Is COVID (and WFH alone) causing us to lose passive learning opportunities?

YES!

Like many things we took for granted before COVID-19 changed our lives and working habits, passive learning is one such area that we didn’t realise we enjoyed and took great benefit from until we couldn’t do it anymore.

No one is immune to the effects that lockdown has had on the working from home  (WFH) culture. In March 2020 businesses shut the doors on their commercial real estate and quickly set up their digital infrastructure incorporating zoom and Microsoft teams into their daily activities for all staff. Kitchen tables, bedrooms and even sheds transitioned into makeshift offices as Britain’s workforce adapted to a new way of working.

Many people are now simply ‘doing’ their jobs from the loneliness of a laptop or PC.
There is a lot of discussion about the issues of remote working, mainly around communication and teamwork – which is of course a huge barrier, but not much is being said about the unsung learning and development.

One of the biggest losses most businesses I’ve spoken with is the passive learning from one colleague to another; one team to another. Many of us are not being exposed to the wider business functions, the insights and discussions with colleagues from senior teams or other departments throughout the business.

The obvious things we all miss; the water cooler chat or the ability to pop over to Pret for lunch with our colleagues but the real issue is the lost ability to ‘learn’ from our colleagues and senior team. You can’t put a value on that or quantify the power of human interaction to career development.

The importance of overhearing conversations about projects, progress, business successes – these things all add up.  It’s this passive learning that will have a big impact on our ‘commercial learnings’ and the growth of our acumen as individuals. We mustn’t let this go.

Many ask, how will we progress up the career ladder if no one is here to ‘see’ me?
For some there are remote learnings, courses and CPD sessions but that’s just educational learning – hugely important but not the whole picture. What about the passive learning? The exposure to wider business functions and knowledge of other departments and how cross departments work together to deliver project, design systems, create solutions for clients. The exposure to those telephone calls and meetings with colleagues and clients.

Coupled with this is the ability to get out and network. The corporate events and exhibitions colleagues were able to attend to learn, meet, discuss and ‘sell’ to network and communicate with the wider stakeholder community. Lack of exposure to the wider business and wider stakeholder community will soon impact on business and colleague’s development and progress – which impacts the business overall – the commercial growth of both business and colleague.

To stop the act of passive learning impacting on business development and commercial growth we need to adapt now:

• We need to find a new way to bring back the passive learning. How can we recreate the power of the water cooler moments, the exposure to the wider business, and the commercial acumen?
• We also need to be able to keep up to date with what our competitors are doing, what our prospective clients are wanting, where the market is going, what customer pain points are now and in the future.
• We need to build a new culture of sharing a businesses commercial plans, opportunities and movements.

This is where 3Eight can help. As communication experts, we can assist businesses while they transition into this new way of working. Good communications can help build a new culture to be able to share and educate on the business, its marketplace and prospects. 

How do you do this effectively?

By adapting business culture to be more communicative, informative, educational. With effective communications that can help feed and fuel the passive learnings of the WFH individuals ensuring they are communicated with and feel a part of the wider business community. Examples of this can be:

• Sharing success stories and insights on team activities, promotions, successes and looking outside the business at the wider stakeholder community. As well as competitors and market movements then communicating that internally to all teams in a manner that relates to them.
• Creating content such as blogs and insights for intranets and colleague newsletters, these can help share business information, updates and successes, market movements and how they may impact the business.

Team meetings and performance reviews on zoom with senior colleagues may be inevitable right now, but without the ability to share wider business impact stories colleague’s ability to learn from the business can be seriously impacted.
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It has never been more important to encourage colleagues to immerse themselves in the culture, learn from colleagues, experience the external influencers, market movements and what the competitors are doing. This is challenging during the WFH lifestyle but with a smart effective and considered communications strategy it is possible to embrace the art of communication and the different channels available to.
 
If you would like to know more about how the team at 3Eight Communications can help, please get in touch http://www.3eightcommunications.co.uk/contact-us.html