delivered consistently every time and cover important safety information, for both normal and emergency situations,” explained Susan Gearing. “Pict also wanted to include an end-of-training assessment to check each user had assimilated the information and was ready to progress to practical training.”

Without assessment materials, no one could objectively identify workers’ competency levels. Without learning and development materials, achieving job and professional competency would take longer, be more haphazard and offer more opportunities for making potentially costly mistakes along the way. Moreover, making these materials and assessments available digitally means they can be accessed almost anywhere, at any time as well as adapted for different cultures and made available in a wide range of languages. Furthermore, these materials’ digital nature means organisations and their workers will always access the materials’ most up-to-date versions.

Worker competency is an increasingly important aspect of working life but, as technology develops and the time to achieve competency contracts, so technology – in the form of digitally delivered learning materials and assessments – enables these demands to be met. It’s up to organisations and their workforces to embrace the concept of competency and take advantage of digitally-delivered aids to competence produced by competent, professional organisations.

Author biography

Bob Little PR’s Specialist Re-imaginer, Bob Little is a UK-based writer, commentator and publicist, specialising in the corporate learning industry. Introduced to the corporate online learning technologies industry in May 1990, Bob now works globally and his work is published around the world. He advises and helps promote organisations including the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Learning Solutions, which creates solutions aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity to help organisations achieve their goals.

In particular, technology-delivered assessment – eAssessment – offers organisations cost savings, greater convenience and ease of marking compared with a traditional paper-based assessments. Moreover, in addition to speeding up qualification-awarding process, eAssessment can be less open to manipulation – making it more reliable and trustworthy in terms of regulatory and compliance issues.

According to Linda Steedman, CEO of the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland, organisations that use eAssessment can benefit in ten ways:

1. Administration is reduced. Before the exam, eAssessment saves time on printing and distributing exam documentation. Relevant information can be sent via email and, depending on the question types used, L&D professionals don’t need to spend hours marking papers and coordinating the delivery of results. Furthermore, an eAssessment solution which includes digital micro-credentialing – where digital ‘badges’ are issued to recognise skills and knowledge gained – avoids logistical challenges involved with issuing paper certificates. For security, micro-credentials include a unique code and meta-data allowing accredited centres, potential employers, organisations and individuals to confirm the credentials are valid and identify the credential-issuing organisation.
2. Trainers can develop candidates’ competency. With eAssessment, L&D professionals can spend longer developing a candidate’s future skills because they spend less time preparing and marking exams. Most modern assessment systems – including eCom Scotland’s eNetAssess – allow developers to create a large question bank which can be set so every candidate gets a random selection of questions. This helps minimise question order bias and improve the assessment’s overall quality. Question bank compilers can work collaboratively, regardless of where they are in the world, to update or add questions to keep the question bank fresh and relevant.
3. Tools to create accessible assessments. Using eAssessments, L&D professionals can make assessments accessible – for example, by changing background color or font size. The platform can be programmed to allocate extra time to specific candidates, if required. Tools such as navigation features and screen readers can be used to aid understanding along with other tools, such as voice recognition, that help with question answering. Not limited to the assessment stage, these tools can be applied to the digital learning materials made available before the eAssessment is taken. These changes in tutor practice and IT infrastructure can enhance – and transform – the way a person learns.
4. Reporting. Using eAssessment gives organisations access to quick, clear reports on each candidate’s progress, identifying areas of strength and areas for further learning. L&D professionals can generate reports on how questions are being answered – to spot questions that may need changing, because they are too easy or difficult. Reports can be generated on assessment completion rates across the organisation and by department – to provide accurate, up-to-date reports for compliance/ regulatory purposes.
5. Assessment becomes eco-friendly. Going paperless – via eAssessment – eliminates printing and transporting exam-related papers. There’s less need to travel to and from exam locations – so organisations’ and candidates’ carbon footprints are greatly reduced.
6. Candidates get direct, immediate feedback. Many professionals believe that feedback is most effective when delivered as soon as possible after both formative and summative assessments. Automatic marking reduces marking time. In some cases, results can be delivered to candidates on the day of the assessment. This helps L&D professionals assess large numbers of candidates more easily. It also allows candidates to re-book immediately any tests they haven’t passed. This can be particularly helpful where compliance/regulatory issues are concerned.
7. Taking exams digitally is now preferred. Globally, people are increasingly accustomed to using technology. Using technological devices as part of our daily lives, both at work and leisure, means we’re familiar with this way of working and are, arguably, now more comfortable interacting via technology than with paper and pen. eAssessments could even make candidates more relaxed and engaged when taking exams.
8. Increased security. While managing and maintaining the security and safety of traditional exam paperwork can be stressful, many L&D professionals are sceptical about ensuring security with eAssessments. The best of todays’ eAssessment platforms – including eNetAssess – store all data safely and securely. For example, eNetAssess prevents candidates navigating to other websites, closing down the browser or opening any applications. It uses the latest encryption techniques and employs new security tools as they become available.
9. Offering flexibility, scalability and worldwide reach. Easily scaled to meet the needs of any size of organisation, eAssessments enable candidates, regardless of location, to take exams via mobile phone, tablet or PC. So, candidates can use the most convenient device for them or one that best suits the assessment type. Moreover, some eAssessment platforms, including eNetAssess, offer a secure offline option, enabling testing centres with internet connectivity issues to offer the same eAssessment experience as those using online assessment.
10. Notable cost savings. According to eCom Scotland’s calculations, switching to eAssessment can reduce costs by up to 43 per cent. Traditionally, key areas of assessment that incur cost are:
    • Creation -Test design, item development and subject matter experts’ travel expenses.
    • Production –Printing, collating, posting papers and handling these papers at the testing centre.
    • Delivery -Venue and equipment hire, security, special needs adaptation, and posting papers to the test administrators’ headquarters.
    • Invigilator and Administration –Invigilators’ and test administrators’ costs.
    • Travel for quality assurance/site audit -Hotel costs, subsistence and travel.
    • Marking and scoring -Posting papers to the markers; marking assessments; posting papers from markers to administration centres, and post-marking moderation activity.
    • Certification -Certificate creation and posting.

