A Design Strategy for Creating Engaging Online Induction Training!

As all of you know, Induction training programs have to introduce new employees to the organization’s vision, mission, purpose, goals, key roles and responsibilities, also about their culture, services, policies, procedures, and health and safety measures etc. Most of the online Induction training programs contain text and images, combined with audio narration. In spite of usage of these graphics and audio, these programs are not very interesting to the learner and the purpose of the program is not achieved.

This training needs to be planned carefully by the HR or Training Managers. For the learners to smoothly become a part into the organization and become productive, they need to understand the information thoroughly. If not, this will impact on the organization’s growth and reputation.

For this type of content, we had developed an interesting and engaging strategy for a new employee experience eLearning course for one of our customers.

Let me share that experience with you here.

The customer came to us for the training solution on new employee orientation with high interactivity and rich look and feel. The company employs thousands of employees, in different countries all over the world. The learners are multicultural, with different education backgrounds.

Based on client requirements and audience analysis, we come up with a design strategy ‘Explore and Learn‘.

The course starts with an introduction, where the course description, duration, and system requirements are given. The learner can also choose the preferred language from this page.

Once they click on the preferred language, they find a virtual campus that represents the company. This virtual campus has different buildings and a playground; each building deals with a different topic with an employee testimonial via video at the end. By clicking on highlighted objects in each room, they go to a new topic with some interactive areas in it. After completing all subtopics in each room, they can come back to the main campus by clicking on a small campus icon at the bottom of the room.We also used rich graphics, real time videos, music and audio where ever required to enhance the learning and to address all kinds of learners. By using this strategy, the user interaction with the course is high and they will explore and learn more themselves.

On clicking the first building, the CEO’s desk/ room appears, where the learner will meet the CEO with a welcome message in the form of video.

On clicking on the second building, the culture room will appear. This room looks like a museum with lots of posters and paintings. By clicking on each, learners get to know about the company vision, mission, goals, purpose, and leadership traits followed by a testimonial from one of their employees about the company culture.

The third building deals with business strategy and the organizational structure. In this topic, they learn about the services they offer, their organizational structure and business groups. They also learn some factual data about the company followed by another testimonial from one of their employees.

The fourth one is ‘Your Role’ section where the information useful to new employee in his job is given, all about new employee roles and responsibilities, career development plans, company policies and some useful online & offline resources, followed by another testimonials from their employees.

Finally, it’s time for the quiz; by clicking on the playground, the learner gets into the final quiz section where the soccer game was used. When the learner chooses the right option, he scores a goal, and the score is shown on the score board.

We categorized and presented the bit sized information in each room with supporting graphics, audio and videos. This was a very effective method for the new employee to learn about the company.

The client was very happy with the course.