E-learning: The Death of Human Resource Department

Human Resource Department (HRD) in many corporations must overcome its fear of technology. Otherwise, it will be replaced by other departments or outsourcing agents. In Information Era like today, e-learning is a trendy training medium among corporations. In fact, like other learning methods, e-learning also has potential failures, from dropouts and dreary sessions to technology glitches. There are more problems ahead; HRD’s ignorance will increase e-learning failures. Currently, e-learning dropout is estimated at 35% and above according to Ruth C. Clark and Richard E. Mayer. It means, if we train 100 employees, then more than 35 of them will quit from the session. Furthermore, of those e-learning graduates, there is even smaller number of people who actually benefit from the learning.
E-learning is often measured wrongly. E-learning is measured by using adoption rate. This rate does not show learner attrition in e-learning solution. The adoption rate of the first three months of implementation in Bank Mandiri which implemented e-learning in Indonesia recently, has almost reached 6,000 employees. Within a year, the adoption rate has increased significantly to 25,000 employees. If the figures are combined with above statistics, there are estimated 8,750 dropouts in a year. Supposedly, Bank Mandiri spent about US$ 10 million to implement its state of the art e-learning solution, alas, the institution has burnt down US$ 3.5 million into ashes because 35% of it was wasted.
The loss is more than the training travel savings that e-learning promised. It is often that the saving after e-learning implementation is diverted to learners. In branches where internet connection is slow and charged on usage, the branch must pay extra for internet connection and overtime for employees doing the training. Not to mention, that the centralized training prints decrease its economies of scale because all learners must print ones for themselves. The so-called corporate saving has become branch’s extra spending.
In today’s competition, business organization is personified. Any organization that is incapable of learning or retaining learning in its organization is doomed to fail. According to Knowledge Management studies, knowledge can become obsolete very quickly. Companies are forced to create, retain, distribute and recreate learning. Learning has become the thirst of every company.
Learning is defined as a transformation from old behavior to new behavior – from not knowing to knowing. In organization’s perspective, learning is a transformation of the old strategy to the new strategy. Clark and Mayer defined e-learning or electronic learning as training delivered on computer – including CDROM, Internet and Intranet – that is designed to support individual learning or organizational performance goals. Therefore e-learning must be built around company’s strategy. The company that wants to improve its customer retention must decide whether its strategy lays on customer information acquisition or performance improvement of the front office staffs. E-learning strategy for information acquisition emphasizes on providing more information and less practice opportunity while performance improvement emphasize on more practice to strengthen response of the front office staffs.
Though it is very important, e-learning solution fails as we know it. First of all, it takes an e-learning consultant who understands company’s business strategy and educational technology issues beside human resource issues to design a good e-learning solution. A good e-learning must be based on business strategy analysis and job analysis. Secondly, HRD has surrendered its function to Information Technology Department (ITD). The learning environment should have been designed by a “teacher” instead of a “techie” – technical people – since there are more human problems rather than technology glitches. For example, in a low adoption and high dropout case, HRD, not ITD, must investigate the main problem. Sometimes it requires policy adjustment. As an example, in one hand, the employees do not want to take the e-learning on office hours because they may be piling on their assignments. In other hand, the company refuses to have employees working overtime. The company can slightly change the policy by allowing employees to take overtime for e-learning purposes only and use the overtime money as incentive to employees taking the e-learning.
Other example, many e-learning graduates fail to benefit from the learning. The reasons vary from lacking of job aid to no immediate real life situation where graduates can utilize the new knowledge or skills. This situation requires intervention from HRD, not ITD. In a simulation of operating new machinery, the simulation is presented in a perfect world where all tools needed are provided. A highly-scored trainee in that simulation may perform poorly back in the real world just because his or her body figure does not allow him or her to reach a certain panel in the machine. A stool as a job aid may be helpful for him or her, not more e-courses.
In the case where e-learning graduates do not have immediate real life problem that is related to the e-courses taken, HRD may need to create activities, as intervention, to retain the newly acquired skills. For example, the graduates can be assigned to a small task group of improvement based on the e-courses taken. Let there be competition among the task groups. The findings of the winning team can be adopted into company’s policy and the winning team can earn money as incentive for exercising their new skills. This is what Nestle Indonesia does with its SGIA (Small Group of Improvement Activities) competition, as part of its learning organization strategy. Post e-learning activities, such as SGIA, improve retention of the newly acquired knowledge. The post e-learning activities must be aimed to develop a learning organization. Issues in Change Management, Knowledge Management become crucial.
Life after e-learning for HRD is no different. Yes, e-learning solution helps HRD in collecting data on how the organization transforms. However, e-learning is only a tool, not some magic wand that grants all the wishes. HRD must continue analyzing e-learning solution performance and provide solution in order to increase the e-learning Return on Investment post implementation. Giving it up to ITD, that knows nothing about human resources, means surrender and die. HRD must improve its role in e-learning implementation.

Jaha Nababan, Ed.M (jaha@fulbrightweb.org)