Ep206 Steve Stookey - Transform Your Training: How Modern E-Learning Solutions Are Saving Companies Millions While Boosting Employee Performance

Steve Stookey 0:00

You also want to make sure that you're bringing on those executives. I'm just really passionate about this because I've seen how online training and professional development, in and of itself, transforms organizations that they need to see the ROI

Mike O'Neill 0:18

Welcome to get unstuck and on target, the weekly podcast that offers senior leaders insights and strategies to not only lead with confidence and vision, but also to achieve ground breaking results. I'm your host. Mike O'Neill. I coach top level executives on the power of ethical leadership to forge teams to be as united as they are effective. In each episode, join me for insightful conversations with leaders just like you, providing practical advice to help you get unstuck and propel you and your company forward. Let's get started. Welcome to get unstuck and on target. I'm Mike O'Neill, and today's episode explores a topic that I frequently discuss when coaching executives, how training can be a game changer for culture, engagement and performance. My guest Steve Stuckey, co founder cyberworks, has spent over two decades, transforming professional development with cutting edge strategies that go far beyond compliance. Together, we uncover how intentional modern learning approaches can align teams, reduce turnover and drive measurable results. So if you're ready to re imagine how training can unlock potential across your organization. This episode is for you. Let's get unstuck and on target. Joining me today is Steve Stuckey, co founder of cipher works, an online education company with 23 years at Paychex, one of the top 100 training organizations in the US. Steve developed expertise in adult learning. Since then, he has worked with organizations to transform cultures, improve efficiencies and create custom, interactive online training solutions. Steve specializes in developing purposeful professional development programs that combine online in person and virtual training, ensuring that the right people receive effective training in today's business environment where employee retention and engagement are critical. Steve, insights are invaluable, and therefore I am very much looking forward to this conversation. Welcome, Steve,

Steve Stookey 2:39

thank you so much, Mike. I'm really thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me. You

Mike O'Neill 2:45

know, Steve, when people think of online education, and they probably have already heard of your company, cipher works because you are somewhat a behemoth if you're a major player in that world. I'm just stepping back and I'm just trying to envision how online training has evolved, and what comes immediately and form of a question is, what trends have you seen emerge in training over the last decade? And in particular, what trends have you seen kind of emerge since COVID

Steve Stookey 3:18

Yes. So the first thing that came to mind was that notion of of of COVID was a really watershed moment for all of us in this industry. But I would say, backing up a little bit, I think all of us, certainly of a certain age, are used to the compliance training that we had to take of yesteryear, and it was very laughable, right? So everybody's probably taken the CBT computer based training over time, which was typically just a recorded PowerPoint, or it was a video. Hey, go ahead and watch this video. And sometimes it was cataloged in an Excel spreadsheet or some other program to say, hey, you know, John Sue and Susie completed this training. And so there was obviously a lot of problems with that. And the interesting thing is, you mentioned that I came from the world of payroll companies and and the interesting thing from payroll HRIS systems is for years and years, training was not a natural part of the payroll HRIS world, which seems kind of odd, and it was odd to me, because it's so critical, right? You onboard an employee. I am of the belief that when people get a new job, they don't want to get fired, they don't want to do a bad job. They come to the position and they really want to excel. And not only do what they want to excel for that, but they also want to be, continue to be developed for the next position and the next opportunity. And so that was really a big gap, right, even in the notion of just new employee. Employee onboarding. So when you ask the question about, like, what is kind of changed, and what's happened in the evolution, all of those pieces have happened. So almost all of our clients might integrate with their payroll HRIS system, so that if you hire a new employee, they come aboard, they're automatically assigned certain courses. It might be compliance training, it might be management, leadership training, whatever it might be that can be prescribed. And then, going back to the COVID piece, I think that, you know, it was really, we were one of those industries that really did well during COVID, as you can imagine, particularly in the education space, because these organizations didn't want to lay people off. They had to make a number of changes. They very quickly. And so we were able to step in and really help out with that, not only with their their training and keeping people busy and uplifted and ongoing, but also from the social side of things. We also created some free courses to try to educate people on what's going on in their state and updates and so forth. So it's just been a wonderful process. But to conclude kind of that is, you'll see that there's been leaps and bounds in terms of the functionality of the learning management system, more importantly, the quality of courses. There's a tremendous amount of data now that show how effective training is created. There's a tremendous amount of science and study that goes into how do we interact with a person? Right? Because we learn differently. You might be more of a visual learner. I might be more auditory and kinesthetic, and that's really important, a critical piece of instructional design and creating courses, and then thinking about the courses themselves, what is ideal in terms of the delivery. Sometimes it is online training, and that's appropriate and spot on. But more oftentimes, there's courses or subject matter that needs to be trained live or virtually or what have you. And so now I see a lot more of our clients using blended learning, which is a combination of online training and live training.

