The Danish Arthritis Union

The Danish Arthritis Union has been around for over 80 years. Today, they are more than 80,000 members who work to make a difference for the over 700,000 people with inflammatory arthritis, osteoarthritis (osteoarthritis), and back diseases at home. This makes the Arthritis Union one of the largest patient associations in Denmark.

Challenge

The Danish Arthritis Union needed to digitally transform parts of their learning for various reasons.

First of all, because their employees handle a lot of patient data, for example, at treatment places. So it was important for them to provide great digital learning to make sure they understood and comply with GDPR. 

“That is why it was obvious to use Learningbank’s GDPR game because I think a lot of people do not think GDPR is very thrilling. In the game, you have to answer a lot of interactive dilemmas in relatable situations, where you have to think a little extra, and hopefully, this will make it easier to digest,” Christina Jensen, Digital Project Lead in The Danish Arthritis Union, says.

Secondly, they have also chosen to digitalize a number of their learning materials for another reason: Onboarding of new employees.  They needed to ensure that all new employees got the same level of training.

And of course, they wanted to save time for their employees and managers by digitalizing as much as possible.

“Some of the restructuring we have been doing – especially after Covid-19 hit the globe – is that we now have a 30 min-introduction to each department via Skype, and then the plan is, that you, as a new employee, get an introduction to the entire Danish Arthritis Union digitally,” Christina says.

Solution

Knowledge about the audience has been essential to sending out the new form of learning to the employees. The strategy has been to start nice and slowly with the GDPR game, and afterward to send out the IT Security Game to get all on board.

“We needed some time to see how people received this. We should not push our employees and say: 'Now you only have three days to complete this.' It must be manageable for employees to complete. We are introducing some completely new work tasks for the employees, so, we have to send it to them nice and easy, so the employees know what they can expect going forward,” Christina says and adds:

“It has been super easy for us to get started with the platform and send out the GDPR game. We just went live at a bit unfortunate time just before Christmas. But in January we could already see an increase in the number of people who logged on to the platform.”

Over-the-shoulder training is still an essential part of learning something new – especially if you are a completely new hire. At the same time, it is important to balance what should be taught over-the-shoulder and when. A digitalization of parts of the onboarding process will mean a huge timesaving for both managers and the employees themselves.

“Our managers will definitely save time when our onboarding process is digitalized, because then new employees will already have completed an introduction to, for example, Outlook, and what features work well here, and how to set it up in a smart way for yourself. At the same time, I think that as a new employee you can easily spend hours finding this out on your own, but with a digital introduction you can save time, because you already got the hang of it,” Christina says and continues:

“We will still have physical training and over-the-shoulder training, but now we have moved a lot of the practical training and specific software-training to become parts of the digital onboarding. In this way, we save time by reducing the over-the-shoulder training.”

The plan is that Blended Learning, where you mix digital and physical learning activities, should be a part of the culture in The Danish Arthritis Union.

“I definitely think that this will become part of the culture, because the digital training will already be visible in our onboarding going forward, and, in that way, the employees will get an introduction to digital learning from the start. And this makes it easier to create learning paths and training digitally in the future for the employees. I already imagine how we can create digital learning in systems that are specific to departments. So, the plan is, that we should dive more into what the departments need in the future,” Christina says.

Results

“It has been really easy to get started with the platform, and especially the Modulemaker (ed. The platform’s authoring tool) has been amazingly intuitive to build content in. The platform responds to our needs, I know where everything is, and how the outcome will be. It is very user-friendly and comfortable to work in, and when I am inside the platform, I can easily create content. Once, for example, HR send me something, which I quickly got copy-pasted into the platform, and then it took me only ten minutes to create a learning path,” Christina says and continues:

“And if I have experienced the least of doubt, I have always been met with a high level of service from Learningbank, where I always can call or text Katrine (ed. Senior Customer Adoption Manager), and then she has always been able to help me or send my request forward to someone who could help me quickly.”

“It has been a really good experience, and I still think, it is nice to have your own contact you always can call or text. There has been great engagement from Learningbank too to get us going. The dialogue can often be strong just around the purchase of a product, but will slowly fade afterward. At Learningbank they, on the contrary, held our hands in the entire process, and actively gave us good advice and ideas to how we could get it out to the employees in the best way possible to get us a great start.”

The reception of GDPR game has only been optimistic so far.

“I have only received positive reactions. I have got mails from some, who says that this is simply so great, and people have commented on the GDPR game on our intranet. They really encouraged the other employees to enter the platform and complete the game, because it was so much fun, and that the people in the IT department should receive a giant gold star,” Christina says.