IBM Canada takes T&D to whole new level with online speed mentoring
Not many companies have a floating boardroom where employees from different countries can come together to learn. Even better, they can make themselves look like anyone — a bald man with an earring, a short woman with a funky fashion sense — while they walk around and interact with each other.
The magic of the virtual world is transforming how IBM conducts business, particularly when it comes to training and development. The 400,000-employee organization has tens of thousands of avatars — virtual projections of employees used in a 3-D computer environment — involved in various worlds, one of which is a speed mentoring facility in the virtual world of Second Life.
IBM Canada has had several kinds of formal mentoring for years, from the short term to the long term, but it was missing the opportunity to have something more ad hoc, where people could easily come together but not demand too much time or effort from executives, managers or seasoned IBMers, says Chuck Hamilton, virtual learning leader for IBM Canada in Vancouver.
The speed mentoring model, in its second year, is somewhat similar to speed dating, he says. Mentors spend brief 15-minute sessions with a group of protegés sitting in pods and then move on to the next group of seated avatars in the virtual world. With the mentor answering a question from one person, all the protegés in the pod have the advantage of hearing the answer, says Hamilton, and the same is true when it comes to a mentor asking a protegé a question.
“They’re learning on the fly, so it amps up or increases exponentially the opportunity for mentoring in that quick-concept stage,” he says.
The pods are designed for privacy — only avatars sitting down or standing very close can hear the dialogue — and encourage protegés to query the mentors by typing in questions that appear onscreen or using VOIP.
A co-ordinator alerts the mentors through an audio channel when it’s time to move to a different pod until the allotted time for the overall session is up. About three or four questions are covered at each pod and, if there are two mentors per pod, 30 minutes are allotted.
Ongoing development
The move to virtual speed mentoring is part of ongoing adoption of virtual social technologies at IBM, according to Mark Fullerton, a consultant and technology architect with IBM Global Business Services. It’s about moving toward a 3-D “immernet” and has a lot of applicability for learning, training and conducting business.
With one-half of its workforce relatively new to IBM — with fewer than five years of service — and 40 per cent working remotely, the organization is encouraging virtual, dynamic teams to work across the globe.
“Email doesn’t cut it anymore,” says Fullerton.
That means tools such as instant messaging, e-meetings (with screen sharing), wikis and blogs, online jams or ideation sessions (where people work over a short period of time to develop products or training materials).
The speed mentoring area is “the Swiss Army Knife” of learning facilities, says Hamilton, and includes a floating boardroom in the Second Life environment that is dedicated to resources for career-building. Larger areas can be used for orientation, to connect people to the overall idea of virtual mentoring or the concept of the avatar world. IBM may also feature a panel of mentors for a larger crowd, with a moderated chat.
The protegés are usually identified but participants can play with their looks or cultural attributes, says Hamilton. And there is a greater degree of comfort to the avatar approach, particularly in patriarchal societies where the concept of losing face is common, he says.
With a more casual setting, people are more relaxed and inclined to ask questions, unlike a formal boardroom with senior people who may be intimidating.
“There is much more uptake, with people raising their hands, talking and asking questions much more freely,” says Hamilton. “This is not formal. It is a bit more playful and engages you to be more collaborative.”
In addition, the expertise is amplified, he says, as it would not often be possible to have managers, senior tech leaders or senior executives all together, in one place at the same time because of the prohibitive costs. This way, employees gain a different perspective from each mentor and that leader has only given up an hour of her time, from a remote setting, while having an impact on several people, says Hamilton.
“I also don’t believe we could get the variety or range of people in the same space at the same time,” he says. “We’re hearing from our folks in other countries that they really like the ability to meet someone who they normally wouldn’t run into in their career. They feel like they’re reaching in, anyway, from afar, so this is a level landscape that allows them to have equal access to an experienced person.”
Hurdles to overcome
There are a few challenges to speed mentoring, one being unfamiliarity. Employees have to find their sea legs, the notion of walking around, understanding how to move and feeling comfortable. IBM provides an optional mentoring session to go over the tool with them.
“There is that little bit of hand-holding that has to go on,” says Hamilton.
As further incentive, employees can earn give-aways, such as tools to make an avatar more visible, materials helpful for a worker’s career, camera tools to see hidden areas, access to special areas and corporate dress clothes or culturally aligned clothes.
“The purpose of the give-away is… it helps people get more comfortable,” he says.
The 3-D environment also demands considerable bandwidth, which is a problem in some countries or cities — and for many companies when it comes to cost. For that reason, IBM has worked to strip down the environment and keep it clean, to use less space and reduce distractions.
“What we try to do is keep the walls out of the way and keep everything open and dynamic and very simple,” says Hamilton.
People also require a device on their desktop to run the tool. And often employees working from behind IBM’s firewall have better, more stable access than those working at home.
But many IBMers prefer this approach to video-conferencing, which requires people to be at a certain place at a certain time — a problem with time differences — and appear onscreen, something not always appealing for those forced to join a meeting at 5 a.m., says Hamilton.
The virtual speed mentoring approach is catching on and participants speak highly of the process, encouraging others to get involved if they can, he says. Eighty-five per cent of attendees say the events help them achieve their learning objectives.