Mike O'Neill 7:26

You know, Steve, there's several reasons why I was looking forward to this conversation with you. One of them is, where has online training come and you've kind of given us a great recap of the fast evolution and in many respects, improvement upon the effectiveness of online learning. But you also introduce something else that in the back of my mind, I think, you know, I came out of a corporate HR background, and if you did nothing but just try to track compliance, we got to keep up with this compliance, that compliance. How to do that. One thing I'm aware of is that you make available to clients a learning management system that helps them do just that, and if I'm hearing you correctly, because your training is already able to integrate with your payroll or HRIS system, you make it so much easier if they have access to a learning management system that talks to these other systems. Do I understand that correctly?

Steve Stookey 8:32

Yes. So there's a there's a that's kind of a longer conversation, and the fact that there's so many different ways to integrate. And it surprises people to find out that I have a lot of conversations during my week with other learning management systems companies, and that's because they want to have our content so we have the ability to deliver SCORM compliant training courses in other learning management systems, which is really helpful for that organization, that, hey, I've already got a learning management system in place, but I need specific whether it's license, licensing or certification content that I don't have, or I want to have a higher level of quality of course, they might come to us to utilize those courses, and that's an easy thing to do, so but in terms of integrations, right? We're work, we're developed integrations with with Salesforce and LTI, integrations, API and so forth. And I'm, I'm by no means the technical expert. I've got some really brilliant people that help us through that, but it gives us so much flexibility now that we never had, you know, 10 years ago, it's, it's, it's really, that's what's exciting for me, is there's so much that is coming out that is new. You've got AI and VR, there's so many different technologies and modality. That you can bring to the table to really do a great job at training. So,

Mike O'Neill 10:05

you know, you mentioned a few minutes ago how we all tend to learn differently. Some are visual. Some are more, you know, listen for learning. One thing that some people don't realize, most people listen to podcast, and I would venture most of people will be listening to this podcast. What people may not realize is that we're both in front of a camera. We're recording this, and this will actually be available in a video format. We have a YouTube channel. I've been surprised to learn of the number of people who have come back to me and said, I watched your podcast, and so you just don't know, but they do what works best for them. And it sounds like what y'all have learned is, if you make that an option for the learners, they embrace it that much more. You know, Steve, I love to kind of learn a little bit more about the kinds of organizations that that you work with. I know from our prior conversations, you help organizations such as like the YMCA and other state agencies, and you help them save money and improve outcomes. Can you share maybe an example of an organization that y'all have helped with and how you did so,

Steve Stookey 11:22

yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Mike. So one example that comes to mind that you you brought up was the YMCAs. So years ago, our CEO was the member of the YMCA of Rochester New York, and the YMCA of Rochester New York is kind of the feeder organization to other YMCAs, meaning they're they develop their leaders, and those leaders go on to run other YMCAs around the country. So it's kind of the hotbed of knowledge and experimentation and so. So it was funny, we had actually created a whole series of courses to to serve the the world of after school, right? So these are individuals that are working with children there. They need to understand how children develop and trauma informed care a whole number of other subjects. And so folks across the country just loved our after school training that we came up with. And we Paul, our CEO, wound up sitting down with the executives at the YMCA of Rochester, and they said, Wow, this is really great. But you know what, you'll have a customer today if we can figure out this new employee onboarding process. And what they had been doing is they had several times a year they would run a three day new employee onboarding process. So you can imagine, with YMCAs, they have quite a bit of turnover. You can imagine people coming in and out for the summertime, and they wanted to hire somebody, and they wanted to be able to get them trained and get them out on the on the floor as quickly as possible, with with their knowledge. Well, it and the YMCAs are geographically very dispersed, right? So the Rochester YMCA covers several different geographic areas around the city. So you hire a new employee, you have to sign them up for that three day process that might not be happening for another month or so. So you have to wait for that time, and then you also have to pay quite a lot of money to for transportation, for food, the hours that they're spending in the classroom, etc. And one interesting thing to note as an aside here is that if you if you're doing an hour long live training, that typically translates to about a half an hour course online, because it's, it's, it's a more efficient in that regard, and there's not the chatter and so forth. So it's, it's really very efficient. At the end of the day, what we did is we wound up sitting in and listening to their training process and really analyzing, what are the subjects that they're training on what can be put online. So we took a three day training and reduced that to a half a day training. And so you can imagine right there the cost savings. But I think the surprising thing for them, what number one, they were very surprised at how much money they saved, but also how efficient it was, and how quickly they could get people on the floor and absolute actually working rather than having to wait. So the the feedback just all around, not just from the administration, but also from the users, right? There's very few users that are going to want to go sit in a classroom for a whole day's worth of of training, not much less three days worth of training and so forth. So we're very excited about the results of that, and then we took that knowledge, and now we create custom new employee orientation training courses around the country, and because they're using our learning management system, again, you hire a new employee. They automatically get assigned that training. Managers can go in and they can see, hey, these people have completed all of that training, even all of their compliance training. They can even sign off on their employee handbook and so forth. So every organization is different, and YMCAs in particular, once you've met one YMCA. You've met one YMCA, so that's really nice having a customized process for each one.

