Case Study: The Crofting Commission

SuitcaseThe brief

The Crofting Commission aims to create “a well regulated crofting system that positively contributes to the sustainability of rural communities.”
To facilitate this vision they created a new case management system to roll out to all staff and Commissioners.

They came to Honeyboot & Lemon (that’s us) to develop training for their staff. They needed engaged, knowledgeable users who would be able to promote the new system in the traditional atomsphere at the commission and help champion change.

The solution

We could have suggested a few possible solutions, and the Commission was expecting it to be one of two options:

  • Face to face training with all staff

or

  • Online training on the system

These solutions would probably both have worked, but we felt there were issues with both.

  1. Sustainability. Face to face training is by it’s very nature a single hit. When we would have walked out the door they would be left on their own and we would take all our understanding of the system with us. Given that the system will evolve, we didn’t feel this was a good option.
  2. Skills transfer. Even with online systems training, which is generally a good option, there is an issue that there would have been no one in the Commission who had a hand in creating the content. Any issues would have to be resolved by the developer of the system.

We proposed instead a week long workshop with key users of the system, not to understand their needs but to enable them to create the training content themselves.

This approach would allow the Commission to get the materials, update them themselves, and create new ones as needed. They would also create learning champions, users who were heavily invested in the content, it’s use and delivery. They would have skills to create new content for different areas and be able to function without outside help in the future, saving considerable amounts of time and money.

The workshop had a number of outcomes:

  • Materials required to train the staff in using the new system:
  • Materials created to ensure an optimal training experience and knowledge retention
  • Screencasts of the key tasks a user will perform in the system
  • User journey videos
  • Help texts and task guidance take-aways
  • Champions who are fully engaged with and understand the system
  • Champions who are able to create materials
  • A learning delivery framework
  • A strong team and process able to support other users during and after rollout

The outcome

A week before the workshop the Commission dropped a bombshell: The system wasn’t ready. Rather than postpone, we decided to go ahead and focus more on the skills and champions side of the workshop.

The workshop went very well, and it was amazing to see people who had never even thought about creating learning content have a lightbulb moment and start to get excited about the possibilities.

For most of the people present in the workshop, this was the start of a journey. It was a privilege to work with the Commission and see the participants become more and more enthusiastic as the week progressed.

This is what they said:

“Honeyboot & Lemon helped our organisation develop the training material for our new IT system. Throughout the week the group’s confidence grew and it was great to see their enthusiasm to get back to the organisation and put the new skills and knowledge they had been empowered with into practice.
I was impressed with Andy’s flexibility to change and adjust at a moments’ notice to accommodate our learning needs. It made a big difference to the outcomes.”

 

“I really enjoyed the training.  I can think of numerous situations where we could use Captivate to create learning programmes within the Commission.”.

 

“The week’s training gave me the opportunity to learn more about CIS and develop new skills including an introduction to Software Simulcasting.”

 

“The week was really intense as we were trained on the skills and tools needed to deliver training. After using the applications a few times I became more comfortable and adventurous with them and it gave me the opportunity to get used to the type of things we are going to be producing.”

 

Speak to us today to see how we can help deliver your project and create engaged and enthusiastic champions.

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