De-escalation Skills 

This eLearning course teaches de-escalation skills through a scenario-based learning experience. 


Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development 


Tools used:


Target audience: Retail employees across Canada 

Overview

Unfortunately, conflicts are becoming more common, especially in customer-facing environments. With rising concerns about workplace safety, learning de-escalation skills enables employees to defuse potentially dangerous situations, protecting themselves, colleagues, and customers.

My involvement in this project stemmed from these escalating concerns. A comprehensive training strategy was chosen in collaboration with various stakeholders. This approach included training for store leaders, in-store practice scenarios, and the development of an eLearning program focused on the fundamentals of de-escalation. eLearning was chosen to reach a vast audience, including new hires, now and in the future.

Process

Analysis

Following discussions with subject matter experts to gain a deeper understanding of store-related challenges and identify the skills we aimed to teach, I collaborated with a colleague to examine data from actual incidents at various locations across the country. Our goal was to uncover patterns that contributed to heightened incidents. With this knowledge, we decided to build 2 eLearning modules, one focused on the principles of de-escalation (why people get angry, what is de-escalation, etc.) and one focused on teaching de-escalation skills. I took lead on the de-escalation skills module. 

Design 

We agreed to a series of steps we wanted to teach employees to de-escalate an incident. To make the steps real and memorable for employees, I designed the learning experience to follow an interaction between an employee and a customer, choosing a scenario that was common in the data we examined.  I decided to use video so employees could see how tone and body language changed throughout the interaction. In the text-based storyboard, I laid out the story script, which included opportunities for learners to make decisions about what they would do in those circumstances. Throughout the story employees learn de-escalation steps and tips for keeping calm and safe. 

Development 

After integrating feedback from SMEs and stakeholders, I moved on to developing the module's videos using Vyond. As multiple voices were required for this project, including English and French, I organized the script for voiceovers and coordinated getting multiple people to voice characters and narration for the story. I then edited the received audio files using Adobe Audition to ensure consistency with the recordings. I developed the final course in Articulate Storyline.