7 Questions

Can we legislate business ethics? Should we try? Express your opinion.

In a CNN interview to promote his new book, Isadore Sharp, founder of the Four Seasons hotel chain, talked about how he developed the company’s mission statement after sitting in on a training session at McDonald’s and realizing that their training literature hadn’t changed in 20 years -

It occurred to me that if you have something that people can understand, identify with, you don’t have to change it. That’s when I thought that we would use the Golden Rule as the basis for creating our mission statement.

You can read the full text of the interview here.

To read the Four Seasons mission statement, click here

Ensuring that every employee knows how to ensure that every customer interaction is win-win is critical in today’s hyper-competitive market. Here’s a story of a couple of company’s that “get it” and one, very typical, that has some opportunity for improvement.

There are times when business ethics seems to be a matter of stating the obvious.

In a recent article in the South African business publication Business Day, Graham Willcock wrote “In order to understand what constitutes moral behaviour, morality needs to be understood as using reason to govern behaviour while giving equal weight to the interests of those affected by that behaviour.”

It isn’t easy for us to give “equal weight” to the interests of others. As a social species we understand the value of cooperation, but as a competitive species, we are vitally aware of the personal benefits to be gained from putting our own interests just a little bit ahead of those of anyone else.

To counter this tendency we create all sorts of elaborate codes and processes to act as checks and balances. The problem of course is that the more elaborate the system, the easier it is to circumvent. Or in case of ethics. the easier it is to convince ourselves that we’re not circumventing it at all.

The 7 Questions takes a minimalist approach to the question of ethics. There are no elaborate manuals, no paragraphs of qualifications. Just 7 Questions that ask us to ask ourselves if the action we’re taking gives “equal weight” to those who will be affected by it.

They’re tough questions. but they’re ethical ones.

A column on the site SearchCRM from May of 2007 has a list of 14 Best Practices for managing remote call center agents.

It’s not a bad place to start when evaluating a remote program. Several of the points the article makes are valid. It talks about online training and doing a remote readiness evaluation.

However, the author makes a common error. She attempts to recreate a bricks and mortar environment remotely. Not only is this obviously impossible, it is undesirable. The real strength of a remote workforce is in the quality and flexibility of the people it attracts.

A CNNMoney article today covered a new partnership between Altigen and Skype to use Skype’s VOIP network to facilitate remote agents for Altigen’s call center platform clients.

Usually, remote agents subscribe to a local VOIP vendor and use standard telephony/headset setups to connect to the call center’s servers. This new partnership apparently allows users to bypass some of these steps and connect directly builtin Skype connectivity.

Deploying a remote agent program is often a matter of overcoming technical hurdles. This new partnership looks to be a big step in that direction.

In this article we’ll talk about adapting classroom based training for remote delivery. We’ll touch briefly on some technology, then take a look at a few of the factors that differentiate classroom and remote training environments

The More Things Change
A number of years ago, before the Internet was the Internet, I developed a remote training program in conjunction with five community colleges in Ontario Canada. The program was used to deliver programs with titles like Using Microsoft Word and The Principals of Small Business Accounting. Development included working with IT, traveling from college to college conducting train the trainer sessions, and even creating a technical support queue for students and instructors.

Contrast that with the latest remote training program that I facilitated. The program, a customer service training curriculum, included all of the standard call centre agent elements – scripting, quality, hands on practice with company’s customer tracking database. None of the participants left home to take part at any time and I often had someone on one coast of the country or the other in control of my computer for purposes of demonstration.

We’ve come a long way. And, with the financial and customer service benefits of remote agents becoming clearer with every new report that’s released, software vendors are certain to continue developing for remote environments.

Remote Training Technology
The very first programs that I created were little more than text based discussion forums. Many of the participants had only low speed modems. Long distance charges were an issue. The idea of exchanging streaming video and distributing PowerPoint presentations was still the stuff of science fiction movies.

The whole thing seems rather quaint now.

Since we’re limiting this discussion to instructor led training, we won’t have the opportunity to talk about some of the Learning Management Systems (LMS) that offer independent study, scoring and advancement tracking. However, in as far as they may incorporate instructor led components, the following will be applicable to them as well.

Software developed to facilitate Web-based meetings is a common choice for implementing a remote training program. Adobe’s Connect and Cisco’s Webex are two examples of solutions offered as either hosted services or licensed to run on company servers. Microsoft, with its Live Meeting, the successor to NetMeeting, is another player in the market. It’s even possible, although I’ve never tested it, to have a limited meeting using Skype, the free European designed program and granddaddy of VOIP services.

All of these programs emulate a classroom through the inclusion of live video by webcam, application sharing, white boards, remote control of participant and facilitator computers and conference audio. They are relatively inexpensive to implement and provide a cost effective avenue to test the suitability of remote training for your curriculum.

Speed is Key
Before we talk about actually converting course materials, I think its worth making one additional technological note. Speed is key. No matter what you intend to do across the Internet, access to reliable high speed connectivity will be crucial to your success. We’ll talk more about connectivity in another article. For now, I’ll just briefly mention that there are three potential bandwidth bottlenecks – the company network (or training host if you’re using that service), the trainee’s Internet Service Provider (what happens when every teenager in town gets home from school and logs onto MSN?), and the trainee’s internal home network (especially if they have one of those teenagers on MSN).

A New Environment
The most fundamental and obvious difference between a physical classroom setting and a remotely delivered program is the almost total lack of visual cues between trainer and trainee. For example, the instructor can no longer survey the class at a glance to assess the engagement of students. Is it time for a break? Do they need to review a point further? Things that were previously obvious to the instructor’s eye become invisible.

