To say that the lockdown has upended how we work is a slight understatement.
I have always really enjoyed bringing people together in management and communications workshops and seminars. And then from March we couldn’t do this. Like most people we thought we would all be back to normal someday very soon. My children were meant to return to school after Easter.
We gave our clients time to settle in to their new working from home routines. And like everyone, we were thinking more about the well being of family, friends as well as adjusting to new rules.
But we’ve had to innovate rapidly to reformulate how we deliver training. Bite sized webinars for small groups, follow-up online coaching for individuals and online resources on our learning management platform so that our learners can study at their own pace.
Life is not going back to the old normal. And do you know what? For communications and management training, I am not sure I want it to. Our new offer (webinars, coaching, classrooms) is more focused on what our learners need and how they want to access training.
It’s not about the technology – it’s about what learners want. And how we can provide it for them. The technology works and we are all pretty good with Zoom, Webex, Hangouts or Teams. The social interactions can be awkward – but we get on with it.
We now offer a mix of:
- Virtual classrooms – interactive webinars (2-hours)
- Individual coaching
- Online study materials
- In-class training (where social distancing allows)
We can include staff from multiple locations, attendance is high, sessions are bite sized so easy to commit to and learners can get individual follow up coaching. We are currently training 80 people from one company across multiple countries and five different time zones. They get pre-course tasks and videos, study materials and us trainers on Zoom.
It’s all about the value of training and communications. We have had to innovate very quickly – but I am truly excited about providing communications training for the future. We will always enjoy being together with people in the same room, when we can do this safely. But digital is here to stay.
We are #openforbusiness. Now, let’s hope that the wider economy recovers – my wishes are with the small business owners, in particular.
If you want to know more about how we have adapted our training courses online please contact me at andrew.manasseh@communicatingeu.com