Case Studies
Marks & Spencer Line Managers Case Study

casestudy_scr2.jpgMarks & Spencer’s line managers are responsible for managing HR issues. To support and enable them to manager HR/people issues, Marks & Spencer in collaboration with Kineo has created the Line Manager Performance Centre, a flexible and innovative e-learning portal. You can read the full case study below or download as a PDF here.

At Kineo we see rapid e-learning as an approach to production and development of learning that has these key principles of collaboration:

1. Focus on service; ensure processes are streamlined to deliver best value

2. Be creative and efficient in content gathering

3. Design creatively for and with your users: involve stakeholders and learners in its creation

4. Find efficient and creative ways to deliver and gather feedback to e-learning

5. Ensure design approach is reusable to maximize return on investment

Here we explain how we applied each of these principles in our collaboration with Marks & Spencer.

1. Focus on service; ensure processes are streamlined to deliver best value

From the outset it was clear that we were going to be working at an accelerated pace, and that a close working relationship was going to be critical to the success of this project.

We agreed it was preferable to keep the process light (as often e-learning projects can get weighed down with unnecessary documentation) and instead focus on being there and getting things done. This was the approach that was going to be most efficient, and critically deliver best value to Marks & Spencer.

From the outset, we preferred to

  • Spend at least one day a week onsite so that communication was continuous and we could absorb the culture
  • Communicate progress in terms of visuals and working versions
  • Get to working versions quickly and then update as required
  • Keep the production team size small – designer/project manager, writer, developer, so that everyone got close to the project and keep internal communications simple too
  • Make a promise of rapid response to those updates, and stick to it (often same working day)

We believed that the time spent onsite, getting immersed in the Mark & Spencer culture, getting to know the stakeholders and the environment, contributed both to the quality of service, the value to and to the quality of the end product.

2. Be creative and efficient in content gathering

E-learning production succeeds or fails on initial content scoping. It’s here where either you uncover the gold-dust that makes for an authentic and engaging learning solution, or miss the point and/or take too long to get there.

We also knew we had access to a huge amount of policy documentation – but to simply replicate those policies in an e-learning format would not be enough. More ‘personality’ was required than policy documents alone can convey.

So, very early in the project we explained that we needed to see the ‘whites of the eyes’ of the experts and hear their views firsthand. M&S was happy to arrange this – but we knew that subject matter experts were busy and time was tight. Nobody could spare more than an hour in their initial session.

How to work with subject matter experts to gather that information, with no more than an hour per expert? If you’ve only got an hour, you’ve got to focus. We developed a set of just 5 questions (and in fact, they’re ones that you can ask any expert to get to rapidly scope a topic):

1. What are the top five things people must know on this topic?

2. What are the key steps/processes people must follow to do this right?

3. What are the top five most common mistakes people make? What are the consequences? How do people avoid them?

4. What are your five case studies, examples or anecdotes that would help people put this topic in context?

5. Where should people go for more help, advice and information on this topic?

Working through these questions in rapid scoping sessions with SMEs generated a wealth of information that complemented and added tone and personality to the policy details themselves. The next challenge was to develop a creative and effective design that brought this raw content to life.

“The real value to be gained in this support tool was not to just regurgitate policy as line managers already had access to that. It was important that there was almost an element of feeling like an HR support member was by their side whilst utilizing the e-tool, pointing out the helpful tips and any risks around the decisions to be made. I tried to keep that in mind when conducting the short interviews with Kineo.”

One of the subject matter experts involved in the Performance Centre Development

3. Design creatively for and with your users: involve stakeholders and learners in its creation

Our approach for a creative design approach on this project was to start with the learner’s needs and usage patterns in mind. Our initial research indicated some key insights about this target audience:

  • M&S line managers are goal-oriented. It must be clear that the learning will enable them to achieve a specific goal or objective. They’re busy, and don’t have a lot of time for ‘learning’. It must be short and focused.
  • M&S line managers are relevancy-oriented. Engagement is as much based on relevancy to the task at hand as it is on any look and feel or entertainment factor. So it was important that if someone had a specific question about grievance processes, they could get to it very quickly.
  • M&S line managers are practical, focusing on the aspects most useful to them in their work. They wanted case studies showing concepts in practice, giving a chance to pause and think, and picking up on the subtleties in application of policy.
  • M&S line managers wanted advice and examples. There was a need for simple vignettes to take the experience of others, good and bad, and condense and personalize it in a way that roots itself in the memory more deeply than facts and procedures on their own.

