According to Josh Bersin from Deloitte, 70% of all training in a company comes from its employees. This is not surprising given that they have unique knowledge about their areas and can share it with others easily when working together on projects or tasks for which there’s insufficient time within larger groups settings. Some individuals feel more comfortable learning something new if another person has already mastered the material firsthand. After all, experts in a particular field really understand the nuances between getting a good result and getting the best result possible. Unlocking these Subject Matter Experts means opening up massive opportunities for superchargeable content too.
When we design online learning, we always try to make the content relevant to the job people are doing by engaging SMEs in a range of different ways. Their involvement can change and is often based on the delivered content. Here are a few ideas that we use:
- Getting to these experts early in the project can be critical during the instructional design phase, particularly when the content is very technical.
- Often SMEs have good knowledge about the people’s experience who will complete the training. They provide guidance on the depth of existing knowledge in the workforce, and they intimately understand the gap that needs to be closed.
- Talent in videos: Employees always like to learn from people they respect in the workplace
- Online courses will often need an integrated skills assessment in the form of a quiz, tests and more. SMEs are perfectly positioned to target questions that focus on key learning areas.
Having spent decades working with SMEs, it’s clear that they value being involved early in a project. Be clear about the business problem that needs to be solved and provide confidence that the solution that will be developed will get positive business results.