It’s a question I’m frequently asked: “What is the most important part of designing a successful employee learning program?” The answer is strategic learning design: understanding the learner’s real workplace experience before you design the learning.
Years of experience have made me a strong believer in the value of immersive experience in the learner’s world. All too often, organizations design learning and development based on the assumption that they fully understand the learner’s world. But that is often not the case.
Typically, organizations understand business objectives and performance gaps. Usually, there is a list of competencies, compliance requirements, safety protocols, or team behaviours they want to improve.
No question, these are all essential elements of a successful learning program. But, in and of themselves, they won’t guarantee success if they don’t account for an employee’s daily experience doing the work. Improving that daily experience is key to successful training and improving Canadian productivity.
Looking for Answers? You’ll Find Them in The Workplace.
As learning designers, our overriding objective is to gain insight into the learner’s workplace reality. Some of our insights come from executive teams. Some from subject matter experts. And some from key performance indicators.
But nothing compares to the insights that come from standing beside the learner while the work is in progress. Our approach is strategic learning design. Workplace immersion is essential to understanding the learner’s reality before we build the learning.
We invest in observing what employees do, listening to how they think, and identifying the gaps where better skills, judgment, tools, or support can improve performance.
This is the stage at which you need to ask strategic questions:
- What pressures are learners facing?
- Where do they get stuck?
- What are the shortcuts or informal workarounds that enhance or hinder performance?
- What does “good” look like in the real world?
Here are just a few examples of how Redwood ensures our strategic approach to learner needs is always on point:
Strategic Learning Design that’s Dialled In
A major telecommunications provider approached Redwood to help improve sales performance on the showroom floor. It was a challenge that was right up our alley! We had our learning designers work with the client’s sales team for a week, selling phones. The result was a much deeper level of insight into the real-world sales experience. And a boost in sales performance resulting from the ensuing sales training we delivered.
Learning and Development that Wears a Hard Hat
A national energy provider chose Redwood to enhance field workers’ job safety awareness. Our learning designers hit the road to job-shadow crews. The experience was essential to understanding the pressures of balancing safety, technical judgment, customer communication, equipment, and scheduling. As a result, we were able to design training that was practical, scenario-based, and addressed real issues from a knowledgeable, authentic perspective.
Workplace Learning that Snags Scammers
When a Canadian financial institution needed to address fraud risk across its operations, the instinct could have been to build a course about fraud. Instead, Redwood started by getting close to the people actually doing the work — the fraud early warning team, the inbound fraud intake staff, and the investigators piecing together cases after the fact. What emerged from that discovery was training grounded in the daily decisions those employees face, with success measured not by completion rates but by actual reductions in fraud incidents. You can read more about Redwood’s guidance on fraud prevention in my previous blog.
Strategic Learning Design that’s Full Bodied
Recently, a liquor control board brought Redwood in to redesign its product-knowledge eLearning for fixed-term seasonal employees. Getting that redesign right meant understanding the learner’s retail experience: what questions customers ask, what a new employee can realistically retain in their first few weeks, and where the gap between “knowing the content” and “being useful on the floor” actually lives. The result was a course stripped down to what genuinely matters for that learner in that moment.
Workplace Training that Rises to the Occasion
A national grocer needed to develop training to ensure top-notch consistency and quality in store-baked bread. We were excited to don our baker’s aprons and dive right in to fully understand the day-to-day challenges of an in-store bakery. With the help of subject matter experts, we quickly identified knowledge and process gaps. That insight was critical to developing a learning program that measurably improved both consistency and quality.
Learning Design for the Real World Wins Every Time
As learning developers, we come in knowing that we’re not experts in someone else’s job. Our expertise is in knowing how people learn. Employees bring expertise in how the work gets done. As I’ve seen countless times, the learning magic happens when those two types of expertise combine!
In future articles, I will share how Redwood’s strategic learning approach guides our approach to course production, delivery, and ongoing assessment. Stay tuned!