You may be tempted to allocate online training, and refresher training to your people to maximise downtime, and keep people engaged. Because professional development is a good thing, right?
Yes, it is, but ask yourself the following questions before allocating training to all and sundry.
While this is good in theory, keep the following in mind.
Globally, workers are undergoing a significant amount of change and stress. Whilst your team member is employed, chances are a partner, family member or close friend has been impacted with work reductions, redundancies, or stand down. Add potential children being homeschooled into the mix and or elderly parents, and their thought load and resilience are probably maxed out.
Access to reliable internet and data may be challenging at times, from multiple household members using the internet at the same time, to network overload.
Simply, this is not a good time to add in additional training, unless it has a clear benefit to your employee.
So, what would this look like?
Right now, this is upskilling team members to increase their skills and capability in using remote working tools.
These include Zoom, Skype, Webex. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, SharePoint…. The list goes on.
Upskill team members to use tools and resources from Zoom, Skype, Webex, Slack, Microsoft teams etc to maximise capability and usefulness.
- Consider engaging a subject matter expert from your business, or skilled team member to run ‘how to’ sessions
- Search on Youtube and product websites for training tools, infographics and cheat sheets to back up these sessions. Often you will find that these organisations offer free training tools, after all, they want to you like using their products
- Engage team members to create a cheat sheet or infographic that is specific to your team, and processes.
It takes time for people to adapt to new ways of working; each person will need different levels of support, so check in with each of your team members to determine what they need.
Check-in with your team members post the upskilling session.
- How are they feeling?
- Do they require more assistance in using these new tools?
For many, they will be fighting their way through overwhelm.
Let’s take a look at a model to explain this further.
Source:
- Conscious competence model
- There are many who have been attributed to this model, including William Howell, Gordon Institute and Howell. Origins of this model cannot be clearly defined.
The steps of learning are also known as the conscious competence model.
The progression is from step 1 through 2 and 3 to 4. It is not possible to jump stages. For some skills, especially advanced ones, people can regress to previous stages, particularly from 4 to 3, or from 3 to 2, if they fail to practise and exercise their new skills.
A learner regressing from 4, back through 3, to 2, will need to develop again through 3 to achieve stage 4 – unconscious competence again.
For certain skills in certain roles stage 3 (conscious competence) is adequate.
While it can be argued that learners who become skilled at level 4 – unconscious competence – cease to be learners. However, it is important that the learner is open new methods, technologies, etc., and may find themselves once again unconsciously incompetent.
Interestingly, the progression from step to step is often accompanied by a feeling of awakening, ‘the penny drops’ or things’ click’ into place for the learner. The learner feels like they have made a big step forward, which of course they have.
This will also be true for team members using new tools to them, such as Video conferencing or Microsoft 365.
Your role with upskilling your team doesn’t end with the end of team meeting and upskilling session. Success relies upon follow up and further coaching.
Set your team up for success with regular engagement, and support with adapting to new tools for working remotely. Only once your team has created a new rhythm and confidence in working remotely, only then should you consider adding to their workload and allocation of eLearning.
In the instance that eLearning is allocated or pushed to your team from a centralised HR or Learning function, then I suggest that you purchase your team these tshirts.
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About the author: Colleen Condon
Colleen likes to keep things creative in all that she does, often using marshmallows as a source of inspiration.
Everyone knows that ongoing learning is essential for both personal and professional success and yet, for many, this means hours of attending dead boring training or completing’ losing the will to live’ eLearning modules. Colleen’s mission is to end tedious professional development while ensuring targeted outcomes for learners and businesses.
Colleen has honed her skills over the last 20 years across multiple industries and locations. Her previous role saw her overseeing the training and development needs of over 60, 000 employees across 13 countries in the APAC region. This enabled her to hone skills that celebrated diversity and understanding human commonality through learning, and that in the absence of a common language, flip charts and coloured markers helped her to overcome most challenging situations.
After taking a ‘go away package’, in 2019, Colleen founded her own business, Facilitated Training, harnessing her global learning experiences and sharing them through ready to use learning resources, specialising in leadership, mentoring, guest speaking, creative problem solving, filling the gap of high quality, customisable training resources and tools.