The need to develop leadership has also been recognised at the strategic level and incorporated into the HR programme. The Renewing supervisory work and leadership project began in early 2024. It has created the Jotos leadership programme, which aims to develop leadership skills and make everyday work run more smoothly, supporting both new and experienced managers.
Using learning design in staff training planning
Learning design is a user-centred approach to planning learning. It creates a process, with stages and content, that enables learners to learn as effectively as possible. The learning design approach can be applied, for example, to planning and delivering training, staff skills development and digital learning.
Jotos’s main objective for the collaboration was to model a process for designing and delivering training/courses that could be used to plan and implement internal training.
Through the model, Jotos wants to connect coaching and training content with other forms of workplace learning, ensuring that learning becomes part of work and the workplace community’s shared expertise.
Progress of the work
The work began by considering appropriate ways to involve people. Instead of conventional workshops, we chose a working-pair model in which the contribution of Jotos’s specialist planner ensured dialogue between the emerging model and Jotos’s skills development team.
Through co-creation, we developed Jotos’s training and coaching process model: what stages go into building an impactful coaching programme, and what must be considered at each stage when designing effective learning?
The resulting process model covered the stages from identifying skills needs and defining learning objectives to pedagogical scripting and impact assessment.
A handbook with templates was created to support these stages, guiding everyone involved in training design through the process model. The templates created to support the coaching and training design process serve as tools at its different stages and help break the planning process into smaller parts.
The process model prompts consideration of everything that should be kept in mind when working through each stage. The templates act as tools throughout the learning design process, moving planning forward stage by stage.
Following these stages in order, using the instructions and templates, makes it possible to put learning design principles into practice, design high-quality learning processes using design thinking and familiar design tools, link learning processes into a coherent coaching programme, and plan measures for assessing impact.
In conclusion
The reform of continuous learning responds to the lifelong need to develop and renew skills. It is based on the idea that, in a rapidly changing world, people constantly need updated knowledge and new skills to succeed in working life.
This need also challenges workplaces to become learning environments and develop their own processes to support continuous learning. Learning design provides tools for planning consistently high-quality, goal-oriented learning experiences in work environments.
Learning is ultimately a highly complex whole. It is important to understand the different factors in the process when adapting it to needs arising in work environments. Using learning design tools, we plan staff training and support the application and deepening of learning in practical work tasks.
Learning design offers an excellent way to ensure positive learning experiences and create favourable conditions for continuous skills development in work environments.
Follow Jotos and the work of the wellbeing services county of Lapland if you would like to hear more about how the model will be applied to leadership development.
For further information about Jotos, contact Project Manager Vesa Karjalainen.
Would you like to hear more about us and our work?
Kuulas & Co Oy. Kuulas & Co is a design agency and coaching company specialising in organisational development. We help our clients align strategic skills needs with employees’ career and learning aspirations. At the same time, we coach employees to become insightful developers of their own work and workplace communities.
Let’s shape the future of work and learn together!