This year challenged companies to pivot constantly in the face of a significant crisis. For many, business-as-usual no longer exists. Now, it's time to create long-term strategies for the new reality.
The current environment demands swift, agile adjustments, and you'll need to communicate business expectations clearly to your learners. With all the obstacles still making face-to-face learning a challenge, companies may have to adapt to learning methods that don't involve in-person gatherings. Read on to learn the best strategies for staying flexible, no matter what comes next.
1. Determine Learning Priorities
Your organizational goals likely haven't changed—you're still trying to outpace the competition, drive revenue and optimize ROI—but the obstacles you have to overcome have changed. The same can be said for your learning priorities.
Given the current business landscape, there are several key areas to focus on and rethink:
- Employee communication and training
- Reskilling and talent and development
- Corporate trust and accountability
- Employee well-being and work flexibility
These topics may seem incredibly complex, but learning is at the core of each solution. For example: use learning to communicate new workplace safety measures and protocols to employees, fill resource gaps and encourage professional development through reskilling, foster employee trust through improvements around diversity and inclusion, and redefine your employee experience through well-being and workplace flexibility options.
Once you've determined your top learning priorities, communicate your expectations to your learners and stay open to their feedback throughout the process. Leverage an LMS by creating learning paths that communicate what's most important and relevant to you and your learners. If unexpected circumstances arise and training priorities shift, keep your learners involved and informed of any changes ahead. Then, use an LMS to quickly pivot and adjust your training.
As you engage your learners, use the robust reporting and analytics tools to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of individual learners, so you can help them grow and thrive.
2. Employ a Variety of Training Mediums
Once you've determined what you plan to communicate, next, you should consider the learner's experience. People are unique, and they process information in different ways.
Research completed by VARK Learn, a guide to learning preferences, indicated that participants in the business category were split in terms of their most preferred learning styles: 22.4% Visual, 25.5% Aural, 23.8% Read/Write, and 28.3% Kinesthetic. However, VARK emphasizes that most learners enjoy more than one learning style, with 63.7% expressing multimodal preferences. Fulfilling the multimodal learner's needs means delivering training through a variety of mediums.
Lean on your LMS to provide this crucial diversity of training. A robust learning management system offers multiple ways to educate and train, which can include:
- Video recordings
- Mobile learning
- Social learning
- Documents and written content
- Live Webinars
By offering diverse forms of learning content, you'll help your learners flourish in the present and prepare for what lies ahead.
Pro Tip: Look for an LMS that can bring additional value through content library partners andplenty of integrations. This will make it easier than ever to quickly deliver trainings and ensure there's always more for your learners to explore.
3. Create Content in a Timely Fashion
To thrive in the current professional landscape, swift pivots and flexible practices are a must. Developing your training content quickly ensures that your learners are always a step ahead.
You have many options for deploying new training content. There are numerous eLearning content providers, who collectively offer thousands of pre-built courses ready to deploy. If you prefer to create your own courses, an industry-leading online course authoring tool is designed to help you create interactive eLearning content fast. There's also the custom course development route for those that want professionally-designed courses that are built around your particular needs and goals.
4. Support Your Learners
Amid times of change, we must always remember to check on our learners' state of mind. The compounded stress of personal and workplace changes can cause typically happy people to shut down, grow frustrated or fall behind. When you shift to remote work, it can further agitate anxiety.
An LMS helps smooth the transition from in-person training to online learning. Often, the people accustomed to in-person learning enjoy the feeling of connection and camaraderie. An LMS can bridge this gap by facilitating live webinars, recordings and social learning features like leaderboards, polls and newsfeeds.
An LMS provides even more valued support for your learners during challenging times. Take advantage of content providers that offer stress management and wellness courses. These can help promote long-term health and happiness to remote staff.
5. Renew. Reassess. Repeat.
If this year has taught us anything, it's the importance of flexibility, adaptability and vigilance. Now's not the time to put your learning program on autopilot. While every organization faces its own unique challenges, revisiting your priorities regularly and staying ready to pivot will pay off if you're consistent.
With the right LMS by your side, you and your learners have the right tools to stay ahead of the curve.
Ready for what comes next? We're here for you. Connect with us to learn more about how Absorb LMS can help you build a long-term learning strategy.
