In today’s reality of world-wide interaction and commerce, effective global learning initiatives have become increasingly important. As organizations expand their reach further and further into new locations, employees of diverse cultural contexts need adequate training. This varied audience certainly poses a challenge for learning and development (L&D) teams who need learning materials that are both relevant as well as affordable. Finding stability between these and other competing forces is essential for successful global learning.
5 Strategies for Creating Inclusive and Impactful Global Training
1. Create Adaptable and Relevant Content
Creating content that fits a global audience means making it adaptable. Remove the idioms and slang. Find examples general enough to fit a wider variety of contexts. Don’t go too deep into specifics. Use images that accommodate the cultural nuances of a diverse audience. However, materials that are too watered down and vague won’t be of much use. By designing content for a wider audience, we face the danger of appeasing everyone but making it relevant to no one. Is it possible for content to be both relevant and adaptable? Thankfully, the answer is yes! But pulling it off requires a careful balance.
2. Define Global vs. Local Needs
Another challenge when designing training for a dispersed audience is balancing global and local needs. It is easy to assume that all employees have the same perspective as the home office does, which is never true. The better this gap is understood and addressed, the more impact the final product will have.
As you hone learning objectives, analyze learner profiles and consider the key differences between them as they relate to content areas. Common differences may be variations in location, language and education. Are your learners using the same type of technology, equipment, raw materials and terminology? Are they in the same markets? Roles, terminology and processes should be carefully defined as they can vary from team to team.
Keep asking questions such as: What does this person need? What is blocking them from being successful? What is their priority? This research into your learners will take some effort and should involve representatives from each of your profiles. But, by developing a good relationship and getting insight from these various stakeholders, you will then be able to design materials that meet their needs and have a much greater assurance of success for training initiatives.
After evaluating learner profiles, look broader. Learning experiences should align with corporate policies, business objectives and local regulations. Hopefully, your corporate policies and standards have been built with both local and international laws in mind. But what can you do to reinforce your organization’s vision and values? How can your training impact business objectives either positively or negatively? If you can align your training goals with your organization’s goals, learning will be seen as more valuable to your organization.
3. Consider the Risks
After identifying learner needs and the needs of the company, it is time to assess the risks of not meeting them. Taking the perspective of the worst-case scenario, evaluate both the likelihood and the impact of failure. Mistranslations or misrepresentations in training materials can have severe consequences, particularly in fields like health care and safety-critical industries.
But safety is not the only risk to consider. For example, a three-person IT team struggling with English proficiency may merit the cost of translation for all their learning materials because of the potential impact to the company. Creating a localized scenario-based training game may make sense if the overseas call center has been underperforming and hurting the company’s reputation.
Understanding and mitigating these risks is crucial for your global learning initiatives. Only then will you be able to make informed decisions as to which components of your training must be highly targeted to a specific learner profile and which can be more general.
4. Include Local Resources
The more tailored that training is to a specific audience, the more relevant and impactful it will be to them. Knowing when and how to incorporate local perspectives, experiences and statistics into training materials is key. This is where a map of your curriculum design becomes critical. Designate some content for general learning that the larger group of learners can use as an introduction to the topic. Then, based on risk analysis, create specialized content for specific profiles. This approach balances broad and specialized training, making learning widely applicable yet highly relevant.
Offer learners personalized learning path options designed for their role or region to take them down a separate track after viewing the general content, or include links to access more information as needed. Creating glossaries to standardize internal terminology, especially for translation, and a “resources” tab to provide further information is also helpful. Finesse is needed to give each group of learners what they need without exposing them to too much of what they don’t. Realize that your words, design, graphics, sound effects and other elements, are all communicating concepts and ideas — so consider the total package to foster learner engagement.
Even with your content that is earmarked for general use, don’t be afraid to use some specific short examples from a targeted learner profile. By drawing on the experience of your diverse global population, content creators can design materials that are more representative of the larger organization. This gives the opportunity for your employees to gain a broader perspective of what is happening with other teams and improve their cultural sensitivity to develop the skills necessary to communicate within a diverse workforce.
5. Weigh Continuous Feedback and Improvement
Organizations often resist change — and for good reason. Making an improvement can be a lengthy process. For the improvement to take root, it must become habit, and new habits are hard to form. We must counter the preference to adhere to convention with the need to adapt and evolve based on the needs of a diverse audience and the organization.
To do this, establish a communication mechanism accessible for all learners to give feedback about their learning experiences. Regularly assess the impact and effectiveness of global learning initiatives to make informed adjustments as needed. By evaluating and adjusting the learning materials and approaches, organizations can ensure that they remain impactful and relevant for varied learners.
Final Thoughts
Mastering the art of global learning in the workplace requires finding cohesion between the various cultural, linguistic and contextual factors that influence the learning process. By creating adaptable content, considering global and local needs, mitigating risks, incorporating local resources, enlisting stakeholders, fostering cultural intelligence and evaluating and improving, organizations can design effective global learning initiatives. This balanced approach can ultimately lead to a more engaged and skilled workforce with improved intercultural communication and a greater appreciation for diversity.