We worked with these key audience characteristics, and the information emerging from managers, to create a four-quadrant model for the e-learning:

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  1. Take it in: all you need to know about the topic in five minutes, through simple, conversationally written questions and answers (see screen 2 for an example)
  2. Take me through it: a twenty minute run through of the process, covering
    1. The key steps
    2. Who does what in each step
    3. Try it yourself: short simulation with questions for each step
  3. Top tips: Short nuggets of advice/anecdotes, sourced from M&S subject matter experts
  4. Take it further: links to policies, templates and resources for more detail.

Our goal here was to provide a flexible resource that allowed for exploration of a subject, and at the same time enable quick access to key information.

This design structure provides some key benefits to line managers:

  • Pragmatic: each section is focused on assisting line manager performance, when line managers needed it
  • Focused: each section and component within each section is kept brief and addresses a specific point
  • Easy to use: users can navigate quickly to the specific question, case study, story that addresses their need – non-linear and exploratory to suit line manager requirements
  • Engaging: modelling real situations and challenging the user to address them, with detailed feedback
  • Flexible: users can complete the four sections in sequence if they wish, or spend two minutes getting the answer to a burning question as performance support

We worked on this design with M&S stakeholders, including line managers as we worked through early versions, and they had valuable feedback about structure and wording that helped to ensure it was on target for line managers to take it to the final version.

What pilot learners said about the design approach (sample quotes from feedback survey):

  • “User friendly and easy to follow. Definitely more subject or areas should be made available”
  • “Fantastic tool - very clear and simple and an efficient way to learn”
  • “Very easy to use, good examples to back up the policy”

What stakeholders say about flexibility of the design approach:

“The highly flexible approach means that while the e-learning stands alone, we can also take a blended approach if we want to – running workshops and using the e-learning as supporting information. We’ve run a performance management upskilling session where this e-learning has worked extremely well as a level-setter before the workshop. It’s also a global solution – our international line managers can access the learning from anywhere, and line managers on the road can access it too, extending our reach as an L&D team. “

M&S Learning and Development Manager

4. Find efficient and creative ways to deliver and gather feedback to e-learning

From the start, we knew that M&S didn’t have a learning management system. Implementing a full-blown commercial LMS seemed too much at this stage. But they were keen to have a strongly branded portal, to act as a home for this e-learning and potentially for future modules too.

So we thought differently. Adopting the Moodle open source LMS, Kineo did a full customization to create a branded portal for M&S: The “Line Manager Performance Centre”. Building on the core Moodle functionality, we have created a portal that has

· A strong M&S corporate identity

· A ‘magazine’ feel to create a visually appealing home page.

· Easy navigation to core modules

· Self-registration of learners

· Tracking and reporting functionality

· Ability to extend with further e-learning modules, links to urls and intranet resources and downloadable .pdfs.

We believe that by leveraging the open source functionality of moodle, and customizing to create a highly tailored portal for Marks & Spencer, we’ve delivered an efficient and high quality result, at a substantially lower cost to Marks & Spencer than a commercial LMS might have required.

5. Ensure design approach is reusable to maximize return on investment

Finally, a key goal from the original brief was to ensure reusability of the approach. In our design approach for the initial modules, we took care to work with our stakeholders to ensure the model we’d constructed would work for other HR topics too. In the second phase of development, this design approach has proved entirely re-usable for other topics and has been re-used and extended since the initial pilot.

Critically, the approach will generate cost savings, as one stakeholder put it: “A lot of costs can be saved here, for example, our store people generally travel to the local training academy for this type of workshop. The savings on travel costs and in same cases accommodation costs, would be enormous.”

Summary:

We believe that we have collaborated to create a highly creative and effective e-learning solution, both in terms of the end product, and in terms of the streamlined process applied in its production. It has set a tone and expectation for e-learning within Marks & Spencer, and has received plaudits from learners and stakeholders in the business.

We have gone on to collaborate with M&S on a wide range of rapid e-learning and web development projects and continue to add to and develop the Line Manager Performance Centre.

 

 

 

 

 
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