E-Learning

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's be diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who have supported me through this journey. As a leader, we try to find different ways in order to work with our teams and get them to get the proper training necessary. One of the things that a lot of companies are looking at right now is e learning. So I wanted to have a discussion about this today, and I'm so lucky to have someone who has a lot of knowledge in this area. Her name is Tristan Sylvester. Now, Tristan Sylvester is the founder and driving force behind Inventio Learning Designs, LLC, a cutting edge e learning and instructional design firm based in Magnolia, Texas. Tristan's mastery of tools like articulate rise and storyline, combined with her love for exploring new technologies, establishes her as a dynamic force in the evolving instructional design landscape. With a blend of innovation and fervor, Tristan continuously explores avant garde avenues in e learning. Her strategic methodology ensures that every design not only captivates the learner, but also synergizes with over aching organizational objectives. Her portfolio is diverse, encompassing sectors from finance to medical, continuing education. Outside her vocational sphere, Tristan cherishes her life in Magnolia, Texas, alongside with her wife, two delightful dogs and cat. Welcome to the show, Tristan. It is so great to have you on today. [00:02:02] Speaker A: Thanks, Andrew. It's great to be here. [00:02:04] Speaker B: It's great to have you. How are things going in your neck of the woods? What's new? What's exciting? Tell us what's happening. [00:02:12] Speaker A: It's busy. Some companies do year end budget things and they start to analyze how much money they have left. And a good rule of thumb in the business world is if you don't use it, you lose it. The next year, your budget may not be as good. So right now I'm busy because a lot of companies are realizing they have money left to spend. So things are going well, but very busy. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Yes. So I'm guessing it's going to be like this probably till January, give or take. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the rule of thumb is they have to have the money at least earmarked before the end of the year. Doesn't mean the project necessarily has to be completed by the end of the year. So some of the longer ones might roll into February, but yeah, around the very first couple of months of the year, I'll start seeing a lot of. [00:02:57] Speaker B: This stuff wrap up and then January hit, and then it'll all start all over again. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Indeed, yes. [00:03:03] Speaker B: It's like a cycle of love when it comes to work, eh? [00:03:06] Speaker A: Yes, very much. [00:03:07] Speaker B: I'm glad to hear that things are going good. When you got lots of stuff going on, it's a good sign for business. I'm glad to hear that things are going well on your end. I do hope that you get to have a little bit of rest over the holidays, though. I think we all need it, especially around this time for sure. Before we begin, I always have a fun question to ask my guests to get things going. Are you ready for yours? [00:03:31] Speaker A: I guess so. Hit me. [00:03:33] Speaker B: So your question is, what is the most sensible thing you've ever heard someone say to you? [00:03:39] Speaker A: It might be a bit cliched, but it's something that I implement quite often in my life, and it's the work smarter, not harder. I've recently gotten into coding the last several years, and that's a big rule of thumb in coding, in the sense of you don't duplicate code over and over if you have to, or in your life. Instead of walking back and forth across the house to put laundry away, grab all of it at once and bring it working smarter, not harder. Finding ways to improve the workflow, whether that's actual work or even in your personal life. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I've heard many people tell me that as well in my lifetime. Exactly like you said, whether it's at work or helping people move from one home to another and lifting boxes, and people have something we can put boxes on so we can carry them. So I've heard that before. Yeah, let's work smarter, not harder. So I have heard that many times for sure. Thanks very much for having fun with me. I appreciate your quickness and your willingness to have fun. I just love those questions and start things off. I think it's a great way to get things going. Why don't we start off with you telling us a little bit about you and your story? [00:04:50] Speaker A: Okay. So I grew up and have been based in Texas for my entire life. And one thing that as I was preparing to be a guest on your podcast that I started really thinking about was what has my career journey of my life looked like and what has it all led me to? And when I started reflecting on the different jobs that I've had throughout my life, what I realized is every position I've held, whether it was junior high and high school, I coached dance and cheerleading college, I bartended in weighted tables briefly. After that, I worked in realty management, helping lease apartments. Then I was an educator for twelve years and now I do instructional design, but they're all service based and giving of yourself and interacting with people based jobs. And so that's just something that I realized really just fits my personality very well and is my approach to work that I tend to prefer is being in some sort of role that involves. [00:05:54] Speaker B: Service for me as a leader, I feel like leadership comes in different forms. So from what you've told me and your little bit of story of what you've done, you have been in a leadership role in different capacities throughout your life. And the one thing I notice in my dealings with you is that I'm going to say that you built rapport with everything that you've done. So that was probably what made you successful in everything that you did. [00:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And the decision to start my own business ultimately came out of when I left education, I was already working in instructional design part time and taking on just small part time contracts as I worked my way out of the classroom. And I realized after a while that cutting the middleman out, starting my own business, would really allow me more FaceTime with clients. And it's not that I don't still do some subcontracting opportunities, I do. But ultimately, a big piece of what was missing when I was subcontracting is I was just the grunt labor in that situation. And so I didn't have the opportunity to do those types of things and be a leader, build relationships and do any of that. If I was just the grunt, whoever I was working with was the person who was mostly interacting with the client. So that was part of the push for me to start my own business, was being able to develop those relationships further and work more directly with clients. