Achieving behaviour change through emotional investment - learning technologies summer forum 2013
At the recent learning technologies summer forum Saffron interactive's Toby Harris and Nick Baurn presented a talk entitled "e-Learning in the age of uncertainty: achieving behaviour change through emotional investment".
Here is a summary of the talk...
Studies show that emotionally engaged employees drive through change/improvement, unfortunately only 31% of employees are emotionally engaged.
Saffron looked at behavioural economics, when tasked to create e-Learning for TFL on mental resilience. They found that people are primarily motivated by intrinsic factors.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
One of the factors is the sense of 'Community'. The example of the high salaries for bankers and footballers was used to explain that people are less concerned about their salary compared to the world, but are concerned about how it compares to peers. This is called peer-comparison, we compare ourselves to people in our community.
The 3 dynamics of action-orientated learning
involve me, show me where I am in relation to others
content through story telling, emotionally charged scenarios
tailored action plans that belong to the learner
All three help build emotional investment.
When TFL came to Saffron they had a problem with high levels of staff absence. 1 in 4 of their employees were effected by stress related mental illness, often due to abuse from customers.
Cost of staff absences
The TFL Building mental resilience e-learning uses a questionnaire to gauge your own mental resilience.
Questionnaire used to evaluate learners level of resilience
Saffron argued that by relating the learning to the learner they maximise engagement. The following screen shows the learners results from the questionnaire.
Results based on questionnaire highlighting learning needs
Learning on how to improve mental resilience is then provided using scenarios and questions.
Scenarios followed by questions
Finally the learner is invited to create their own bespoke action plan. Tailoring the plan to the user means that they are emotionally invested in the action plan.
A tailor made action plan for learners to take away
Over a thousand members of staff took the course, a year after the it was rolled out 70% of learners said they were still using what they learned from the it.
Saffron and TFL looked at the ROI (return on investment) of the course and found that absenteeism had reduced by 1% saving £7.8 million in costs.
ROI from reduced absenteeism
TFL found that the biggest return on investment was not money, but cultural change through emotional investment.