Mike O'Neill 15:28

That's a great illustration. You know folks who listen to this podcast, or they know me or bench builders, they know that we're also in the training business, but we have a very specific niche that we typically work our build your bench. And new to the bench series is in person most typically, and it's focused on people skills. It's focused on the things that supervisors need to know and be comfortable with to be successful. We have found that that classroom approach works best at the same time, those same clients have ample need for training at E Learning is a much better fit, but where I was going with my comment is that in today's environment, even in an in person environment, the attention span is not what it once was of participants. Sure, when it comes to e learning, what are the things that I know that y'all have worked real hard on, but I think it'd be important for our viewers and listeners to kind of see, and that is, if you are sitting in front of a screen, in what ways have you all learned to make that experience not only such that they enjoy it and they learn something, and that what they learned, you can see impacting the organization. But what do y'all find that keeps engagement high so that people don't feel like they're just parked in front of a computer until they complete all the training modules.

Steve Stookey 17:05

Yeah, so engagement is critical, and I guess maybe kind of a fun way to put this is to just admit to you that I don't like when I get assigned online training courses myself, right? It's just a reality, but there's compliance trainings that we have to take as individuals, right? And it's funny, because I always look at that as a spectrum. That's one of the things, why I have a new engagement, is I'm asking and trying to get a feel for that organization. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to go from one end of the spectrum is check the box, right? I want to complete this training so that if something happens, there's a lawsuit or an accident or what have you, I can show that my training records. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you know, we do a lot of training course development for courses that literally save lives, like fire and EMS training and and so forth, which is really important some of the training that we've done with the zoos and aquariums, right? You know, it's critical that we keep people safe, etc, and so engagement is really a critical issue. And you point to the fact that, you know, attention spans are reduced, that type of thing. So you probably heard of micro learning, right, which is basically smaller snippets of courses. So depending on the subject matter of those courses, there's almost no limit of things that we can do right? We can make very short courses where folks can go into the catalog and say, Hey, I need to review on lockout tagout or whatever that might be, maybe a crucial conversation. I want to review that real quickly. That's one of the advantages that you get, but within a course, right? And as I mentioned, there's a tremendous amount of data and studies that support this, making sure that we are paying attention to the fact that there are different types of learners, number one, so that there's text to read. Then the next thing that you might do is watch a video. You might play a learning game, and a learning game is a drag and drop, right? You've heard the term gamification, and we respond very well to that, and we also it goes into Neuro Linguistic Programming, right? How do our brains work? So I will share with you, me personally is that I discovered over time that if I'm listening to a podcast or a lecture or whatever it might be, ideally, I'm writing down those key points. And the reason why that works is that involves a different part of my brain. It solidifies that piece of information. And then to carry that on to the next step, we've got a lot of tools like surveys and learning paths and things like that that help us collect data on how we're doing over time. And is is it? Are the individuals? Is it relevant? Or is it enjoyable for them? Is it easy to use? It's important for us, for example, to make all of our courses completely mobile, so that they can access courses on their cell phone or a tablet or what have you. So trying to meet people where they're at and keeping them engaged. And so you're never going to have a course that is just all text or just a long, hour long video, because as humans, we can't digest that, so we're mixing it up. And then, of course, the you know, you've got learning checks throughout, so that's going to try to reinforce your behavior or get you back into, you know, serve as some guard rails, and then you've got a quiz at the end of each course, and you need to complete that successfully. And if you don't, you've got an opportunity to go back and redo the course or cover some of the areas that that you might need some more help on. So there's a lot that goes into that. I'm listening to you, and started kind of laughing to myself for a moment. Here we are geeking out on on this. You probably don't know this. I have a Masters in Human Resources Development, and people say, Well, what is that? It's what we're talking about. I had no idea all those years ago that I would be having a conversation like this and be leaning into this conversation just learning about all the things that you know cipher works, has learned in you all's journey. Let me shift gears about implementing