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a huge believer on building rapport. I think it's super important. I think you're getting to know people. And a leader taught me once when I was first starting out working that if you're nice, people are be willing to buy from you or work with you. I've always kept that in my back pocket and I've always been someone who loves to build rapport and be genuine with people. And what you see is what you get from me, which is what I've always tried to do. So tonight, again, we're talking about elearning. So if we're thinking about the rise of elearning during COVID how did the shift to remote work during COVID-19 Highlight the benefits and challenges of self directed elearning for businesses? And also want to ask what ways has this shift changed the landscape of workplace learning? [00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So with COVID-19, I mean, elearning has been around for a long time, and it was used still pretty heavily prior to COVID. But a lot of companies, either those that weren't very tech savvy or didn't have their own learning management system, were still doing a lot of in person training, or there are some circumstances where elearning wasn't the appropriate avenue. But once shutdowns started to happen and people weren't entirely sure when they were going to be going back to the office, it really necessitated that shift to elearning. And in some ways, there were a lot of benefits to it. There's a lot of flexibility there. It's self directed, so people can find time within their own workday or their workflow to take it, versus whether we're talking about a virtual live class or we're talking about an actual in person class, those happen at a very specific time. It doesn't matter what else you have going on. And big benefit there was the ability to take it anytime, anywhere, at your own pace as well. And so there were some big benefits, and especially for some organizations that maybe weren't using elearning when they should have, there was really beneficial. The downside that exists, and that people don't want to talk about a whole lot, is that elearning isn't the appropriate solution for every training issue. And it doesn't matter how cool or how flashy of a course I make you, if this wasn't the right avenue, then you're still not going to get those results that you were looking for. And for a lot of these companies, it was a band aid situation versus really developing things that were going to be worthwhile and effective in the long term. And some other challenges, lack of social interaction, you don't have a chance to collaborate with others or discuss things. And then you also have the issue of digital literacy. For companies that weren't using eLearning, that suddenly shifted in the course of the pandemic. You may have employees that have zero clue how to use the learning management system or how to navigate these kinds of courses, and then they're stuck at home, frustrated, trying to figure it out. By the time they get it working, they don't really care what the course has to say. So there were a lot of ups and downs that were revealed. And for those that had been working in instructional design prior to that, we knew what the limitations and benefits are that exist within elearning. But COVID-19 really highlighted those. And I think, post COVID, we're still seeing a lot of companies wanting the shiny new toy. They want the coolest, flashiest elearning you can make. And sometimes it's the appropriate solution, sometimes it's not. But we are seeing a lot heavier push towards elearning, which is fine for me. That's what I do. But oftentimes I'll have to tell clients, I don't think this is the right avenue, or, I don't think that for this particular skill or for this particular training, it's the appropriate modality to use. [00:11:09] Speaker B: When you mentioned flexibility, I could see a situation where companies are given these elearning courses for employees to do, especially maybe during the workday, but then they also have their tasks and stuff they need to finish throughout the day. So I could see some companies, I don't know, maybe have that time where they've set aside, okay, you're going to do your elearning. And then some companies may be wanting to say, okay, it's online. You could do it anytime, even like when you're at home or on the weekends. But I believe with COVID a lot of people have been pushed away. I feel like before COVID people were like, yeah, sure, no problem. I'll do it in the evening after supper, or I'll do it on a Saturday. Now, as it's COVID, people are a little bit more family orientated and they want to spend more time with their families. So they're like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm doing this during my office hours, or I'm not doing it because I'm not doing it on the weekend or in the evening. [00:12:13] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. And as they should, this is a whole nother topic that we could probably do a whole episode on as well. But we're really seeing a shift in the workplace in the sense of people are no longer willing to be taken advantage of. When wealth disparity is as bad as it's gotten globally, you start to notice, like, no, your company is making billions of dollars and your salary pays me for these hours and this much work. And so the flexibility for me is really like, personally, workflow is a huge thing. And so if I'm in the middle of something, heads down, and I want to focus