What is Learning & Development if it is not face-to-face?

With offices currently closed and the prospect of more remote working in the future, charities with a traditional training structure of providing a calendar of face-to-face courses, may be wondering how L&D adapts to this.  What will L&D be doing if there is no classroom training? The answer is: plenty

Adaptable and forward-thinking L&D will be looking at what the priorities are right now and what resources might be needed. They will have moved on from early stages in the pandemic of providing resources on enabling remote working, to what will be critical in the organisation now and in the future. 

Here are some examples of how L&D could be working with various teams and people in your charity environment:

Services: L&D could be working alongside the services teams in your charity to look at learning methods in re-designing face-to-face courses to an online format. It is tempting to convert what would normally be done face-to-face straight into an online course in its current structure. This can work well, but more often this can have pitfalls: long sessions converted onto Powerpoint can lead to less engagement with service users because highly valued peer support opportunities are lost. L&D have knowledge of how people learn, the best learning methods to use, how to include peer support online and will give you ideas and tips on increasing learner engagement.

Future projects: L&D will be keeping a close eye on future projects within the charity. For example: if you are implementing a new system or database, do you need to talk to L&D about how you will train the staff? What training resources are you producing – are they the best method to use, are they too long and disengaging, will people be able to access them easily, where will you host them? We look at how people learn, for example, we know people only concentrate for the first 3-4 minutes of an instructional video, they will want to do a quick search for the short video clip they need at the moment they need it. Which are the top 10 short videos clips that new starters will need? L&D could be directing these resources out to them in their first weeks to help them when they start in their new role.

Business objectives: Many charities will be re-looking at their objectives: with less income, the next budget year will mean charities will not be able to achieve previously set business objectives. As organisation and team objectives evolve, L&D will be scanning those to determine what these will mean for teams and individuals: will there be skills gaps, will some individuals need to learn new roles, will some people have moved teams, will there be new systems and processes? Will some of all the above be a learning need, or in fact is it an organisational need that does not need a learning intervention? What support will teams need to re-form and re-group as we return off furlough, or back into an office environment? We will be listening to these concerns around the charity and working in partnership with teams to consider the best methods and resources that will be needed to meet learning needs.

Online learning: There is no doubt that where a traditional classroom training structure exists, L&D will be thinking about how to provide more online and digital resources for employees. We have seen this year how quickly organisations have had to change and evolve, and those who continue to be able to react quickly will benefit. To adapt quickly, we have to have the capacity to learn fast and we therefore need employees who are constantly being developed through the changes. Consider how rapidly employees had to move to collaborative working on MS Teams after lockdown, many for the first time. Gone are the days where we wait three months to attend a scheduled course on the training calendar, only to find that by the time the course date arrives, we no longer need to learn those skills! Now we Google and get an answer straight away. The way we learn has changed, we are not expected to know everything, we learn as we go. Online learning has a huge breadth of opportunity for L&D of which e-learning courses are just a minute part of the offering. Some e-learning can be useful and even a legal requirement, like Health & Safety for example, but over-loading people with e-learning courses, expecting employees to keep slowly clicking next to get to the quiz at the end, can be disengaging. Online learning opportunities are vast: it includes creating a space for people to ask “how to” questions across the organisation and get instant answers in return: some may use an organisation-wide L&D MS Teams group to do this, or Slack. Online also means curating free resources, or working with teams to create new ones, which can be put on a platform to share – so knowledge sharing across the organisation becomes the norm and we have less working in silo. L&D would certainly be looking at blending online learning with face-to-face when that becomes possible again, so that programmes such as leadership development can provide knowledge and resources online as well as offline through workshops, coaching and mentoring. Classroom sessions will never disappear, but it will need to be purposeful, it will involve real problem solving, the sharing of ideas and experiences across teams, relate directly to what is happening in the charity and be measurable so that it can show practical implementation back into the workplace.

Connecting people: L&D will be working hard to connect people across teams, to encourage more knowledge and skills sharing, and less working in silo, particularly when working from home. We might know what projects other teams are working on and will connect people where we see that knowledge can be shared, reducing learning time by elevating the starting point of a project. We may know what knowledge and experience people have and will encourage them to mentor or work alongside those who could benefit from that. Our partners in this work will often be our line managers, Internal Comms, Digital and IT teams, who we will collaborate closely with and who also have an eye across the organisation.

Volunteers: Volunteers in charities are a valuable resource: they provide support to our service users, many raise money for the charity and they also represent and market the charity’s brand and purpose. Some of the support services volunteers were involved in may have been face-to-face. The current situation risks the disengagement and subsequent loss in numbers of these volunteers, as due to social distancing they may be unable to volunteer in environments which involve shielded service users. Volunteer Management may be working alongside L&D to consider what learning could be made available to volunteers to keep them engaged, what is good practice or mandatory, what online resources do we have available for them for their own personal development? Can we convert what they were doing with our service users face-to-face into an online virtual format. Or are we attempting to copy what volunteers do face-to-face into an online offer, but our service users are not engaging with that? We might want to convert one-to-one in person support into an online course with peer support instead – would that be more accessible to our service users? Volunteers can also be a useful resource for scoping work in developing virtual support: they know what might work for our service users in terms of accessing online support. L&D are learning designers, they have often been designing courses for years, can they help you design courses or one-to-one support that involve the use of volunteers in a different way?

Inductions: It’s true that in many charities there may be few or no new starters at present, with recruitment freezes and possible restructuring due to a lack of fundraising income, a shared reality during this pandemic. L&D will, however, still be concerned about their 2020 new starters. Have we thought about those new starters who have been furloughed for a few months, and will be returning to work? How will we give them the confidence to ask, when they are not sitting alongside a colleague? Do they have all the information and tools they need, and know how to access them? How can we induct new starters into the charity and team virtually? How can we prevent feelings of isolation, how can we encourage social connections which underpins the sense of belonging they may be lacking?

Mandatory and compliance training: Not the most exciting area of L&D, but arguably the most essential and important, as legally we need to provide H&S training for all employees. How does this change with employees working from home, do we need to re-look at it, have we got the online resources to do it? Is it trackable? If not, this should be an urgent requirement for your charity right now. 

There is no doubt that the out-dated “Training” function needs to work hard to move forward to a “Learning and Development” offer, which is focused on the concerns and business objectives of your charity. Have you considered how you could be utilising your L&D function?