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:

  1. How has remote working impacted learner adoption and engagement in light of employee capability development?
  2. How can organizations, L&D in particular, aid learner adoption and engagement for the dispersed workforce?
  3. 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?
  4. How does Product Training play into the learner’s learning journey?
  5. What’s the importance of Management Buy-in and Manager Activation in learner adoption and engagement?

UpsideLMS | Podcast

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