on it, I turn all my notifications off. I turn off slack. I turn off Microsoft Teams, everything that could notify me or distract me, I turn off. The flexibility of an e learning is the sense that if I'm in the workflow instead of having to stop because it was assigned at a specific time class, I can just stop and then do that elearning once I'm done. [00:13:08] Speaker B: I love the flexibility as well. When I went back to school and I took my HR certificate, I did it elearning. I did it online. And what I loved about it is that I could do my course in the evenings or on the weekends. I could start something and I could save the spot and I could go back in and it would save where I was last or where I've read last. So that was the convenient part that I loved it compared to finishing work and then going to a class at a college or a university in the evening and getting home at ten, there was that flexibility. Like, okay, I'll do about an hour tonight. So I love when you said flexibility for sure. So when we're talking about balancing elearning modalities, given the diverse needs of employees and organizations, how do you determine when self directed elearning is inappropriate and when other training modules might be more effective? Could you share some examples of how the balance has been managed in your projects? [00:14:10] Speaker A: For sure, there's different modalities in terms of both within elearning itself, like what types of elearning you're going to create, but also different training modalities. As I mentioned, there's of course, the traditional in person class, the variant on that is doing a virtual version of that. And then there's elearning. There's micro learning. So there's a lot of different modalities that you can use for training employees and realistically, suitability kind of boils down to a couple of factors. The first being, can they reasonably understand and practice this skill or this information that we're trying to convey to them? If the answer to that is that it can't be done in a digital format, then elearning isn't the right modality. And like I said, I've had to mention to clients before that, barking up the wrong tree in that situation. And you see this a lot with hands on type professions. Teaching a nurse how to do an IV over an elearning, probably not the best solution. Now, you could always do something like a blended solution where maybe you give them some background, talk about the types of equipment that you're going to need, allow them to practice virtually first. But of course, you would want your nurse to learn how to do an IV in an actual real world situation, whether it's on a person or a fake limb or what have you. But that's a big determination is practicing, and that's, of course, an extreme example, but a real world one that I can give you is a client. I can't say too much because they're in DA, but client basically has a call center where they have customer service calls. And we're experiencing some issues with very poor customer feedback. And they looked at what was going on and realized that they didn't think they were doing enough training wise, and they wanted to do situation. And when we talked more about it, and I looked into kind of the analysis that they had done, they had a handful of people that were doing excellently, and then they had a handful of people that were not. And so there is always the argument that some people are just naturally better at relational type things. But we ended up coming to conclusion after we talked about it, of instead of doing an elearning, making it an in person instructor led training and having them have the ability to practice on each other, doing a little bit of role playing customer and call center employee kind of situation, and then taking those people who were already excellent at it and allowing them to coach and work with those who weren't. And so there's a lot of factors that you look at, but is it something that you could practice virtually? If the answer is yes, then elearning is fine. If the answer is no, then that's not the right modality. [00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And I could see what you were talking before about people learning differently. I could see some people like, okay, I can do this elearning class, but then some people, maybe they have a short memory, so going through it, maybe they don't remember in the beginning or it's easier for them, like you said, to do it. Maybe in class where there's a bunch of people where they can have discussions, type things. So I like the fact that there's different options and trying to figure it out. It sounds like elearning has come a long way, for sure. [00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And then within elearning, of course, there's a lot of different ways that you can take an elearning. You can have an elearning that has a lot of interactive videos. You can have elearnings that have what's called branching scenarios, where, I don't know if you remember this, the choose your own adventure books, right? Where you would essentially at the bottom of a page, it'd be like, do you chase the goblin down the road? Or do you hide? If you hide, turn to page, whatever. Branching scenarios are similar to that, where they're interacting with a situation and then they make a choice, and depending upon that choice, they're led down different pathways. This is an example of giving people an opportunity to practice something and still being effective in an elearning. So there's also different kind of avenues that you can take elearning itself depending on what your goals are and what you're really trying to convey. But ultimately, whether we're talking about elearning, instructor led training, virtual training, when we're talking about what's going to give you the most return on investment or what's going to get you those results you were looking for, just giving people information isn't enough. You have to allow them to do something with that information. [00:18:36] Speaker B: So if we talk about strategic integration of learning in your experience, how can businesses strategically integrate elearning into their overall training and development plans, especially in the post COVID area? And what are the key considerations HR professionals should