Conversely, the instructor no longer has the ability to move around the classroom or work directly with students. He or she is limited to their voice and perhaps some version of streaming video or webcam functionality. This impacts all other aspects of program development and implementation, including class size, pace of delivery, testing methods and student interaction.

Let’s look at student interaction first. I’m talking here about the small group activities and partnering exercises that are a staple of classroom training. These are difficult to translate to a shared remote environment. The audio portion of the class is generally provided through some version of a conference call, and all participants are viewing a single shared desktop or screen. This means that all actions by definition involve the entire group.

The higher the small group component of your curriculum the more creative you will need to be in adapting it. One tactic is to place more emphasis on independent exercises. Many small group activities can be revised for individual use. Other forms of team activity that don’t require simultaneous interaction can be added. For example, each student might develop a scenario that is then exchanged with another student to complete, after which it would be shared with the group.

Other ways to facilitate student interaction in a remote environment, such as separate chats, require varying degrees of computer or Internet literacy. When including these elements in the curriculum, it’s important to also include testing for literacy in the recruiting process.

Comprehension and retention testing methods are also affected in a remote environment. In a classroom setting, trainees might be given a set of exercises to complete while the instructor walks through the room answering questions and checking for accuracy in real time. In a remote environment, it’s only possible to review one student at a time.

This is usually done by allowing the student to take control of the shared desktop. Other students either continue to work independently or act as coaches to the student who’s demonstrating. The process is effective. However, it also has significant impact on the pace of delivery which we’ll get to in a minute.

This can be challenging to address. It may be possible to adapt the exercises in the training to have the student submit a completed project sheet, or to work on a training account that can be reviewed by the instructor at a later time.

Another option is to employ additional tools such as online quizzes. Quia is one of several Web-based quiz tools that allow the instructor to create quizzes using multiple question styles. Results can be measured individually and overall as a class. Scores can be emailed to trainees for review. Questions that do not perform well across the class can be highlighted to identify areas requiring additional work.

A third factor that needs to be considered in a remote environment is the pace of delivery. As well as the situation we’ve just noted, Internet connectivity and other technical issues can affect the speed at which information can be disseminated.

Delivery is also affected by the trainee’s level of concentration. In a classroom setting waning attention is generally easy to identify. In a remote environment, with the participant sitting in front of a home computer, perhaps in a corner of their basement, it’s not always as evident. For example, in one instance a trainee seemed to be having difficulty completing an exercise. The reason became clear when he neglected to mute his headset and the basketball game could be heard on the television in the background.

All of these factors should be taken into account in determining effective class size for remote training. The more interactive the program, the smaller the class size should be. A program that is primarily lecture based for instance, with occasional questions from participants, can accommodate a fairly large group. “Webinars” often have dozens or even hundreds of participants.

In general however, a remote version of a classroom curriculum will ideally have about half the enrollment of its counterpart. A program designed for 20, with a modicum of interaction, may begin to lose effectiveness as class size increases beyond 10.

There is often resistance to the idea of smaller classes, usually related to the perceived cost. However, remote training is significantly less expensive than training conducted in a classroom. Running additional sessions with lower enrollment will almost always prove to be cost effective.

Summary
The potential advantages to utilizing a remote agent/training program are enormous. However, careful consideration must be given to the unique properties of this environment to ensure a successful implementation.

This article was only able to touch on some of the more significant considerations in implementing a remote training program.

For a more in depth review of your specific needs, please feel free to contact me.

Looking for a topic and speaker for your group’s next business meeting?

7 Questions for Positive Employee Relations

This 20 minute presentation introduces the 7 Questions approach to creating a positive working environment in any organization. It is a strategy that focuses on not only employee needs, but also those of management and the company as a whole.

The 7 Questions approach fosters accountability and consistency in decision making across the enterprise.

About the 7 Questions -
The program draws on the “ripples in a pond” metaphor; the idea that the effects of decisions spread outward in ever widening circles to impact all aspects of business.

Recognizing this connection encourages managers to understand their actions within the context of the management team and the company as a whole.

Using the 7 Questions -
Each of the 7 Questions starts identically -
Will this decision positively affect:

1. The employee
2. You (as their manager)
3. The employee’s friends or associates in the company
4. Your peers
5. Your team or department
6. Other teams or departments
7. The company overall, in productivity, community perception, etc.

This introductory presentation will provide a high level overview of how the 7 Questions can be implemented, what specific behaviours are targeted, and how creating a positive, consistent work environment benefits the bottom line.

About David Keating
David is an entrepreneur, manager, and trainer of thirty years experience. He has used a variation of the 7 Questions in numerous businesses and looks forward to the opportunity to share his technique with groups of all types.

For booking information, contact: David Keating

If you treat your employees as you would want to treated (or as you would want your wife, kids, parents, etc. to be treated), most employment cases would never be filed - John Hyman

The above is an excerpt from Ohio Employer’s Law Blog. Hyman calls it the “Golden Rule of Employment Relations”.

I am always interested in finding references to the Golden Rule outside of “religion”. For me, the Golden Rule represents the tool for living out our ethics and ideals in all aspects of our lives. That has to include our work lives or it means nothing.

In Hyman’s article he references yet another employment lawyer. The focus of the article is to offer employers advice on how to avoid lawsuits from employees.

That motive should not seem self serving. The Golden Rule isn’t intended to turn us into money-losing doormats. Business still exists to both provide service to its customers and make a profit for its owners and shareholders. But Mutuality means that cause and effect are never separated.

If a manager follows the concept of the Golden Rule appropriately, they cannot help but serve the customer, employees and employer, and in the process benefit all.

Subversive isn’t it?