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Until recently, we used external trainers to deliver a wealth of wellbeing and personal development programmes. These received great feedback and would run throughout the year. We would also arrange stand-alone sessions during iconic weeks such as Mental Health Awareness Week. Due to financial constraints, we had to stop running all these sessions. We had many emails from employees expressing their sadness and frustration, and a small number of complaints. Currently when we get requests for learning in this area, we are only able to signpost employees to external learning websites such as Percipio and Get Abstract.

We are aware we need to develop something internally. ONS is a large employer - employing 5,835 people. There is evidently a large responsibility with this. We need to actively do more to promote good mental wellbeing in our day-to-day roles. It is well researched that wellbeing in the workplace makes business sense – healthier employees means higher productivity. We want to design a bespoke mental wellbeing and personal development programme that is available to all employees, at point of need.

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Mental Wellbeing

Employees cannot internally access the information they need – tools, support and strategies to build/maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Personal Development

Mind (2023) list prioritising personal development as one of the ways HR professionals and senior managers can promote wellbeing at work.

In ONS, we cover personal development in sessions such as Building Self-Confidence within some of our established Management programmes, however they are only available to those with line management responsibilities. By my rough calculation, 34% of the workforce may not have line management responsibilities – that is a significant percentage. Equally, if someone was looking for wellbeing/personal development training and felt they needed to go through a whole management programme to access that, that is a significant time investment.

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I want learners to develop knowledge, skills and behaviours they can use and apply within their own personal and professional life. To write my outcomes, I referred to Bloom’s Taxonomy, the ABCD approach and the SMART framework.

Bloom's Taxonomy classifies learning outcomes based on a hierarchy of 6 cognitive levels. Learners move up each successive level of cognition as they master learning (Callister, 2023). The ABCD approach consists of four key elements: (A) Audience, (B) Behaviour, (C) Condition and (D) Degree. It is a useful tool for writing learning objectives that are clear and concise. Furthermore, the use of action verbs (Bloom’s Taxonomy) to write observable and measurable behaviours demonstrates how a learner can show mastery of the objective (Kurt, 2019). SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely – is another useful tool for writing learning objectives.

By the end of this course, learners will be able to;

1.     Define mental health, mental wellbeing and resilience and discuss how they are linked to success at an individual, team and organisational level

2.     Identify stress, it’s causes, symptoms and effects

3.     Identify tools and strategies to optimise workplace wellbeing and personal development

4.     Create and champion a working environment that is supportive of wellbeing and resilience

5.     Confidently deploy a range of resilient management techniques and tools in the working environment

Using 5. as an example, we can see how ABCD was used;

By the end of this course (C), learners (A) will be able to create and champion (B) a working environment that is supportive of wellbeing and resilience (D).

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What are learning personas and what do they tell us?

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What are learning personas and what do they tell us?

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Malamed (2023) defines a learning persona as “a well-developed fictional profile that reflects the characteristics of the audience groups you are designing for.”  Developing learning personas gives the design stage a tangible focus which allows for the creation of a learner-centered approach.

I referred to attendee/evaluation data from the wellbeing sessions we have run previously as a starting point for the development of personas.

Our learners are in various locations and so a full online programme would be the best mode of delivery.

A similarity shared across both groups is a good level of digital literacy combined with a lack of time for learning and development. This would suggest self-paced, asynchronous micro-learning would be preferred.

Lillian represents a group who have difficulty in finding topic-specific resources, so building in a bank of additional resources/further reading would be worthwhile.

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Task: Apply the DLI templates and process in the initial stage of analysis and macro design of a training offer. I will be looking at introducing a Mental Wellbeing course within my place of work, Office for National Statistics (ONS).

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Module 1: Introduction to mental wellbeing

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Module 1: Introduction to mental wellbeing

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Module 3: Coping with stress, change and uncertainty

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Module 3: Coping with stress, change and uncertainty

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Module 4: Optimising your workplace wellbeing

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Module 4: Optimising your workplace wellbeing

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Module 5: Professional development and growth

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Module 5: Professional development and growth

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Module 6: Promoting a healthy work environment

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Module 6: Promoting a healthy work environment

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To develop the modular framework, I utilised a ‘Bottom Up’ approach - Following desk research, I set out all the content following, listed the various topics and then organised this into key modules. This was beneficial in helping me ‘put pen to paper’ with the granular detail in my head, and then develop my thought process more widely to develop learning outcomes. Generally, a learning outcome will align to a module except for outcome 1 which aligns to both modules 1&2, and outcome 3 which aligns to modules 4&5.

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Module 7: Resilience for Leaders *optional*

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Module 7: Resilience for Leaders *optional*

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Callister, L. (2023). Using Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning to Improve Outcomes. Skillcast. https://www.skillcast.com/blog/blooms-taxonomy-learning-outcomes

Kurt, S. (2019). Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives: The ABCD Approach. Educational Technology. https://educationaltechnology.net/using-blooms-taxonomy-to-write-effective-learning-objectives-the-abcd-approach/

Malamed, C. (2023). Learning Personas for Instructional Design. The eLearning Coach. https://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/audience/learner-personas-for-elearning/

Mind (2023). How to promote wellbeing and tackle the causes of work-related mental health problems. https://www.mind.org.uk/media-a/4662/resource3_howtopromotewellbeingfinal.pdf