Creating a Learning Journey Map
Learn how to create a Journey Map for your employees
Simulations are a powerful way to build skill in both new hires and veteran employees alike. But it's important to point out there is no silver bullet in training. Learning takes practice, repetition, mistakes, and many 'aha moments' over time to make a difference. You'll need a holistic strategy to achieve your organization's learning and performance goals, and simulations will likely only be one part of that strategy.
As you set out to develop your organization's learning strategy, we've gathered a few tips, and created an editable PPT Journey Map Template (below) that will help you you design and communicate a holistic learning experience for your employees.
Build Experiences Over Time: For most humans, learning takes time - weeks or months (not minutes or hours) to sink in. If your goal is to build skills, avoid automatically talking about training in terms of minutes or hours of content. No matter how good your content is, or how inspirational your facilitator is, your learner is going to forget most of what you cover within hours. Set expectations with your team and business partners that the 'best' training approach likely takes place over time.
Say No: The next time a business leader tells you confidently "We need a class on X," sometimes the best answer is, "No. We don't." When a leader says, "We need a class on X,' what they usually mean is, 'We need Y behavior/skill to change.' And the best solution for that probably isn't just a single class. The Bright Platform puts many tools in your toolkit to address gaps and build skill.
Use Multiple Modalities: There are very few learning needs in the modern world that couldn't benefit from the use of multiple modalities over time (as opposed to only a class; or only an eLearning). Your learning strategy should include a mix of reading, video, coaching, simulations, in-role practice, and more.
Personalize: Employees come to the table with different levels of experience and skills. And they progress through experiences and build new skills at different paces. So one-size-fits-all classes and videos are limited from the outset. As you develop your organization's learning strategy, be sure to create different paths for different roles, and even different experience levels. The journey map sample below can help with this.
Get Managers Involved: Best-in-class learning experience design seeks to 1) educate front line managers about learning experience content, 2) provide resources managers can use to activate or pull through in on-the-job coaching, and 3) measure whether reinforcement is actually happening. As you design content and simulations, always ask 'what is the role in the manager in activating this experience on the job.'
Put It All Together in a Journey Map: If you've done the points above well, you'll be ready to visualize the learning experience in an employee journey map that shows how the employee will experience skill building activities (including Bright simulations) over time. The journey map format doesn't matter as much as your ability to demonstrate to your team, your business leaders, and the employee that their learning will be a true experience. We've attached a sample
HERE (needs updating) that shows an employee moving through multiple modalities over time, including front line manager engagement.
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