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Welcome Paul Stevens – Synapsys’ new GM of Technology Services
We’re excited to welcome Paul Stevens to the Synapsys whānau as our new General Manager – Technology Services | Pou Whakahaere – Mātaihangarau! Paul joins us with a wealth of experience and a deep passion for driving platform innovation, operational excellence, and user-centric digital learning solutions. He’s already hit the ground running, leading our…
Synapsys is now a Platinum Totara Partner
We’re delighted to be recognised as a Platinum Totara Partner! 🙌 A big thanks to the Totara team and to our fantastic clients – this achievement reflects the meaningful work we’re doing together. 🤝 We’re proud to champion smarter learning that makes a real difference for people and organisations across Aotearoa.
A day of discovery with Te Wharewaka o Pōneke
We just had an amazing time on our quarterly Synapsys get-together with Te Wharewaka o Pōneke on their City to Sea tour. After a delicious lunch at the award winning Karaka Cafe, we were welcomed with a traditional Mihi whakatau and learned about the history of Te Āti Awa, the Te Raukura building, and…
Does emotional intelligence have a role to play in change management?
Is your team experiencing changes in job responsibilities? Understanding the role of emotional intelligence (EQ) can help with navigating these transitions effectively. Creating a culture of empathy and strong social skills can also reduce resistance to change and encourage collaboration. When employees feel understood and supported, they are more likely to engage positively with their…
Want to achieve great service delivery? Prove it to the world
One of our clients set a bold goal, deciding the best way to prove they’d hit the gold standard for service was for their team to win industry awards – because that’s real proof of impact. If you want to know your training is working, aim high: set the goal of your people winning an…
Skilled migrants bring talent, but the challenge is bigger than just filling roles.
In a global marketplace, many organisations look to migrants to bolster their workforce. But newcomers face a lot: not just doing the job, but navigating a new culture, language, slang, systems and potentially prejudice. These can all be barriers getting in the way of them effectively supporting the industry they have come here to work…
Making sure your content will work for all your learners
Image source: Unsplash.com Maximising the impact of your learning means you need to reach everyone in your audience. It’s surprising how many learners have issues with access, from colourblindness (8% of males) to approximately 150,000 New Zealanders who have low vision. Using a colour palette that is accessible ensures that important information is not lost…
Communicating change is about listening
This article from BEM describes the all too familiar challenge of the change team believing that communications are being handled well, and the staff believing differently. It outlines a useful checklist for planning communications, but the real value is in calling out the need for two-way dialogue. When the change team sees communication being…
Maximising generative AI in organisations
After the initial excitement of generative AI, organisations are now looking at the challenge of translating potential into tangible value. Many have learned that capturing gen AI’s advantages requires not only technology tools but also organisational capability development. As with any new technology, value is only realised when it’s applied to solve real people and…
Harnessing the power of AI in LMS
We are often asked how AI tools can be integrated into LMS platforms. Here are the most common ways we’re seeing this done: Chatbots and virtual assistants have been around for some time and can offer learners instant support and guidance at any time Generative AI enables course creators to develop content, generate course summaries…
A tikanga-forward approach to onboarding success
When we bring new people into the team, we usually have three main goals: We want our new people to be engaged with the organisation, which includes being connected with their team. We want them to be able to contribute in their role as soon as possible. And we want to set them up for…
Mark Your Calendars: Totara 19 Arrives This Month!
Totara is releasing it’s latest version of Totara LMS, Version 19, in January 2025. We’re pretty excited about this release and the benefits it will bring. Totara 19 offers practical features that make learning management more straightforward and effective. The new Course Enrolment Approval workflows let organisations control who can access training with customisable approval…
Using induction to drive change
Attitudes towards induction programmes are changing. There has always been a focus on meeting the team, health and safety, and operational systems. However, there is a growing recognition that induction/onboarding programmes can be powerful tools for driving and embedding organisational change. In our experience, you have three months to set the culture for new employees….
