ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Do you Connect Well?

This scenario-based eLearning program was created for the Restaurant Zone, a hospitality recruiting firm, to enhance leadership skills for their recruiters in empathy and active listening skills. The program focuses on improving the company's commitment to white glove service by fostering effective communication between the recruiters and the clients, candidates, and branches. It is currently in the final stages of development.

Target Audience: Recruiters and Staff (US-based headhunters and international coordinators)

Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Visual Design, Animation / Motion Graphics, Sound Design

Tools Utilized: Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, MindMeister, Canva, Miro, Cornerstone Learning (LMS)

Overview

The client is an SMB with remote employees nationwide and internationally, facing a significant challenge in delivering exceptional white glove service. The heavy reliance on written communication, such as email and text messages, hinders personal connections and meaningful interactions between clients, candidates, and colleagues. This reliance on written communication has led to frequent misunderstandings from the loss of contextual tone, missed opportunities for customer care, and negative reviews questioning the company's commitment to white glove service.

Upon investigation, it was discovered that the company's weekly training sessions on customer care, empathy, and active listening were not engaging employees effectively. The sessions followed a data-dumping approach with minimal engagement from the participants. Additionally, while recruiters and staff were aware of the option to directly call clients and candidates, they often chose the convenience of email and text.

Further analysis revealed that US-based recruiters were the primary senders of emails, while international staff faced challenges due to time zone differences and couldn't avoid relying heavily on written communication and joining the video conferencing meetings.

To address these challenges and improve efficiency, a proposal was made to develop an engaging eLearning course. This course would present real-world scenarios that allow recruiters and staff to make decisions based on empathy and active listening skills. Through interactive exercises, employees would experience the consequences of their choices, enhancing their communication skills both spoken as well as written via the phone, email, or text.

The objective of this tailored training is to empower the team to effectively connect with clients, candidates, and colleagues, elevating the company's white glove service and ensuring client needs are met with excellence.

eLearning style guide I created for the client

My Process

I collaborated with the Subject Matter Expert (SME) to create an action map, identifying the key actions for the learner. Once the top actions were determined, I proceeded to develop a text-based storyboard. After receiving approval from the SME on the storyboard, I crafted visual mockups using Adobe XD. With the text-based storyboard and visual mockups as references, I constructed the visual storyboard, incorporating programming notes for seamless implementation.

To enhance the learning experience, I designed five dynamic animations showcasing the positive and negative aspects of each tool. These animations feature carefully placed sound effects, immersing the learner and effectively demonstrating the consequences of using each tool. Our aim was to provide an engaging and impactful experience that promotes real-world behavior change.

Next, I translated the concept into an interactive prototype using Articulate Storyline. Incorporating valuable feedback from the SME, I refined and finalized the project, ensuring a smooth and intuitive user experience within Storyline.

action map

Working closely with the SME, we mapped out the essential actions for learners to achieve their goals. By identifying the limitations of excessive email reliance, we pinpointed scenarios where alternative communication was more effective as well as how to incorporate the skills via email.

Drawing from these insights, I created an action map that emphasizes three key actions to enhance communication effectiveness.

Mind Meister

Created on mindmeister.com

Text-based Storyboard

Once the action map was finalized, in collaboration with the SME, we developed a text-based storyboard that incorporated real-world scenarios for learners to practice the desired actions. The scenarios focused on key challenges faced by recruiters and were based on the following problems:

1. Working with Clients: Recruiters handling multiple job orders encountered situations where upset clients required specific answers. Instead of providing personalized customer care, recruiters were responding via email in a professional yet matter-of-fact tone, missing opportunities for empathetic communication.

2. Sourcing Candidates: Limited geographical options in the company's database and reliance on local candidates for brick-and-mortar restaurants posed challenges. Candidates interviewing while working full-time faced scheduling conflicts, transportation issues, and unique circumstances. Building trust with candidates and effectively addressing their needs became an obstacle in communication.

3. Branch-to-Branch Collaboration: With recruiters spread across different branches and teams to enhance efficiency, competitive dynamics and a lack of communication hindered open channels of communication. This led to duplicated work, multiple recruiters contacting the same client or candidate without updating the backend systems, and overwhelmed recruiters and management due to complaints.

I designed three scenarios in which the learner would have to make a realistic decision on the most empathetic and active listening tool to use. To make the situations more immersive and realistic, I incorporated storytelling elements and mirrored the real-world context. Working with the SME, I designed the consequences of each scenario to highlight the results of each choice.

For example, to drive home the inefficiencies of using email, I used an animation sequence that showed an inbox quickly filling up with emails. The animation shows the reality of what it is like to be bombarded with email responses and how quickly a full email inbox becomes overwhelming. Along the way, the learner would be able to ask the mentor character for help if they were unsure of what to do in a situation.

Visual Mockups

Once the SME approved the text-based storyboard, I designed the visual mockups for the project in Adobe XD. Adobe XD allowed for quick iteration and easy sharing to make improvements to the visual design of the project. I was quickly able to incorporate feedback from my peers into the slide designs.

One of my design goals for this project was to focus the learner’s attention on various animation scenes that would help illustrate the results of their choices. I accomplished this by keeping the overall project design clean and minimal and incorporating more color into the tool animations to make them the visual focus of the course.

My goal was to make the different Microsoft tools easily identifiable while sticking to the minimal and simplistic style of the overall project. I designed multiple iterations of each program interface until settling on using the main color of each program in the heading bar along with Microsoft’s default font throughout the project.

I continued to iterate each slide type based on the feedback I received, improving the various slide layouts, button colors, and hover states. I edited the cover photo, desk background, computer background, and profile pictures with Adobe Illustrator.

Click through the images to your right >

Interactive Prototype

After incorporating valuable feedback and refining my mockups, I created an interactive prototype using Articulate Storyline. This allowed me to thoroughly test the functionality of my eLearning experience and gather suggestions on incorporating animations that enhance the user experience. The prototype consists of seven interactive slides, covering content up to the second question. To offer additional support, I included a mentor button on the question slides, granting users the option to seek expert advice before responding. This intentional decision, based on extensive research, aims to provide learners with autonomy and control over accessing knowledge during their learning journey.

Full Development

Currently, in the final stages of development, we are awaiting input from various stakeholders, including supervisors, managers, and coordinators. We are conducting A and B testing with different scenarios to determine the most effective approach that can be implemented in the course. Additionally, we have engaged a few recruiters to test the course and provide valuable feedback. Once we receive all the necessary input and feedback, we will be able to finalize the key areas and proceed with rolling out the first phase of training.

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RB Instructional Designer