keep in mind? [00:18:57] Speaker A: So we'll start backwards. First, I think the considerations that you always have to start with if you're within HR and the kinds of questions that are going to be the first ones out of my mouth when I meet prospective clients, is be very clear on what your business goals are. What is it that you're looking to accomplish? What type of learner am I interacting with and what are their specific needs? Oftentimes this could be technology based. Are we talking to a workforce that's out and about, like maybe delivery drivers? So they might be doing this on a tablet or a mobile device, or are we talking about people that are in an office situation and we know that they're probably going to be using a desktop computer. Accessibility is another big thing. Do you have employees that need accessible learning? The answer should always be yes. To be clear, everything should be accessible. Making things accessible is good for everyone. But are you required to meet that compliance? And usually this applies to organizations that are either affiliated with government entities or take funds from the government. They're required to be compliant. But do you know what those requirements are for your business specifically? And then how do you want to go about tracking effectiveness? Do you do that right now? Do you have a way to tell me how effective whatever you have is? A lot of clients I meet will throw a PowerPoint my way and be like, can you turn this into an elearning? Yes, but it's not going to be any better than what you have. And do you know how effective the PowerPoint that you gave was? How did you measure that effectiveness? And so I usually will start by asking those really big three what are your business goals? What are the needs of your learner and what is the way that you use to track the efficacy of any of the training that you've given? And if they don't have those answers right away, it's not that I necessarily won't work with them. And oftentimes I'll do the needs analysis where I interview some learners, talk to people within departments, look at some data, if they have any, and I can help them along with that process. But at least considering those things before we even start talking about how you're going to integrate a new method of learning into your business is really vital. So from my end, why is it really important to integrate elearning as a long term strategy? Because it's not going anywhere. Firstly, it's a preferred methodology. You see a lot of people moving to more hybrid or remote work environments and that is one way that you can deploy training across geographical wide areas, but of course across different time zones when we're talking about different types of learners. And one thing that really great about elearning is with the technology we have nowadays. And I could go down this whole rabbit hole where I talk about X API, but essentially there's ways that we can actually track more than just did they answer the multiple choice questions at the end correctly. We can actually store data long term on our learners and find out who does what well and use that data to later suggest what types of courses they should take and get a more holistic view of people. So it is going to be something that businesses should consider, how they're going to integrate it. It doesn't have to be everything all at once, but it's thinking about where are the areas where this is going to make the most difference and probably apply to the most people, and then start thinking about how that all aligns with their business goals, learner needs and how they're going to track the effectiveness of it. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Do you find that companies struggle with that? Do you find it when you were saying they may need to do a needs analysis, do you find that they struggle with a figuring out how to do a needs analysis or why is it important to do one? [00:22:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I've had clients where the first time that the word came out of my mouth was the first time they ever heard it. And I do have some things that I've developed that I use along with clients, whether they are aware of it or not, just my preferred templates. And so if they're not as experienced with what a needs analysis entails, I go through it with them. Talk about what information really needs to be gathered, who should be providing that information. That's vital as well. If we're talking about, we can go back to my call center example. We're talking about the people that are answering your phones initially. So not the I want to speak to your boss or whatever, but the people that are the call center, then they're the people we should be talking to. Talking to their supervisor isn't going to give us a good view of what the needs are of their call center employees. And really talking through how you go about that, who you should be approaching and specifically what you should be asking both. And I like to always make sure that we include, if we're talking about maybe trying to improve something, talking to both your low and high performers and really looking at what is it that they're doing differently. And oftentimes a lot of people are like, because maybe they have more experience, but that's not always the case. [00:24:03] Speaker B: No, it's not for sure. I love all that. I think that's very important. I love that you do a needs analysis beforehand. I love that you speak to the proper channels. I talk to a lot of leaders, and that's what a lot of people in the workplace say, is that, oh, they want to put this process in, or they want to put this in, but they've talked to the higher up or the leaders, but they haven't talked to the actual people who are actually doing the processes on a daily basis. So I love the fact that you do that because you're going to get a good idea and a good indication of how it will benefit them and what they're going to take from it and how it's going to help them to be better or be more productive at their position, for sure. So I just love that. [00:24:48] Speaker A: Of course, I'm not talking about any of my own clients. I don't want to get myself in any trouble here. [00:24:52] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:24:53] Speaker