training for a moment, and that is Steve, in your experience where, when organizations are trying to implement training, where do they get stuck? And when they get stuck, what steps do you recommend that they do to help them get unstuck? Yes, that's boy. That's a great question, because is funny, because we'll, we'll reach out to organizations and and so often we will hear that, you know, yes, we tried this. We tried to create something in the past or or what have you, and it's and I think there's almost a universal acceptance or understanding that online learning has a significant place in in our world. But I think that the challenge is a lot of folks don't know how to do it. And I'll put myself in that same camp, because when I came out of my years in the payroll hrs industry and came to start this business with with our co founder Paul, I realized quickly there was a lot that I didn't know, and I had to sit down with instructional designers and watch them, what is the process that they go through? And so a lot of that has to do with they don't know the questions to ask, right? And so that's one of the things that we can help guide folks with. And usually you start with the start with the end in mind, right? What is it that I want to accomplish here? What is my vision going to look like, and then build backwards from that? And, you know, we help folks put a plan together. I'll tell you just a quick story. We wound up working with this, the American zoo Association, Aza, and this came out of a need for standardizing training for zoo zoos and aquariums around the country, and there was a lot of interest in creating courses. And through that conversation, we got connected with the San Diego Zoo and met with them, and they had struggled for several years to come up with an online, a series of online training courses, and when we got to them, they'd spent a lot of time and money and effort, and they had one course in it, and it just, and it frankly, wasn't that great. I mean, it's, it's no dig on them. It's just they didn't have the experience to do that. So the interesting thing is, is that, you know, we're not experts in fire and EMS, and we're not experts in in in animal care and so forth, but we work with their subject matter experts. We're experts in creating that interactive, engaging online courses. And so over a period of time, we created the partnership with San Diego Zoo, and we started creating a whole catalog of online courses, working with all of their subject matter experts. And that's a great example of what we do now. We're do a lot of courses for the ASPCA colleges and universities. You know, even Harvard universities, people come to us because they have this really great content, but it's really important that they deliver it in such a way that it's going to stick. And the important part of that is that when we work with a new industry, like the zoos and aquariums, with San Diego Zoo, when we create the courses, we'll also oftentimes do an efficacy study in this. Is where we really try to get an idea of where are people at today and where do we want them to be. But in that efficacy study, we're having them fill out a survey where we're collecting demographic data, etc, and then we're having them take that course, and then we're doing a follow up survey and scores and data, and then we're also, oftentimes, we'll do another retention survey maybe six months down the road, because that's another metric that we want to look at. And it's really neat we actually have a had a professor from San Diego State that actually evaluates online education. And I remember going into the room going, I don't know what to expect. He did the Evaluate, first evaluation for us, and he said, This is the best that we've ever seen in terms of these results, in terms of before and after, and then even months down the road, seeing how people actually retain the information. So we've got now that data, and so we had such great success with the efficacy study, we have clients that will do that with us as well. And there's also some very simple tools that a a Learning Development Manager or an HR director can now use within the learning management system to inform them of the training that they're delivering or the training that they're creating within the system. Uh, it'll inform them. How is my training? What do I need to do to improve it? Because it's an iterative process. And the fun thing is, is I don't know what we're going to be developing six months from now, right? There's always new training courses to be, to be developed, but it's important to be really mindful of what your end game is, right? Because,

Steve Stookey 26:51

boy, there's so much to it, right? Because you also want to make sure that you're bringing on those, those executives. And I, I'm just really passionate about this, because I've seen how online training and professional development, in and of itself, transforms organizations. So oftentimes, people will come to us with a specific problem. It may be like San Diego Zoo, where we're trying to train people so that they can deliver a better experience to their guests. It could be that they're trying to be safer. It could be that they're trying to learn very specific information on how to work with elements or lemurs or whatever it might be. There's so much that can be done, but it has to be done effectively, and it's important that those executives are on board too, but they need to see the ROI so this helps? Yes,