“In addition,” believes Linda Steedman, “eAssessment can encourage active learning, especially when the assessment delivery is innovative and engaging. Using visuals and audio can help candidates focus on the exam subject matter, rather than looking at a long string of words, page after page – which can strain the brain. Content can have a variety of question types, making it easier to suit all types of assessment needs.”

By Bob Little

Author biography
Bob Little is a UK-based writer, commentator and publicist, specialising in the corporate learning industry. Introduced to the corporate online learning technologies industry in May 1990, Bob now works globally, advising and helping promote organisations including the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland, which creates solutions aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity to help organisations achieve their goals.

Now there is, thanks to collaboration between eCom Scotland – the digital learning and assessment specialist with offices in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Athens, Georgia, in the USA – and Operations Geoscience International Competency Assessment (OGICA). The result of this collaboration is an online assessment tool – powered by eCom’s online assessment system, eNetAssess – which, among other things, allows individuals to benchmark their skills.

Wendy Edie, eCom’s Managing Director, commented, “Given the international nature of the oil and gas sector and the 24-hour nature of its work, OGICA needed a digital solution that candidates could access at any time, from any location. The tool eCom developed is helping to demonstrably increase the standard of professionalism in these roles. OGICA supplied the industry-focused expertise in developing the tool’s content and this is backed by eCom’s many years’ experience in developing eAssessment systems.

“Using the tool, operational geoscientists can assess themselves against the skills framework – via a randomised series of multiple-choice questions,” she continued. “As well as enabling users to progress to competency management systems relevant to their organisation, the tool also identifies any industry-related knowledge and skills gaps they have – to help with their continuing professional development (CPD) and on-going lifelong learning”. 

In addition to OGICA engaging with several major international operators who are currently exploring how the framework can support their activities, one major oil and gas company is now using the framework, in-house, in the Middle East. 

“The United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia – the three largest global producers of oil – produced some 33m barrels of oil per day in 2019, which is some 54% of total world production,” Wendy explained. “We’re confident of developing the market for this tool, particularly among the world’s top oil and gas producers because it provides an objective assessment of these key professionals’ knowledge and skills”.

Taking a strategic view of the oil and gas sector, eCom’s External Relations Director, Helen Robertson, observed, “Being such a safety-conscious, highly-regulated industry, organisations in the gas industry are missing out if they don’t take advantage of the benefits of innovative learning and assessment technologies – including virtual reality (VR) – to develop their workforce’s knowledge, skills and competence faster, more effectively and more cost-efficiently. Moreover, those who suffer most from this overly-traditional approach to corporate learning, development and assessment are the industry’s customers – the public.

“For example, as eCom knows from first-hand experience, many industries which also place great emphasis on safety are using VR – including eCom’s Cloud-based VR authoring tool, eNetReality – to develop their workforce’s competency in a safe learning environment. This includes using online learning materials and objective assessments which can be delivered on any device – from immersive headsets to mobile devices and desktop computer.”

Helen Robertson’s eCom colleague, the Learning Technologies Specialist, Emma Dickson said, “The use of online videoconferencing tools is playing a big role in the ‘new normal’ for remote observational assessments – often because organisations now see both time and cost saving efficiencies with the removal of travel from the assessment process. The pervasive use of mobile devices has allowed online observational assessment to become a reality and organisations are inventing new ways to use this delivery model. Our experience is where assessors, typically, use a mobile device to interact with the candidates.

“Organisations then get an immediate view of all assessment taking place and can see how each assessment group is performing. They can set up global marking schemes, independent of assessors, that provide scores on selected criteria to produce standardised, fairer results across defined target groups.”

In Helen Robertson’s view, “Investing in digital technologies creates efficiencies necessary for long-term, sustainable growth in a new energy world. Relying on technology to keep accurate training records helps with compliance and contributes to an increase in employee safety. Moreover, it reduces costs and ‘lost time’, improves time-to-market, maintains workers’ credentials and increases safety – for workers and their customers.”

By Bob Little

Bob Little is a UK-based writer, commentator and publicist, specialising in the corporate learning industry. Introduced to the corporate online learning technologies industry in May 1990, Bob now works globally, advising and helping promote organisations including the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland, which creates solutions aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity to help organisations achieve their goals.