Beyond compliance and training: how your LMS can improve performance and drive growth
Learning Management Systems (LMS) have evolved from simply managing compliance training and cutting learning delivery costs, to becoming an essential tool for supporting wider business goals. We still see clients looking for confidence that compliance reporting is robust, but more and more the vision is for developing organisational capability, building a culture of learning and…
Values alignment key to successful change?
This 2008 research paper from Emerald Insight – Achieving organisational change through values alignment – investigates the importance of values alignment in successful change strategies. It concludes that widespread resistance to organisational change is caused by a failure of current organisational change strategies to attend to a values alignment process for all those people affected…
Your LMS as a growth tool: Aligning technology with business objectives
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a significant investment, so you would think that it would be linked explicitly to the strategic value it delivers to an organisation, as you would find for core IT infrastructure or production facilities, right? Not necessarily. We’re surprised by the number of organisations that do not have a clear…
How is AI influencing change management?
This article from Primeast explores how AI is impacting change management. It argues that in the change space, AI is transforming task management and improving the effectiveness of change management by driving efficiency, providing predictive insights and automating routine tasks. It argues that with a more agile, data-driven approach, AI helps change managers lead smoother…
Key strategies for using AI to create eLearning content
While AI tools and their use in content creation are no longer groundbreaking, it’s surprising how many people still struggle to craft effective prompts. Many users treat AI like a simple Google search, which limits the value they can gain from it. To make full use of the effectiveness of AI, mastering the art…
Lewin’s Change model
Are you a change manager or senior leader, looking to navigate transitions effectively? Check out this comprehensive post from July on Lewin’s Change Model. The model is a great tool for anyone planning or implementing organisational changes, from IT upgrades to company-wide restructuring. The article breaks down Lewin’s three-stage process – Unfreeze, Change, and Refreeze –…
We won the NZATD award for Best Online Learning Project!
We are over the moon to have won the NZATD Best Online Learning Project alongside Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora for the National Cervical Screening e-learning modules that we developed! This was very much a team effort, with close collaboration between Te Whatu Ora’s clinical experts and Synapsys learning designers. Te Whatu Ora…
Maximising the value of Ai in learning content.
The Gartner Hype Cycle is well-documented, and we’ve seen countless learning technologies pass through it. VR is a prime example of the trough of disillusionment that has swallowed up many enthusiasts. Ai, however, is different. It’s broken the curve, or at least the curve is of a scale and pace rarely seen. But just…
Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2024 – A Forever Language
As Tāngata Tiriti, our commitment to building our reo Māori is an everyday thing. The trick has been to build te reo into our daily routines. We’ve landed on three ways that work for us During Tū Mai (our daily stand-ups) we check in on each other and our work for the day using te…
New client top ticket items #1: Making change stick
We have the privilege of working across a broad range of sectors and organisations. So, it’s interesting that we often find new clients asking the same questions. In this series of posts, we’ll cut across the most common challenges occupying people’s minds. Here’s a big one: How do we get confidence that we’ll achieve sustainable…
Navigating Change: The Path Ahead with Synapsys NZ
Kia ora, At the end of each year we always feel tired, ready for a break. December 2023 felt different. There was a real sense of exhaustion across the board. We felt the relentless acceleration of change and the pressure to keep assimilating to it. We felt economic pressures – on us personally and on…
Celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2023
🌟 Celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2023 with us! 🌟 As we embrace Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2023, we thought we would share the resources we find most helpful as we build our language skills. Here’s what we love and recommend: 1️⃣ Te Aka Māori Dictionary – our favourite te reo dictionary,…
Synapsys Hacks: Keeping the ‘micro’ in microlearning
Keeping microlearning short is essential because it aligns with the way people learn in today’s fast-paced, attention-scarce world. Short, focused content improves engagement, retention, accessibility, and flexibility, making it an effective approach to training and education. To help you achieve your microlearnig objectives, Synapsys put together a practical design resource: Synapsys hacks: Keeping the ‘micro’…
AI Image Generators: Their Potential and Impact in Creative Work
We have been exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI) image generators – how they work, what they do, and if we can see a potential use of them in our work. AI content tools are currently a subject of discussion, and it is important to understand their functionality to make informed decisions about their usage. AI generators…
Effective governance of Learning Management System (LMS) – why is it still a struggle?
