The spread of COVID-19 caused business leaders to me focused on safety which meant postponing or canceling travel, sending employees home to work remotely, and even layoffs.
Business will eventually return to normal or some new version of normal. It will take some time but when it does, businesses will face the reality of a tougher marketplace, more demanding clients, and the need to innovate relentlessly. Likewise, employees will have survived layoffs, illness, and disruptions at work. In order to prepare for the future companies should invest in their employee’s development. By implementing virtual and digital learning while COVID-19 brings normal operations to a halt, leaders can invest in employees and lay the foundation for better retention and stronger operations at the same time.
To create effective virtual learning programs, follow these key steps:
1. Start at the top. To normalize virtual learning, get your company leaders on board first. Your company benefit from bigger buy-in if the CEO and the rest of the executive team actively participate in or preferably lead some of the virtual learning programs. Because much of the learning will take place in the flow of work, having leaders as teachers will help enable, engage, and align people more effectively in moments of need.
2. Add interactive elements. If sitting through a lecture is challenging in person, it’s exponentially more difficult when your team is doing remote learning. To hold people’s attention, limit presentations to 30 minutes or less and add interactive elements. Engage people and offer immediate feedback based on their decisions to keep them interested.
3. Preserve a human touch. Virtual development can feel decidedly disconnected, particularly for first-time practitioners. The good news? It doesn’t have to. Lean on coaches and subject matter experts to lead virtual learning sessions and offer virtual office hours that empower your team to go the extra mile and seek more information. Create portals with social features or, even better, use team collaboration tools such as Slack that allow people to ask questions, share content, and interact with one another instantly from any location.
4. Reimagine the experience. Implementing a virtual learning program doesn’t mean simply taking an analog program and digitizing it. Reimagine virtual experiences using design thinking and employ digital experiences and tools when design and outcomes call for it.
Just consider exercises normally done with flip charts and sticky notes by teams in physical classrooms. These exercises can easily be done with common tools we use on our computers every day in ways that make team readouts even easier in the virtual classroom. Or, you could use digital crowdsourcing tools to instantly aggregate all teams’ work and make it better by allowing peers to rate that work and comment to identify agreed outcomes or better solutions to problems. By reimagining the experience, you won’t just have an effective session you’ll also come away with an incredible amount of information that informs future successes.
Virtual learning and development initiatives can help busy employees better themselves whenever and wherever it’s convenient. This motivates them when morale would otherwise sink, particularly during stressful times when they’re working remotely and away from colleagues. Development opportunities are always important, but this pandemic should spur companies to implement these initiatives now while face-to-face learning is impractical. Those that do will reap the benefits long after we’ve emerged from this crisis situation.
Cosmo Insurance Agency is an independent insurance agency serving surrounding communities in New Jersey. Cosmo keeps its promise to assure an efficient and creative approach to the services we offer. Each of our clients experience a personalized and long-term relationship with us. Our New Jersey based team of health brokers guides our clients in helping them choose the most cost-effective options. By incorporating the latest in technology-based tools and laws on healthcare, employee benefits, life insurance and finance, we keep our clients up-to-date with the plans that encompass all of their needs, whether it is individual or group insurance.