A: But plenty of businesses want to throw money at a problem and not have to do the work. Oftentimes they're looking for somebody like me that they can hire as an outside contractor to come in and fix their issue without them having to do any additional work. And the conversation that I would have to have with somebody like that is that that's not going to fix your problem. Again, going back to the whole band aid idea, you could put a band aid on this and you could deploy it, and it might make a little bit of a difference. But if you really want something to be effective, that needs analysis component, which is going to take some work. It's going to take some coordination between different employees to be able to find time to have those conversations. But in the end, you're going to end up with a much better course. [00:25:36] Speaker B: Oh, for sure. I totally agree with you. I want to talk about the future of elearning post pandemic. Looking beyond the pandemic, what do you foresee as the evolving role and future trends of elearning in businesses, and how should HR professionals prepare for these changes? [00:25:56] Speaker A: Okay, so there's a couple of really big ones, and the first one that I'm sure everybody is aware of is AI. Right, artificial intelligence. And I think it's going to play a larger role in elearning. I've seen some things I haven't played with them quite yet, especially with client stuff, because you have to be very careful with that proprietary information and such. But creating bots and artificial intelligence that you would be able to embed within an elearning course that can respond. You can have your learner answer a free response question and you would have AI be able to respond to them about why their answer was correct or incorrect. There's a lot of different AI integrations that are popping up here, there and everywhere. But one thing I would tell HR professionals to consider and really think about is what are the privacy policies of these AIs look like? There's AIs being developed faster than people really anticipated. We had a boom here in the last year or so, and I don't think legislation has really caught up with it. There's not really policies that were in place about do people have to tell when they're using AI generated content? Are there ethical implications with the use of AI generated content? Also, another consideration for HR professionals is there an enterprise version that is locked down so your information isn't being used to train the AI, and so there's a lot of considerations to look at, but it's definitely a future trend and it's definitely something that everybody should be preparing for. I think there's going to be a lot coming down the pipeline because AI is a little bit like the Wild west right now. There's no rules, there's no laws, and it's getting made faster than anybody thought. I think the second big one that I've seen specifically in my industry that's really impacting training and development is data. And I've talked about this in another presentation I did before, but sheer compliance is no longer enough. And what I mean by that is a lot of elearnings. You've probably taken one at some point in your life, too, where it's the most dry, boring thing you've ever taken on an elearning, you click next as quickly as possible, take your quiz and call it a day. You didn't learn anything. You were just being compliant at that point. But there's a huge shift towards gathering, like I said, more data to be able to personalize learning experiences for people so that they do have a greater buy in. And ultimately, we're going to end up with a much more well rounded training program because people are only going to be having to take the parts that apply to them. And we do that by collecting and utilizing data. Something to consider. There are the ethical implications of what data you're collecting. Right. Data collection is a big privacy issue that exists. If you're going to be collecting data about your employees, even if it's just on a training basis, you have to consider, do they have access to this information? Are they allowed to opt out of certain situations? [00:28:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:54] Speaker A: So thinking about that a third, a little bit smaller one, and it's not really a new, it's just getting a lot more focus. Now is micro learning. And I think with kind of the rise of short form social media like TikTok and Instagram reels and things like that, people are moving into getting more bite sized pieces of information. And micro learning has been around for a long time. It's generally just a much shorter learning experience. It conveys a limited amount of information, but that's a modality that I've seen picking up a lot more traction recently because a lot of people prefer that. People would rather watch a two or three minute TikTok on something than watch a two hour YouTube on how to do it. But I don't blame them. If I could learn something in two to three minutes, why would I waste the other 20 some OD watching the video? Right? [00:29:43] Speaker B: I love when you talked about personalizing it. I've talked to a lot of people, and when you said compliant, yes, there are people that they feel like they're compliant. So they work for an organization and they're like, okay, we have these courses that we want you to take, and they do them and they click through, like you said, and they do the quiz and they're done. They keep their certificate somewhere. Most of the time, it's probably forgotten. I think if you're doing an elearning course where someone comes to you and say, oh, you know what, I would like to, especially specifically, let's say during a review time, and they say, in the next six months, what would you like to be doing? And they could say, I would like to learn more on this and this. And they could say, great, that's perfect. So we're designing some elearning courses, and a lot of those areas that you want to learn are available for you in the elearning. So now instead of, like you said, being compliant, now you're getting the individual more interested, because now they've said to their leader or manager or supervisor that they want to learn that instead of sticking it to them and saying, hey, get these done. You have two, three weeks to do them. And people just get mad and they do them. So I think letting them decide what they want to learn. You talked about it earlier about being in an area or talking to the people who actually do the job. What would they like to learn? What kind of things do you want to learn? What kind of things would help you as far as an elearning that can help you be more effective at your job or your. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Absolutely. And even because there's also the idea of just buy in. And a great example of a situation that's not going to get me in trouble is when I was in education, we had to do certain compliance by law courses every year. Now, I understand it's a legal requirement. They have to be a certain amount long and they have to do XYZ. But if you had some sort of course where people who were returning employees only had to review certain sections or changes to the policy, are they going to be more likely to pay attention then? Yeah, because they know they're looking at the pertinent parts. When I took some of those courses, I would be guilty of clicking my way through to the end and taking the quiz. And I usually didn't get 100, but I did well enough to get a passing score. Was I probably missing some updates to the policy that had been made? Sure when you start looking at being able to collect data and using that data to personalize people's experiences, you're going to get more buy in. People are more likely to care because they feel like it is geared towards them. [00:32:29] Speaker B: Right? For sure. If you could choose one word to describe yourself, what word would it be? [00:32:35] Speaker A: So we touched on this a little bit in the beginning, but I think it would be relational. I think when you're starting, especially your own business and such, there's so many instructional designers in my field that are not just as good as me, but better than me. Right. There's people out there that I have immense respect for, that certainly are much better at this than I am. So when clients are choosing to use me, part of it is my skills, but part of it is me. I'm ultimately selling me to the client. And I think part of what really sets me apart is how relational I am in all aspects of my life, that I really work on the relationships that I build with people and focus on ensuring that the communication between us is good, that we understand each other, and ultimately in a professional capacity, this tends to lead to not just a more enjoyable experience, but a more effective one. If we're doing a great job communicating and we've built that trust and we're able to really speak plainly and communicate well, then that generally ends up in a better end product and often ends up in a lot of my clients or repeat clients because that's the goal. You want to enjoy working with somebody so much that you just keep working with them, right? Yeah. [00:33:52] Speaker B: It's that comfort level, right. When you're relationship, you're being relationship building or building rapport, you're building that trust and respect, and that goes so far. When you've gained that from a client or somebody you're working with takes you miles and it can continue to take you miles and miles as long as that trust and respect remains, for sure. So I definitely agree with you. I definitely would agree on that word. I think that fits you to a t, for sure. [00:34:24] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:34:24] Speaker B: Yes. Any final thoughts today? [00:34:27] Speaker A: I think from if I'm speaking directly to some HR professionals that might be listening, I think one of the big things that we didn't quite touch on is that training isn't always the answer. If you have a motivation issue, nothing that I can make you is going to make a difference. If you have an issue of accessibility to things that your employees need and that's what's causing them not to perform well, nothing I make you is going to make any difference. And I can't remember who it was, but another person in our field did. A kind of thing is you need to stop blaming instructional designers for training failing when we already told you that wasn't the answer. Because ultimately, if a client's going to throw me a bunch of money, even though I've told them ten times this isn't going to make a difference, I'm still going to make it. I got bills. I've told you it's not going to work, but you don't get to turn around and be upset that it didn't work. I told you it would. And so ultimately that needs analysis part. Like I said, I'm always willing to start with a client and there's been situations where that's all I got paid for and that's all they really needed to do because we figured out it wasn't a training issue. And so I just got paid for my time where I helped them conduct that needs analysis portion. But if HR professionals really understood what that entire process entailed, a lot of times they could save themselves some heartache and probably money. Not waste money on training when training isn't necessarily the answer. [00:35:53] Speaker B: I totally agree with you for sure. I want to take the time to thank you for coming on today. I think this is an important conversation. It's something that I've heard a lot and I'm hearing more and more. More people I talk to, the more people are talking about this. And it's important to, like you said, find ways that are going to help the dynamic with your teams and in your workplace. Whether it be elearning, whether it be group conferences, whether it be group training, whatever it is. But as long as you are looking at alternatives to help the situation, that's the most important for sure. [00:36:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. Doing something is better than doing nothing, but if you pick the wrong something, it's still not going to be as effective as you'd. [00:36:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. On behalf of myself and my guest Tristan, I would like to thank you all for listening today. Until next time, be safe and remember that if we all work together, everyone, we can accomplish anything. [00:36:55] Speaker A: You have been listening to. Let's be diverse with Andrew Stout. To stay up to date with future content, hit subscribe.