Iris Vermeren makes the important point in her article that you need to be clear about your learning strategy and goals if you’re going to get the most out of your LMS. Sounds simplistic, doesn’t it? It’s a no-brainer that an understanding of effective governance of your Learning Management System (LMS) is vital for creating…
5 tips to kick off a foolproof learning project
Great ideas need excellent execution. We asked our project managers for their recipe for starting a successful learning project. 1. Identify your subject matter experts (SMEs) early to ensure they have time available for the project. 2. Get SMEs involved early so they understand the planning process and can come on the…
Stages on the learning journey
At Synapsys, we see learning as being about helping the learners to move from one stage of understanding to another. It is important for us to have a solid grip on what you hope to achieve through the learning intervention, so we can support it. Are we trying to make people aware of what they…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (5 of 5)
Go live is the real start line This is the fifth and final article in the series on ensuring your technology projects leverage learning to deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Curious about what we discussed previously? Check out the previous articles! Part 1. “Using learning to make technology projects stick”…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (4 of 5)
Change happens when people get it This is the fourth article in the series on ensuring your technology projects deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Read the first article here “Using learning to make technology projects stick” Read the second article here “Vision, what vision?“ Read the third article here “Change starts…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (3 of 5)
Change starts when the programme starts This is the third article in the series on ensuring your technology projects deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Read the first article here “Using learning to make technology projects stick” Read the second article here “Vision, what vision?“ We all know the well-worn ‘truths’ about…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (2 of 5)
Vision, what vision? This is the second article in the series on ensuring your technology projects deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Read the first article here “Using learning to make technology projects stick” Technology projects are an answer to a problem. Looking through business cases for tech implementations, we often…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (1 of 5)
Using learning to make technology projects stick Deloitte‘s recent “The nine trends reshaping government in 2023” report speaks of silos inside government shifting to collaborative ecosystems. Driven by trends such as accelerated technology and the rise of networked power, it describes how governments around the world are tailoring public services, bridging data networks and moving…
Articulate’s new microlearning option in Rise 360!
We are really happy to see Articulate‘s new microlearning option in Rise 360! Our learning designers love its simplicity. The one-click access to #learning activities allows learners to quickly get into the learning instead of negotiating multiple layers of navigation. This approach is particularly valuable for busy professionals who want to maximise their time. Whether you’re on…
Staying Current in a Changing World
We know that transformation and adaptability are key to organisations thriving and growing. But transformation can be hard. Remaining current though? That’s much easier. Or is it? What is ‘current’ is subject to change, and might not be current in six months’ time. So what does ‘current’ mean for us, and the work we do?…
Bringing our Stands to Life
At Synapsys, our Stands reflect both how we think and are the main drivers of the work that we do. Our Stands are what we believe in and what guide us as individuals and as a business. So what are they? Whakarerekē whaitikanga – we stand for meaningful change and the discipline to execute it….
The role learning plays in transformation
“Since I joined Synapsys a few months ago,” says Jo Parag, our General Manager Customer and Client Relationship Manager, “I have come to appreciate our positioning line of ‘Learn to Transform’. On the surface it’s a simple statement but dig a little deeper and the complexity and strength of this statement for both our clients…
So where does our story begin?
At Synapsys, our name and our brand tell our story. We think of the synapses in the brain as the spark of creative thought, but they are also central to how we remember, and how we tell our body to take action. Synapsys stands for creative thought and action – we have a meaningful impact by…