In today’s reality of world-wide interaction and commerce, the need for effective global learning initiatives has become increasingly important. As organizations expand their reach further and further into new locations, it is crucial for employees of diverse cultural contexts to receive adequate training. And with a recent increase in immigration, even local organizations are seeing a greater diversity of employees. A varied audience certainly poses a challenge for L&D teams who need learning materials that are both relevant as well as affordable. When it comes to global learning, finding stability between these and other competing forces is essential. This includes balancing global needs with local needs, mitigating risks that are probable and damaging, and knowing when to create specialized learning experiences as opposed to more general ones.
Create Adaptable and Relevant Content
It is no secret that the key to creating content that fits a global audience is to make it adaptable. Remove the idioms and slang. Find examples general enough to fit a wider variety of contexts. Don’t go too deep into specifics. Use images that accommodate the cultural nuances of a diverse audience. But, perhaps, you have experienced something of what we just described: materials for global learning that are too watered down and vague to be of much use. By designing content for a wider audience, we face the danger of appeasing everyone but making it relevant to no one. This is the tension we must balance. Is it possible for content to be both relevant and adaptable? Thankfully, the answer is Yes! But it is a bit of an art to pull it off.
Define Global vs. Local Needs
Another tension to reconcile when designing training is the pull between global needs and local needs. If your organization sees the difference between these two dichotomies, you are ahead of your competitors. It is easy to assume that all employees have the same perspective as the home office does, which is never true. The better this gap is understood and addressed, the more impact the final product will have.
As you hone your learning objectives, look at your learner profiles and consider the key differences between them as they each relate to your content areas. Common differences may be variations in location, language, and education. Are your learners using the same type of technology, equipment, raw materials, and terminology? Are they in the same markets? Roles, terminology, and processes should be carefully defined as they can vary from team to team.
Keep asking questions such as: What does this person need? What is blocking them from being successful? What is their priority? This research into your learners will take some effort and should involve representatives from each of your profiles. But, by developing a good relationship and getting insight from these various stakeholders, you will then be able to design materials that meet their needs so you will have a much greater assurance of success for your training initiatives.
After you have evaluated your learner profiles, look broader. Learning experiences should align with corporate policies, business objectives, and even local regulations. Hopefully, your corporate policies and standards have been built with both local and international laws in mind. But what can you do to reinforce your organization’s vision and values? How can your training impact business objectives either positively or negatively? If you can align your training goals with your organization’s goals, learning will be seen as more valuable to your organization.
Consider the Risks
After you have researched and understood the key needs of your various learner profiles and the needs of your company, it is time to assess the risks of not meeting those needs. Taking the perspective of the worst-case scenario, evaluate both the likelihood and the impact of failure. Mistranslations or misrepresentations in training materials can have severe consequences, particularly in sensitive fields such as the medical sector and safety-critical industries.
But safety is not the only risk to consider. For example, a three-person IT team who is not strong in English may merit the cost of translation for all their learning materials because of the potential impact to the company. Creating a localized scenario-based training game may make sense if the overseas call center has been underperforming and hurting the company’s reputation. Understanding and mitigating these risks is crucial for your global learning initiatives. Only then will you be able to make informed and wise decisions as to which components of your training must be highly targeted to a specific learner profile and which can be more general.
Include Local Resources
As has been discussed, the more tailored that training is to a specific audience, the more relevant and impactful it will be to them. Knowing when and how to incorporate local perspectives, experiences, and statistics into training materials is the key. This is where a map of your curriculum design becomes critical. Designate some content for general learning that your larger group of learners will relate to for gaining an introduction and overview to the topic. Then based on risk analysis, determine what profiles need more specific or in-depth learning with examples more finely tuned to them. Incorporating both general content used by your larger audience and specialized content created with a smaller group in mind allows you to have the best of both worlds. You will make widespread use of your learning materials while keeping them relevant.
How do you allow your targeted high-risk learners to dive into material that is specifically designed for them? Depending on the needs of your learners, you can create learning paths with a Choose Your Role or Region to take them down a separate track after viewing the general content. Or use Select to Learn More icons to tailor a certain objective to a specific group. Creating glossaries to standardize internal terminology, especially for translation, and a Resources tab to provide further information is also helpful. Finesse is needed to give each group of learners what they need without exposing them to too much of what they don’t. Realize that your words, design, graphics, sound effects and other elements, are all communicating concepts and ideas—so consider the total package to foster learner engagement.
Even with your content that is earmarked for general use, don’t be afraid to use some specific short examples from a targeted learner profile. By drawing on the experience of your diverse global population, content creators can design materials that are more representative of the larger organization. This gives the opportunity for your employees to gain a broader perspective of what is happening with other teams and improve their cultural sensitivity to develop the skills necessary to communicate within a diverse workforce.
So far, we have discussed how to balance the strain between content that is relevant and adaptable, global vs. local needs, mitigating risks that are probable and damaging, and content that is general vs. specialized. Finally, we will turn to balancing improvement vs. maintaining conventions.
Weigh Continuous Feedback and Improvement
Many organizations have a strong tendency to resist change and for good reason. A poor standard that is well adopted is better than a good standard that no one follows. Making an improvement can be a lengthy process. For the improvement to take root, it must become habit, and new habits are hard to form. We must counter the drive to adhere to convention with the need to adapt and evolve based on the specific needs of the diverse audience and the organization.
To do this, establish a communication mechanism accessible for all learners to give feedback about their learning experiences. Regularly assess the impact and effectiveness of global learning initiatives to make informed adjustments as needed. By evaluating and adjusting the learning materials and approaches, organizations can ensure that they remain impactful and relevant for varied learners. But be careful not to throw out orthodoxy just because something new is proposed. There is usually something of value to keep even as you reform your standard.
Mastering the art of global learning in the workplace requires finding cohesion between the various cultural, linguistic, and contextual factors that influence the learning process. By creating adaptable content, considering global and local needs, mitigating risks, incorporating local resources, enlisting stakeholders, fostering cultural intelligence, and evaluating and improving, organizations can design effective global learning initiatives. This balanced approach can ultimately lead to a more engaged and skilled workforce with improved intercultural communication and a greater appreciation for diversity.
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