HCAMAG.COMISSUE 13.11

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTORHCAMAG.COMISSUE 13.11

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FEATURES

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E-LEARNING

Staying on top of Australia’s complicated employment laws has never been easy, but e-learning may provide a cost-effective solution for both employees and managers

EDUCATING MINDS, CHANGING BEHAVIOURS

‘MINISTER RESIGNS following employee bullying allegations’; ‘AFP to pay compensation over bullying and sexual harassment’; ‘Public servants’ mental stress claims spiralling’ – these are just three headlines from the last month of news stories on HC Online. They point to a spate of ongoing inappropriate behaviour in workplaces across Australia.

Australian organisations have both the obligation and responsibility to protect their employees from unlawful conduct in the workplace, yet the approach thus far for dealing with inappropriate employee behaviour – including bullying and harassment – has fallen short. It’s time for a rethink.

A different approachIf knowledge is power, then appropriate training could provide a solution – but until now providing that training to both employees and managers has been prohibitively expensive.

“Balancing risk against the cost of a sound safety and appropriate workplace behaviour strategy is critical to achieving business success,” says Learning Seat’s Georgia Edge, product manager – content library. “Above all, those responsible must protect their organisation and their people from unlawful behaviour, maintain an ethical work environment, and instil a safe work culture.”

In order to create engaging learning experiences, the legal content is contextualised; the learners are placed at the centre of workplace scenarios

She adds that a strong compliance strategy that delivers contextualised training to support comprehensive policies is a critical component in meeting these challenges.

To that end, Learning Seat, in partnership with law firm Lander & Rogers, has developed the Law at Work e-learning compliance suite, which includes:

y contextualised content that suits all levels of an organisation

y clear messaging that fosters a safety culture and ethical behaviour

y legally compliant content that supports your workplace policies

y trackable online training that provides evidence of participation

The suite builds on Learning Seat’s 15 years of e-learning and compliance experience, as well as consultation with a focus group of HR directors, people & culture managers and legal counsel from a diverse range of industries.

The focus group identified the need for a product with widespread appeal and ease of use; ideally, it had to be suitable for everyone, from senior-level roles to frontline workers.

“Balancing narrative-based content with traditional text-based screens was highlighted as a priority to meet the needs of diverse workforces,” says Edge. “Learning Seat already

offers a diverse range of courses covering the topic of bullying, for example, but clients with large workforces were looking for choice. The market has outgrown a ‘one size fits all’ content model.”

While compliance will probably never be the favourite subject of choice for most employees (and managers), e-learning has helped enliven this traditionally grey area. Learning Seat presented a range of content concepts to the compliance focus group.

As the hoped-for end goal is not just ‘tick the box’ compliance but also behavioural change, Law at Work encourages behavioural

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translated into educative material,” says Edge. The end result is a suite of nine courses on: y bullying y sexual harassment y equal opportunity in employment y health & safety y electronic communication & social media y privacy y misleading and deceptive conduct y competition law y consumer law

All Law at Work courses support compliance obligations across all Australian states and territories. Any state-specific information is delivered via resources accessible in the online course. Courses are relevant to all employees, contractors, volunteers, management and board members, in all industries.

No more ‘tick and flick’ trainingFor employers still sitting on the fence about taking a more proactive approach to enhancing their duty of care towards employee wellbeing and safety, consider this: the public service’s annual Comcare bill for bullying, harassment and ‘occupational violence’ is approaching $80m, and ‘mental harm’ claims have increased by 88% since 2009. Trauma arising from workplace bullying or violence now makes up the largest proportion of mental stress compensation claims among public servants. These claims are reportedly costing, on average, $342,000 each – but there have been almost 500 mental stress claims by public servants over the past five years with a price tag of $500,000 or more.

Clearly it’s time for a more proactive approach from employers.

“Effective compliance training should incite behaviour change and positively impact our client’s safety culture. Tick-and-flick training is not enough,” Edge concludes.

change through a combination of immersive pictorial storytelling, established learning theories, and traditional audio, video and text-based knowledge building.

“We consistently hear from our clients that storytelling in training works, and therefore we’ve carried this technique through to our latest product,” says Edge.

To create engaging learning experiences, the legal content is contextualised; learners are placed at the centre of workplace scenarios via:

y emotional connections to human stories y real-world scenarios based on case law y character point-of-view insights y interactive decision points

Legal foundationsJust as important as the learning options – if not more so given Australia’s complicated and ever-changing employment laws – is the content. Importantly, Learning Seat’s 11 in-house e-learning experts collaborated with 16 of Lander & Rogers’ lawyers.

This is not the first time such a collaboration has occurred. In 2012, Learning Seat partnered with Lander & Rogers to deliver online compliance training that aimed to achieve

strong compliance outcomes for businesses, and a strong engagement response from learners. The S.A.F.E. Files became Learning Seat’s compliance solution.

The S.A.F.E. Files compliance suite uses storytelling to effectively engage its audience, as well as a range of other techniques to increase information retention and assist learners to align with positive safety messaging.

Many of the same learning concepts applied in The S.A.F.E Files have been broadened and built upon in the Law at Work suite. The S.A.F.E Files aimed to:

y use popular culture to connect with audiences

y recognise language and literacy barriers, and devise communication methods to overcome these hurdles

y produce a product that was reflective of high-quality digital content found across the internet

“The planning and design process [for Law at Work] saw our instructional designers work closely with members of the various legal teams to ensure the key legal principles that underpin the training are being accurately

Learning Seat is an e-learning solutions provider with 15 years of experience building online compliance training that helps businesses create safe, reputable and high-performance workplaces. Get more information at learningseat.com.au or by calling 1300 133 151.

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