Creating An Anonymous Admin For Your Training: A Gift For You From Growth Engineering
Since it’s the season of giving, I feel like sharing something with you. In the spirit of goodwill, I’m going to give you something impossible. It’s a simple change you can make today that could transform your training experience overnight. This won’t just make your learners happy – your platform administrators will be forever in your debt.
I haven’t even told you the best part – it’s absolutely free! Provided you already have a learning platform with social features, all you’re going to need is a little imagination (and maybe a little graphic design wizardry). Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to something I call the Anonymous Admin.
What Is An Anonymous Admin?
If you look at your learning platform now, you’ll probably see some of your learners completing content, managers marking assessments, and admins posting updates on the main news feed. Behind each of those profile pictures is a real person with real responsibilities and real challenges.
But what if there wasn’t? What if you just created an imaginary profile without the baggage of a real person? This mysterious user could be anything you wanted it to be. He or she could have all the charisma and charm you wish you were blessed with. You could even create an imaginary person who represents your organization in every aspect.
Why would you even do that, though? Well, here’s the great bit – there are some huge benefits to enjoy from inventing someone out of thin air…
1. Saves Your Admins Time And Hassle
This is the one that will make you the savior of the L&D team. Even though we all want a community of learners, doggedly engaged with their training, that has its own drawbacks. If Joe the Admin is the main point of contact for all learning-related issues, his mailbox is going to fill up pretty quickly.
Well, poor Joe has enough on his plate without having to answer every little question that learners ask. With an Anonymous Admin in place, Joe doesn’t have to do it alone. Everybody in the learning team can gain access to this phantom account and share the load among themselves.
2. Adds Personality To Your LMS
Learning platforms are seen by many as corporate tools and official utilities. They’re designed to meet organizational goals and there’s nothing wrong with that. It isn’t, however, an excuse to make them mind-crushingly dull. Even if you’re stuck with one of these grey-blue platforms, you can still bring it to life with a sassy, cheeky Anonymous Admin.
Epic Meaning is that sense of purpose – that feeling that you’re contributing to something bigger than yourself. It’s a powerful element to include in any training initiative, yet it’s something that’s sorely lacking in most learning platforms.
By introducing an Anonymous Admin, you could be taking your first step toward imbuing your platform with Epic Meaning. Since you’re creating a character from scratch, you can give it the ideal personality to reflect your vision, values, and culture.
3. Creates Curiosity And Buzz
You could hope that your training gets a high completion rate, or that it yields some good assessment results. You would never dare to hope that the training would have everyone talking about it – that’s not what training is supposed to be, right?
In fact, that’s exactly what training is supposed to be. It’s not just about imparting knowledge, it’s about changing the way people behave. The only way to do this is through social reinforcement.
Once you have a mysterious avatar at the helm of your LMS, everyone will want to know who lies behind the mask. It’s human nature to seek out the answer to a mystery. When everyone is gathering to speculate, whether online or in real life, there’s a better chance that they’ll discuss other topics in the training program.
4. Lets Training Managers Have Fun
Everyone talks about providing an engaging experience for the learners, but nobody seems to care about the administrators’ experience. While learners are earning badges, or competing against each other, the people behind the scenes have to settle for spreadsheets and forms. How can you maintain a fun environment if managing it bores you to tears!?
Think of the fun your managers could have if they can hide behind an invented character. Our friend Joe the Admin could be a big fan of musical theatre, but he has spent a long time cultivating a professional appearance on the platform. But if Joe can assume the identity of Lady Broadway, the Queen of Song, he can unleash that hidden passion on his learners!
Conclusion
In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that this wasn’t even my idea! At the Growth Engineering customer conference this year (The GETOGETHER 2017), some of our clients had the chance to present their achievements over the last 12 months.
During these presentations, we were introduced to The Guru, Topps Tiles’[1] very own Anonymous Admin. PageGroup [2] continued the theme with their superheroic admin, Captain Boost, and Flight Centre [3] flipped the idea on its head by introducing Magnitude, a villainous admin hell-bent on (unsuccessfully) thwarting learners’ efforts.
In every case, these invented characters have brought their own benefits and added an extra layer of excitement to the LMS. If you want to see their stories in full, visit the Growth Engineering website and check out our case studies. You might even get some ideas for your own Anonymous Admin!
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