Analyst Inquiry: Thinking Through a Localization Strategy on Required Courses

Topics: Learning Excellence, Strategy Integration, Technology & Infrastructure, Program Design & Delivery

Contents

Cultural differences manifest themselves in a variety of ways — communication, negotiation, decision-making, teaching and learning, among others. Multinational companies have been addressing these differences through localizing content, which is to say finding ways to approximate the concept in local terms. Over the past few years, localization has felt the burden of great recession budget cuts. As organizations emerge from these tight budgets, many of the plans that had been tabled now require a fresh look and a business case to justify action.  

In a recent analyst inquiry, a global energy organization asked about best practices with respect to how different multinational organizations address localization of regulatory, compliance, safety, or other kinds of required training that needs to be distributed to a global workforce and completion that needs to be recorded. Some of the assumptions behind the question were...

1. that the training was designed as courses, rather than as self-applied reference guides in which employees need to take some sort of examination of its contents;
   [This assumption eliminates the need to consider material format.]
   
2. that these courses would be distributed through a centralized LMS; and
   [This assumption eliminates the need to consider distribution strategy (e.g., device, bandwidth, firewalls, or multiple LMSs for a federated or decentralized learning organization).]
3. that these courses were purchased through content providers.
   [This assumption eliminates the need to consider multisourcing strategies.]

A quick review of recent surveys and engagements indicated that localization issues relate to three critical considerations that should be the basis of any business case: (1) the interface and steps taken to access the course; (2) the cost of localizing the material; and (3) the ongoing support and maintenance of the approach. Depending on whether a system-based approach or a process-based approach is most appropriate, some differences in recommended approach and strategy emerge as offering better success rates. The remainder of this article provides more detail on three considerations of localization, recommendations on better practices, and additional CorpU references.