Back-to-school time - but on-ground, or online?

By Mary Helen Gillespie, 9/18/06

Early fall brings back memories that I will treasure forever. The memories are set in St. Patrick's Grammar School in Bridgeport, Conn,: wearing brand-new dark green knee socks to match our muddy green-and-brown plaid uniforms, covering 20-year-old textbooks with brown shopping bags from the supermarket, inhaling the new box of 64 Crayola crayons and looking for magenta, my favorite color, and hoping I would sit the entire year near my best friend Nancy McCarthy - who, by the way, is still my best friend although her married name is Nancy M. Pashley. We're the Roman Catholic version of the Oprah and Gayle King BFF thing.

Then, of course, there was the actual education. School was just so cool then, even math. This was before demonic algebra stained my brain. Learning, reading and writing were wonderful ways to pass the hours, and to this day, I feel there's so much I still need and want to learn. St. Pat's is now closed, and the dear nuns who reigned over the dowdy classrooms are in their new careers as angels in heaven - although I would not be surprised if dementedly evil Sister Mary Mildred who called me Giddy Gillespie for 10 straight months ended up you-know-where.

Over the years, technology has allowed education to revolutionize how and what we learn. It's also given education an endless timeline. It doesn't stop with a graduation gown and mortarboard hat. And the best part of this new paradigm is we can, with the right managers at the smart companies, learn while we earn.

On-the-job training, performance development, and tuition reimbursement are repeatedly cited as the No. 1 retention tools for talented workers. They are far more effective than bucks or benefits.

The challenge for employers is choosing the most effective delivery channels. Web-based learning has exploded in corporations. Employees can arrange required or optional training to match their schedules when using an Internet-based tool. HR sources will admit with a smile that the Friday after Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Year's seem to be the most popular periods for annual required training classes with most employees learning "remotely" which is, as we all know, code for working from home.

So for the 15-year-employee taking the required "Code of Ethics" training for the 15th time, how much more fabulous can it be to review this very important credo at home in jammie pants with a dog under the desk instead of a tie and fruit flies from the office fridge buzzing overhead?

From an employer's perspective, the cost-savings can be quite impressive. The expenses of buying, installing and monitoring web-based educational software are tiddlywinks compared to the overhead of classroom spaces, trainers, mileage, equipment, paper collateral and enough caffeine-based libations to make sure everyone in the room stays awake.

But, as we used to say in Bridgeport, I gotta tell ya sumtin'. Having created and taught online classes as well as "on-ground" as the vernacular now refers to the real-life classroom experience, there is something to be said for the face-to-face educational experience. It's truly the human element of working as a team, expressing and discussing points of view, listening to different perspectives and the collective and often spontaneous experience of having those "Aha!" moments when everything suddenly makes sense. And everyone in the room, including the trainer/teacher, gets it.

Certainly there are classes and training that suit themselves best to the online channel. With real-time e-mail and even web cameras, some of these courses certainly get very close to the old-fashioned classroom experience. Frankly, there are certain courses, especially in finance, science, math, engineering and specialized areas of expertise, that are probably best taught online. Classroom discussion would be at best limited, and e-mail and discussion boards would certainly address issues sufficiently. Can't imagine a forensics accounting class would be rich in entertaining and dynamic dialogues but I also know I personally would never, ever understand an Excel spreadsheet from Chapter 1 of the required text, never mind making it to the final exam.

But in other arenas, that web software would be wasted. Not just for the actual curriculum, but for the return on investment of bringing together employees from across the organization to meet and network in a communal, non-competitive company-sponsored event. Those rewards are priceless, especially in enterprise-level corporations where work teams are often nothing more than e-mail addresses and conference call numbers. The public forum also reinforces in a very public way management's commitment to its associates. It also allows management to listen to what its workforce is thinking and saying about the organization. Granted, no one is going to stand up and announce "This place rips" or any other disgruntlement.

But managers who know how to listen are going to hear some amazing things - mostly between the lines but that's why they are management -- from these folks: comments and concerns that will prompt leaders to think and execute feedback-fueled processes and tasks ranging from process improvements to "Yikes! We're screwed."

So with that, my advice is that as organizations plan their 2007 training and performance development goals, they budget for a little less software and a lot more crayons.

Please save the magenta for me.

Mary Helen Gillespie is president of Gillespie Interactive, strategic management consultancy, and still hates algebra. E-mail her at maryhelen@bostonworks.com.