The Easy Button

The Easy Button

Jeff McLanahan
Contributing Writer
Service Experts/Enercare

Back in 2005, Staples advertisements began showing a large red push-button marked “easy” and a slogan that stated, “That was easy.”  This was meant to communicate how easy it is to do business with Staples as a consumer.

Since that time, many people have begun referring to the “easy button” for a variety of reasons, but all of them had to do with making a process or procedure easier to complete.

A critical process that needs to be easy is learning and development.

1. Learning and development opportunities must be easy to access.

Whether your content is delivered in a classroom, through a webinar, or from a learning management system, it must be easily accessible by your users.  Review the process for registering for an offering.  Does it take more than a few clicks of the mouse?  Does the user’s information automatically populate or do they need to fill it in each time they register for a new course?  Are course descriptions available for each offering and is the time length of the course identified?

2. Learning and development opportunities must be easy to use.

After registering for a course, are follow-up confirmations sent out with the location of the classroom training course, the start and end times, what to bring versus what will be provided.  For online courses, can the user simply click on a link to launch the course or do they need to go to another location within the learning management system to get started.  Does classroom training have participant interactions built into the day or is it a lecture?  Is online content presented in short, manageable chunks of content or single stream of content that drones on for 30 minutes or more?

3. Learning and development opportunities must be easy to apply.

At the conclusion of the course offering, are the next steps clearly identified?  Does the user have a list of suggested ways to begin applying what they have learned?  Are there resources and reference materials that can be downloaded by the user to help them with the practical application?

Another consideration for making learning and development easy is allowing for and even encouraging, informal learning.  Do you have a forum where employees can ask questions of their co-workers and share best practices?  If so, is this forum easily accessible?

Employees want learning and development opportunities, but they also want the “easy button.”  Set your employees and your company up for success by supplying both!