Learning & Enablement in times of COVID-19

A friend once said, “I work on rocket principle”. The word ‘Rocket’ might have triggered some serious sci-fi linkages in the frontal lobe of your brain too. But as he went on to explain (with a straight face) – “I tend to thrust when there is a fire”, I was both amused and intrigued.

11 years later, in times of COVID-19, this seems like a good argument for accelerated emphasis on digital learning.

While travels and social meetups have been put on hold, businesses can’t afford to hit the pause button on capability building. They need innovative and long-term views to strike the balance between enabling & delivering value-creating efforts and employee safety.

As the Learning & Enablement leader for SAP Center of Excellence, Europe, this pushed me and my team to also think beyond tactical steps, such as exploring alternative digital learning strategies.

Thought why not share some best-practice actions we took and areas where we struggle and learn as we share.

We started with establishing a COVID-19 response operating cadence with the cross-functional team composed of members from learning & development, IT, platform technologists & vendors. This was aimed at defining clear decision points (in line with global instructions) for canceling/ deferring programs and managing effective communication.

This was followed by building a rolling 6 weeks calendar of upcoming programs and milestones, promotion and communication campaign around these programs and a dashboard showing progress, KPIs and decision triggers for further actions.

To ensure good participant experience, we explored & tested alternate technology platforms, that facilitate engagement through video capability, virtual break-out sessions, chat, polling & post session feedback.

In this dynamic world, there is a need to think of Learning as not just as one-off event, but as well-thought learning journeys linking business outcomes and longer-term capability building. Realizing this, we are preparing virtual training modules spanning 6-15 weeks aimed at creating certified, deployable layer, based on practice demands & aligned to pipeline work for the year.

Finally, while we continue to hope that the COVID-19 situation stabilizes globally within next few months, smart thing to do would be prepare ourselves for uncertainties and potential scenarios. Would there be an extended travel ban beyond May? Would there be a shift in mindset preferring digital learning over in-person, even for interpersonal or socio-emotional topics?

Hence, we continue to evaluate COVID-19 implications on business and evolve learning plans, strategy & approach.

To end on a lighter note