Good, better, best
FLOWSPARKS offers a great many forms of learning that keep it interesting both for the authors and for the participants. It is all more interactive and you can make your e-Learning modules visually very appealing.
Goed is the care network of the Christelijke Mutualiteit health insurer, consisting of 90 pharmacies, 70 hearing centres and 60 homecare stores in Flanders. In these points of contact, a diverse range of products combined with the expertise and personal approach of over 1,300 employees ensure high-quality service and comprehensive care tailored to the requirements of those in need.
In early 2023, Goed received the FLOWSPARKS public price for the manner in which it uses FLOWSPARKS in the onboarding process for new employees. ‘Through an e-Learning programme, they make acquaintance with our organisation,’ explains Aafke D’Haeyer, Training Coordinator at Goed. ‘New colleagues learn about practical matters such as guidelines for sickness, holidays, prevention, our corporate identity, and how our organisation functions.’
For over a year now, Goed has been using FLOWSPARKS not only for onboarding, but also for every e-Learning programme that is developed. This includes training sessions for pharmacists, for wholesalers, for employees in the stores, IT-related training courses, as well as FAQs covering topics such as pay slips, explanations of the use of tools and applications, etc.
Before FLOWSPARKS, Goed worked with an open source LMS. ‘That was an outdated platform where you essentially just uploaded your PowerPoint presentation,’ says Remco Van Dijk, Project Manager at Goed. ‘It was not interactive at all and therefore more than dated.’ Long before the arrival of the corona pandemic, Goed wanted to excel as a well-trained organisation and implement a state-of-the art e-Learning platform that offered more capabilities; it had to be able to provide better online training to the very geographically dispersed employees.
‘It is in any case becoming increasingly difficult to gather people together for classroom training. That is where a tool like FLOWSPARKS comes in handy, especially when it comes to pure knowledge transfer. In my opinion, skills are still best learned in a classroom setting. But there too, FLOWSPARKS can be a useful supplement for ‘aftercare’ and pre-teaching. That is exactly what is so great about FLOWSPARKS: you can use it for everything,’ laughs Remco.
A large number of training courses focus on the products offered by Goed in its stores, enabling employees to engage in better customer conversations, provide good advice and make the best choices regarding the products they recommend.
‘We refer to it as the ‘Good better best range’ in our courses,’ Aafke explains. ‘That’s the basis from which we start. If they go with our selection they can be sure they’ve made a good choice.’
‘The group of people with whom we tested those training courses had a very positive response. They were left wanting more,’ Remco adds. ‘But we are still struggling to become more ‘training-minded’. We have already made significant progress, but we are not yet a learning organisation,’ admits Remco. ‘It should become a habit to dedicate an hour per week to training and learning. However, we also realise that it is difficult for people who are working in the stores to fit in a training course in between times. You need to be able to free them up and schedule them.’
That is not happening yet. Most of the training is therefore not mandatory. ‘For the mandatory training, such as that for pharmacists, time is set aside for the employees. Managers can monitor who has already completed the training and who has not and they can inquire about the reasons for non-completion. They do not see the scores because FLOWSPARKS is linked to our HR tool in which we offer the full catalogue of training courses. In that tool, managers only see whether a training has been completed or not. I can view detailed data and scores in FLOWSPARKS,’ explains Aafke.
FLOWSPARKS offers a great many forms of learning that keep it interesting both for the authors and for the participants. It is all more interactive and you can make your e-Learning modules visually very appealing.
A number of authors received training in FLOWSPARKS and took a course on the house style in order to ensure that all e-Learning courses have a consistent look. Within one year, they created a total of no fewer than 81 training courses in FLOWSPARKS. ‘Not everything was new, of course. After a critical evaluation, we also migrated some of the courses from the old platform,’ says Aafke. The authors did not encounter many difficulties. ‘FLOWSPARKS is very intuitive and fun to use, also for the authors.’
‘At first, it does take some searching to find the right template that you need. There are so many templates and possibilities that sometimes you realise halfway through an e-Learning course that it’s better to start again,’ she laughs. ‘It’s trial and error. But FLOWSPARKS already provides good guidelines within the tool itself, and you can always call your contact person to agree on the right approach.’
‘The didactic side was actually the most difficult for us,’ Remco continues. ‘We had no knowledge of how to present certain topics to people; how to translate them into an approach that appeals to the participants. Once you have that, the methodology follows from the approach and then you’re all set.’
At Goed, in any case, they are very happy with FLOWSPARKS. ‘I am very enthusiastic,’ says Aafke. ‘And so are our employees. There are a great many forms of learning that keep it interesting both for the authors and for the participants. It is all more interactive and you can make your e-Learning modules visually very appealing. You also notice that FLOWSPARKS works effectively with user suggestions. That is very pleasing. The tool keeps evolving. Just because they have a good product doesn’t mean that they are resting on their laurels.’
‘The great thing about working with FLOWSPARKS is that the FLOWSPARKS team itself is also very enthusiastic. They want to help you move forward,’ Remco explains. ‘People really help you and they are serious about it. They teach you how to work effectively with their tool and provide great ideas on how to do it better. It is nice to see that an organisation selling a learning platform is itself very eager to learn.’
