A service technician working on a copier encounters a new paper feeder that throws him for a loop - and the manual is nowhere to be found.

A pharmaceutical salesperson is blindsided when word of FDA approval for a competitor´s drug gets through to a customer before the salesperson can learn how to sell against the rival.

A regional manager, who spends most of each week traveling her territory, is frustrated by her inability to keep up on industry news, something that she expects of her own reports.

These are just three of millions of examples of how companies put themselves at risk if their employee training programs stop with traditional classroom- and PC-desktop-based learning. To keep their on-the-move workforces up to speed on business knowledge and job skills, employers are beginning to deploy mobile learning, which harnesses portable computing and communications devices to bring just-in-time training to the worker in the real-world context of his work.

Human resources executives have every reason to get involved in mobile learning, and it´s not just due to their traditional strong role in training. In our economy, dominated as it is by technology and knowledge work, the best employees won´t stay with a company that doesn´t deliver training to them in a medium, place and time that accommodates the particular demands of their workdays.

Portable Delivery Devices Serve Learning Needs of a Dynamic Workforce.
Mobile learning doesn´t begin and end with hardware, but it does employ a wide variety of devices to deliver training to clerks on the sales floor, salesmen driving between calls, and business-development types waiting at airport gates. Companies have implemented or are experimenting with training via Palm computers, Pocket PCs, tablet PCs, handheld scanners and smart phones, as well as the latest in Internet media such as blogs and podcasts.

The argument for mobile, distributed training is simple: Rather than frontloading training for new hires or veteran employees entering new domains, "it makes sense to embed knowledge in the work process," says Thomas Davenport, author of Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers. "You can look at the work environment of a particular role and adjust the delivery mechanism accordingly."

In terms of content, much of present-day mobile learning takes its cues from electronic learning techniques that have been applied in call centers for years.

"In the collections environment, we can deliver to representatives learning that takes them through multiple scenarios with different clients and shows the reps how to drive clients to a payment or to a promise to pay," says Dave Amborski, vice president of best practices at Knowlagent, a training developer in Alpharetta, Ga. The company´s software maintains productivity by sending training modules to agents only when call traffic is slack.

In the retail sector, where annual employee turnover can exceed 100 percent and the inventory of high-tech products changes frequently, mobile learning devices offer big advantages. Wal-Mart and big-box consumer electronics stores are experimenting with handheld devices that enable salespeople to scan bar codes on displayed products and retrieve the latest specifications on the fly, to help educate themselves and sell customers.

Some consumer electronics stores also encourage workers to scan their badges when they start a shift; the device then notifies them of newly available training that´s relevant to their jobs, says Chris von Koschembahr, worldwide mobile learning executive for IBM Corp.

For higher-level knowledge workers who manage their own crunched time, training that´s available in small increments via multiple media offers a practical advantage. "Your audience will get to the training sooner if it´s in six 10-minute chunks, rather than a solid hour," adds von Koschembahr.

The Economics of Mobile Learning Aren´t Simple.
The return on investment in mobile learning is often a complex calculation. But if development and technology integration costs are controlled, mobile learning may offer savings on a number of fronts.

The development of content and technology for the delivery of mobile learning does involve financial tradeoffs. "You may save on classroom trainers and by taking people off the job less," says Eva Kaplan-Leiserson, associate news editor at the American Society for Training & Development in Alexandria, Va. "But you might have to spend more on initial setup."

With salespeople and factory workers, mobile learning can reduce costs or increase revenue by avoiding the need to take employees off the sales floor or the production line.

Athletic shoe retailer Nike Inc., for example, has quantified the value of the on-the-fly training that its sales associates can get in increments of about five minutes. Stores that have adopted the company´s computer-based Sports Knowledge Underground learning program have seen sales increase by 4 percent to 5 percent, according to the company.

Mobile learning can cut the costs of frontloaded training. With mobile learning, "on the front end, we can train less, then get the information to employees when and where they need it," says Robert Pearson, chief learning officer at Vitesse Learning Inc. in Toronto.

And by steering developers away from the expensive-to-exploit multimedia capabilities of desktop or notebook PCs, mobile learning may cut development costs, at least for the delivery of straightforward content. "Podcasting is making mobile learning easier to do - it´s simpler than developing a full-fledged course," says Kaplan-Leiserson.

Finally, to the extent that mobile learning boosts the effectiveness of training for millions of workers, it can even help reduce turnover costs according to IBM´s von Koschembahr. Why? Because effective mobile learning addresses one of top job complaints cited by exiting retail employees: the inadequacy of training.

Mobile Learning Is Just a Piece of the Training Puzzle.
Still, for most employers, mobile learning is only one aspect of an integrated training system. "It´s not a silver bullet," says Amborski. "It works best in a blended learning environment." Mobile learning modules generally must relate to other learning systems, and integration can be expensive and difficult.

Mobile devices and media also pose design challenges. A multimedia presentation created for a notebook PC will have to be radically redesigned to be effective on a 2-inch smart-phone screen with limited resolution.

But when applied judiciously, mobile learning can yield substantial benefits in employee development and retention - while contributing to better results for the lines of business. Those are returns that most HR executives would be happy to incorporate in calculating the hROI, or ROI of their own HR departments.

About the Author

John Rossheim is a journalist in Providence, Rhode Island who writes about workplace issues, employment trends and changing relationships between employers and workers.  Johnregularly contributes to Workforce Insights, an online resource about emerging labor trends and issues produced by Veritude.

About Veritude

The article originally appeared in Workforce Insights on Veritude.com. Veritude provides strategic human resources - the talent, technology and tactics that growing firms need in order to anticipate and adapt to changes in the workplace. Veritude is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fidelity Investments. Headquartered in Boston, the company serves clients throughout the United States and Canada and is part of Fidelity´s ongoing investment and leadership in outsourced HR services. To review other articles, research and expert analysis relevant to HR professionals seeking to stay informed, please visit www.veritude.com.  For more information, contact: inquiry@veritude.com or call:1-800-597-5537. 

© 2005 Veritude,LLC.  Reprinted with permission.