Remote working, from being viewed
as a luxury, has now become an integral part of the new normal for most of us.
We start our day with coffee *fill in with any other poison of your choice*,
dress up (or don’t!) and commute from one room to another to begin yet another
workday from our makeshift (now permanent?!) workplace. We meet our peers and
seniors virtually, spend a majority of our day with our screens and have
in-flesh human conversations for a sliver in the 24-hours graciously granted to
us.
While on the surface it seems like
dream come true – no time wasted in transit, no fuss in putting together a look
for showing up a certain way at office, piping hot meals served in the comfort
of our homes – in reality, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
In a global study
conducted by SAP, Qualtrics, and Mind Share Partners across 2,000 employees in
March and April of this year in Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand,
Singapore, the UK and the United States found that the pandemic is impacting
mental health around the world with over 40% of people stating a decline in
mental health since the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, according to a study of
over 1,000 remote employees by Twingate,
remote employment is causing workers to lose a sense of work/life balance
during the pandemic. Notably, 45% of employees reported attending more meetings
during the pandemic than when working in the office and 40% of employees
experiencing mental exhaustion from video calls while working remotely.
Remote working and online training
For starters, Digital
Transformation replaced ILT with VILT/
eLearning and led to less people connect (physical) and, for almost all
organizations, it called for a change management – pronto! While businesses
with matured L&D processes fully embraced digital learning, others, on the
verge of digital adoption or with traditional training modalities, were
compelled to transition to online learning for their employee capability
development. In both cases, ensuring learner adoption and engagement was
critical to successful employee upskilling.
But this is easier said than done.
How could businesses handhold its
learners virtually? How could L&D enlist the help of their digital learning
partner(s) to align product development to their changed strategy? How could
LMS providers help companies fully leverage the platform features for
engagement?
The key is in
knowing that there is not a single way to bring in
learner engagement and adoption. The key is to keep your ears to the ground,
stay agile in your approach, start with the low hanging fruits – but all in all
to prioritize employee capability development. As critical as it is to look
inward to your own team – your top management, your LMS champions, LMS
administrators, it is important to involve your digital learning partners in
the discussions so they are able to support you every step of the way – from
providing training and tech support to partaking in your learning journey
through timely product upgrades and innovation.
Listen to the full
episode to learn:
- How has remote working impacted learner adoption
and engagement in light of employee capability development?
- How can organizations, L&D in particular,
aid learner adoption and engagement for the dispersed workforce?
- Further to remote working, we are working in
times of the Multi-Generational Workplace. So how can training such a diverse
group of learners be achieved successfully from a product POV?
- How does Product Training play into the
learner’s learning journey?
- What’s the importance of Management Buy-in and
Manager Activation in learner adoption and engagement?
Pranjalee Lahri
