Employees have embraced remote working and continue to demand greater flexibility from employers. This can be a winning scenario for organizations, decreasing the need for expensive office space and developing a happier and more productive workforce. The challenge comes as learning and development teams must continue to invest resources and time in developing effective procedures for virtual and onsite teams.
The Evolving Role of Company Culture, Soft Skills and Emotional Intelligence
Before the pandemic, organizations focused heavily on developing an invigorating and dynamic company culture. With the creative company culture in place, individual talent who “fit the culture” was attracted with numerous onsite features. The idea was to elevate employee satisfaction, enhance retention, and nurture collaboration and communication among team members.
Post-pandemic, many organizations have implemented flexible workplaces. Team members may be across town, across the country, or around the world, creating enormous challenges for HR and L&D teams to define company culture or cultivate it. At Fierce, we understand and have developed training to resolve these issues from building accountability, increasing productivity and ensuring exceptional engagement with coaching and experiential learning methods.
Along with the evolution of company culture, soft skills and emotional intelligence have become crucial in flexible working environments. Anxiety levels remain high for many. Priorities and outlooks have changed. At Fierce, we know how to develop soft skills, enhance emotional intelligence among team members, and teach leaders to start the needed conversations, avoid microaggressions, and ensure a diverse, fair, and inclusive workplace.
Digital Transformation Propagates Change Management
Digital transformation is not new but certainly took on greater significance in light of the pandemic. Updating business practices by replacing legacy systems and procedures with the latest digital technology and software became truly mandatory beginning in March 2020. Companies are adopting AI and machine learning for recruiting, marketing and sales. Universities are implementing online assessment, remote orientation and virtual classes. And restaurants are incorporating QR menus, integrated POS and mobile payments. Old jobs are lost as new ones are created, generating considerable change and the need for reskilling and upskilling of the existing workforce.
Learning and Development training must meet these challenges of reskilling and upskilling while keeping production high and developing new opportunities within organizations. It means developing a greater understanding of the workforce, ensuring DE&I (diversity, equity, and inclusion) strategies are met and supporting employees throughout the technology adoption learning curve.
As the digital transformation efforts move forward, change management strategies must be developed to ensure effective migration initiatives. Here organizational leadership faces challenges in creating cross-functional teams who can effectively communicate changes organization-wide and ensure training and onboarding needs are met. Among the most difficult obstacles of change management initiatives are lack of communication, low buy-in levels, failure to establish goals and KPIs, and inadequate training. Learning and Development training must ensure effective strategic development to drive organizational change successfully.
The Function of Scaling in Learning and Development Training
Scaling prepares an organization for growth and often needs to be implemented rapidly while at the same time enhancing company processes and performance. Doing so requires strategies including onboarding new employees, skill development of existing team members, and implementation of required training due to new local, state, or federal guidelines. In addition, these programs may include training or retraining in regard to company policies, support programs, or initiatives, such as DE&I. Today’s organizations see the exceptional value in learning and development training for fostering a culture of learning and delivering a return on investment (ROI) in productivity, growth, retention, agility, adaptability, progress engagement, and more.
Data Use for Enhanced Learning and Development in the Hybrid Workplace
Today’s hybrid workplaces present more significant challenges for an L&D team to monitor employee development, performance, and productivity. Formerly, in-person monitoring was accomplished through employee interaction in traditional workplace settings. Still, with the latest tools in leadership and training development, teams can collect data from development and training initiatives to establish benchmarks and KPIs and measure training effectiveness.
Employees have embraced remote working and continue to demand greater flexibility from organizations. The commute is no longer required, nor is spending money at the food court. Flexible schedules mean more time with family and greater opportunities to take care of their homes and be more productive in their work. This can be a winning scenario for organizations, decreasing the need for expensive office space and developing a happier and more productive workforce. The challenge comes as learning and development teams must continue to invest resources and time in developing effective procedures for virtual and onsite teams.
At Fierce, Learning and Development Training promises to deliver the guidance needed to meet the challenges in any organization through experiential learning, focused on real-life issues with hands-on practice and ongoing support to the organization. Fierce delivers learning and development training to last, with well-developed, personalized training that positively impacts businesses.
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