Lockdown as a new opportunity?
The lockdown for many has made home-working the new norm. Even as the lockdown starts to relax we are looking at a long tail of virus containment that will mean the old world of crowded commute and packed offices will take a long time, if ever, to return to the way it used to be.
However, many are beginning to realise that this can't just be classed as 'a problem' but that it brings with it the seeds of opportunity.
Prior to lockdown, the home worker tended to be on the outside, a poor cousin, sat on a bad conference-call connection, whilst conversation was dominated by those in the room. Home working was generally a bit painful, a struggle to get others to be aware you were there. There was always the unspoken suggestion that you were not just taking the day off.
Now that everyone has been put in the same boat, my experience is that those calls have become much more disciplined and focussed, and as a consequence more effective. Video calls are - let us admit this - quite exhausting, and as a consequence many companies are having to be much stricter on what meetings are really necessary. If there are not proper breaks between calls, or a gap for lunch then it simply impossible for people to handle the day.
In many ways video calls have shown up just how unfocussed and undisciplined many of our office meetings were. I won’t claim to have any stats to back this up, but from my own experience – and in many chats with others – those businesses that are able to truly implement home working, also seem to be getting more work done. Whilst an office meeting could actually be a bit of escape from work, a video call is quite intensive, and has none of the biscuits and coffee an office meeting might enable.
Add to this the removal of the tedious commute, and I suspect that not only is the efficiency of work-life is getting better but for many the quality is too. Will we really want to go back to old ways, when the new ways show such promise?
Atticmedia’s concern is digital learning – how can we help people learn remotely? And in a world where remote is becoming the new norm, digital learning is part of the new opportunity home working is opening up.
For many 'e-Learning' will bring up tedious memories of 'next', 'next' and 'next' buttons, and an email from the CEO threatening consequences if a compliance course is not completed. This is not what we think of as digital learning. It doesn't have to be tedious and it doesn't have to be expensive to be interesting!
There are two critical lessons we have learnt from 20 years of developing digital learning across almost all subject areas:
- There is no single solution that can be applied to everyone
- Digital learning doesn’t have to be fancy to work, but must be relevant to the immediate needs of target learners
There have been many attempts to standardise what ‘e-learning’ is. You'll hear terms like 'SCORM', etc. But we believe that the types of learning are as varied as work is. Every type of work brings with it its own unique way of learning. A lot of traditional eLearning is focussed on drilling home knowledge - ‘what is the right answer’. But true learning is about understanding, developing insight, building ones capability. Sometimes the best way to deliver that may be nothing more than a one liner to get people to think in a new way. Another time it might be an augmented reality experience, or a game, or a quiz. Our approach is to select the medium appropriate to the learning challenge, and not shoe-horn into pre-set templates.
With remote working, digital learning is going to be more important than ever. If you’d like help thinking of creative ways you can make it really work for you, we’d love to chat. Now more than ever we need to be trying out new ideas and new approaches, and so transform the problem into a real opportunity.