Enhancing business coaching with online training
The first in Finland to have begun the development of business coaching practices aimed at certification, BCC Business Coaching Center has implemented a part of its training program online. E-learning enables course participants to get even more out of the face-to-face training segments.
BCC Business Coaching Center Oy is a Finnish competency center focused on coaching. To promote coaching operations, it supplies services in the fields of training, research, and implementation, as well as high-quality tools for the purposes of process planning, implementation, and evaluation.
BCC provides professional coaches, superiors, and HR personnel with Certified Business Coach (CBC) –related training. One of the forms of training used in the CBC program is e-learning.
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A majority of our clientele operates internationally and in a hectic working culture. Thus the integration of e-learning to all training programs – including those aimed at executive management – has been well received, says Tiina Harmaja of BCC Business Coaching Center Oy. |
- The implementation was initiated due to client needs. Our client, MPS Finland Consulting, decided to make a significant investment into supplying its consultants with an international certification in coaching. The workdays of consultants are expensive and MPS consultants work around the world. It was therefore important that the training be conducted as cost-efficiently as possible, while taking into account the consultants’ schedules. Taking advantage of the benefits of e-learning presented us with a natural solution to this challenge, says the CEO of BCC Business Coaching Center Oy, Tiina Harmaja.
As its partner in the implementation of e-learning, BCC chose Prewise, whose Gimlet LMS was used in the online solution.
Tackling theories online
- All of the theoretical segments have been implemented online. In addition to them, e-learning is used for instance in exercises, reflections on learning, and in conducting exams. This allows us to concentrate fully on practicing that which has already been learned during face-to-face training sessions. In the future, when the CBC implementations become accessible to open groups, we will also add communal learning environments, says Harmaja.
- A majority of our clientele operates on an international scale and in a very hectic working culture. Therefore integrating e-learning into all training programs – including the ones for executive management – have been well received, says Harmaja.
- Course participants have had a very enthusiastic attitude toward online materials, without exceptions. The e-learning’s user interface is easy to adopt and realizing this has been a positive surprise also to those students who do not otherwise use the internet very much. And who wouldn’t gladly welcome the opportunity to study whenever it’s most convenient for them and to do it in peace and quiet, at their own computers, says Harmaja.
A pioneer in the coaching industry
So far, similar e-learning programs have not been implemented in the field of coaching anywhere in the world.
- Internationally, a lot of coaching events take place in virtual surroundings, but these have been done primarily with the help of telephone lectures in combination with PowerPoint materials delivered via email. As far as we know, there is no other coaching program in which the contents would have been produced to be as interactive and media rich as in this one, says Harmaja.
- I myself am a postgraduate student of coaching at a Californian university and over there we only have an internet-based discussion environment at our use. Even that, in itself, is a significant step forward when compared to a lot of other local programs.
- Our implementation has generated interest elsewhere in the world and our plan is to produce the CBC program in other languages too, in the near future, says Harmaja when inquired about future plans.
Nimbleness and self-sufficiency important in course production
- Prewise’s solution has provided us with a nimble and fast way to produce implementations – even those customized to a considerable extent – to answer the needs of our various clients, says Harmaja.
- When selecting the service provider for our e-learning program, we evaluated the numerous options on the market. Our main criteria consisted of, among other things, the ability to produce visually high-quality and media rich content in a way that is nimble and as self-sufficient as possible. Additionally, we wanted the application to offer students an environment that does not require them to devote a significant amount of time into learning how to use the technology or the user interface. Instead, we were after an application of which the logic would be as close to that of typical business applications as possible.
- Now that we have been introducing the environment to our clients, we have received positive feedback precisely on these features. We’ve also been happy to note that quite a number of our clients have selected the same Prewise solution themselves, remarks a satisfied Harmaja.
For more information on BCC Business Coaching Center Oy, go to www.businesscoaching.fi
Text: Jaana Raaska