An organization thrives on engagement and productive people. Employees who are highly fulfilled at work plan to stay in their current companies for three years longer than those who feel dissatisfied. Keeping this tacit knowledge in-house, improved productivity, quality of work and consistency for internal or external clients can all be positively impacted.
There’s also a huge economic opportunity in ensuring people are thriving at work, with Gallup estimating that low engagement costs the global economy US $8.8 trillion. However, many people aren’t engaged with all the virtual meetings and live online training that has been so pervasive since the global pandemic. During a mass-emergency pivot to using more digital tools during 2020 it’s understandable that what some people call “Zoom fatigue” can set in.
The “Kahoot! 2022 Workplace Culture Report” found that respondents felt “most bored at work during virtual meetings and online employee training.” Thirty-five percent of workers mentally checked out of online employee training, 32 percent of virtual presentations and 31 percent of virtual team meetings. The same report found that 16 to 20 percent of people weren’t mentally engaged in various face-to-face meetings either, so it’s a perennial issue that’s exacerbated by being virtual.
My own research about people’s experiences of hybrid and live online learning shows that fewer than 10 percent of learners feel the sessions they have attended exceeded their expectations, which isn’t the reputation needed of learning and development or HR teams in this modern, digital age of work, learning and performance. The CIPD reports that large organizations are increasing their use of digital solutions (53 percent of respondents) and investing in learning technology (31 percent), as well as reporting a decrease in the use of face-to-face learning. If workers aren’t engaging in online employee training, it’s the role of L&D to ensure that the design and delivery is first rate, and they need the knowledge, skills and experience to do that. The skills of the future are now.
At a strategic level, senior stakeholders and L&D managers need to be advocates of using appropriate technology whilst still upholding standards in design and delivery against modern and empirical pedagogy. It’s understandable how technology can become the focus, as it’s both the enabler that brings people together for easier, cheaper and more productivity- and environmentally friendly training, but it can also be perceived as a barrier. Driving this positive but balanced approach to applying learning technology is a cultural shift for some individuals, departments, managers and even organizations. In the CIPD report, only 20 percent of respondents strongly agreed that they are prioritizing the skills needed to help their organizations in the future and this “lack of priority from the business” impacts the quality of all development opportunities.
If L&D leaders can create a governance process and best practice guidelines, it can identify the skills gaps in their own team in order to deliver on the skills gaps in the wider organization, which is the biggest priority for L&D in 2023 according to the “Learning at Work report.” Whilst some organizations say that they are being guided by best practice, in my own research none of the respondents had their performance measured in this way. The risk for the learning professional is a suboptimal design and delivery of webinars and virtual classrooms, which the CIPD shows are the top digital technology used in L&D, as well as the top tool to upskill themselves.
One of the biggest issues in developing people is time. The CIPD found that 42 percent of organizations cited a lack of learner time as a challenge to overcome. L&D manager’s carve out time for their team to join formal training, practice with the technology, gather feedback from colleagues and have appropriate resources available on-demand and for stretch projects will increase the skills, experience and, most importantly, confidence and positive attitude of all involved in live online learning.
For the organizational culture, sharing success stories of live online learning and other positive digital interventions can help challenge the view that training has only happened in a physical classroom. This best practice can be shared, especially across larger organizations or within networks, for self-development. as well as achieving better performance for the skills the organization has deemed a priority for its staff.
When focusing on teams at a train-the-virtual-trainer level, access to master-level events to broaden horizons is essential. By experiencing great virtual classrooms designers and facilitators can adapt techniques to apply to their own development context. The more sessions they can deliver, with feedback from other experienced professionals, the more honed and detailed their skills will be.
Working as part of a community of practice, either internally or with other networks, can support the problem solving, confidence support and skills development needed, especially as skills deepen from ensuring psychological safety live online through to connecting with other people as humans — no matter how remote they are.