Mike O'Neill 27:42

you know, it's interesting. You mentioned the executives. I share that same sentiment, and that is, when you're looking at these types of things, it's it has organizational impact, but you mentioned ROI, and what I'm learning in this conversation is you all go into it with that expectation, and that is, you've got the numbers to kind of back it up. You know, Steve, we've had a pretty far ranging conversation, I guess. What I would ask is, as you kind of think about this conversation, can you think of one actional piece of advice, something you would share with our listeners, business leaders looking to create, say, a impactful and cost effective training program. What would that piece of advice be? Where would you encourage them to start?

Steve Stookey 28:33

I think that it goes two things mainly come to mind. One is, again, start with the end in mind, right? Oftentimes it's a very clear problem that somebody will have. I want to reduce my turnover because it's so expensive. I want to make sure that we reduce the number of accidents that we have. I want to change behaviors. And I'm always a big believer, because I've seen it happen if you're a new executive, or you're an existing executive, and you've got to make some cultural, dramatic changes within your organization. This is a really great, cost effective way to do that. The second piece is really making sure that you have a mindful plan in place for what you want to do. Milestones. Obviously, you know, they say Rome wasn't built in a day. It's going to take a little bit of time, but even that first step is really profound, right? There's we run into so many organizations that don't even have a learning management system, or they don't have a process. Or, you know, Charles is the one that does the training, or it's on the job training never. Everybody learns really well that way. So recognizing that there's a great opportunity to make some profound changes in an organization without a ton of effort, it's really about getting. Started, and then the other thing that comes to mind is making sure that you've got executive support. I've seen that those folks that really want to create a culture of learning and education and constant professional development can make profound changes in their organizations. And there's there's data that I just saw recently that was talking about organizations that have a a purposeful professional development process, that training program in place, are more earn more revenue, they're more profitable, they have less turnover. It just makes a ton of sense, but being being very mindful of that. And also, it's not enough to just throw out a bunch of courses to people you want to make sure that the courses are quality, the content, the live training that you do is is, is very effective, and you've got tools here to be able to do surveys to inform that how you get better and better every day. That was probably more than you expected, Mike, but great question. Well,

Mike O'Neill 31:05

like you, I was writing down so it helped me remember some things. Let me show you what I wrote down as we kind of recap, you're encouraging us as leaders to if you're talking about training and rolling out training right begin with the end in mind. Have a mindful plan. Be intentional. Realize that if you are in a senior leadership role, your sponsorship, your endorsement of this is critical if you're trying to create an environment by which people see that professional development is part of how we do business here. So I think those tied together very, very, very nicely. You know, Steve, before we close, I have something for our listeners to consider, and that is, are you tackling growth challenges with confidence or scaling pains misaligned teams and leadership gaps are they holding you back? At bench builders, we provide leadership training and executive coaching to align teams, develop leaders and drive measurable success. So if you want to lead with purpose and win with clarity, I invite you to visit at bench, dash builders.com to learn more. You know Steve, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. For listeners who want to connect with you and learn more about your work, what's the best way for them to do so,

Steve Stookey 32:35

yeah, so I think there's, there's two ways. Certainly you can connect me, with me on LinkedIn. It's Steve Stuckey. It's S, T, O, O, k, e, y, and obviously, with cipher works learning management systems, that's C, y, p, H, E, R, W, O, R, x. And of course, our website at WWW dot cipher works.com and we obviously excited to chat. This is what we do and what we love to do.

Mike O'Neill 33:05

Well, Steve, thank you. Thank you for our subscribers, for joining us, and I hope that today's conversation with Steve will kind of inspire you of some new ideas to get unstuck and on target. Thank you for joining us for this episode of get unstuck and on target. I hope you've gained insights to help you lead with confidence and drive your organization forward. Remember, at bench builders, we're committed to your success, your leadership excellence and your strategic growth. If you've enjoyed our conversation today, please leave a review, rate and subscribe to keep up with our latest episodes. This show really grows when listeners like you share it with others. Who do you know, who needs to hear what we talked about today? Until next time, I encourage you to stay focused on the target and continue to break new ground on your leadership path. You.