Take learning digital - FAST!

According to McKinsey, half the in-person programmes in North America and nearly all the events in parts of Asia and Europe have been postponed or cancelled. But as the authors say, companies simply can’t push the pause button on critical workplace learning, even as they rush to put employee safety first.

From our perspective, empowering and enabling operational leaders to deal with the uncertainties, changes and challenges of this new environment is even more critical. McKinsey’s latest article “Workplace Learning during Coronavirus” offers some best practices that we’d like to comment on:

1. Set up a COVID-19 response team to set priorities for the next few months – what are the must-haves such as onboarding, what are the topical programmes that will help right now?
   

2. Protect employees in in-person programmes. If you are going to continue in-person programmes in some shape, make them safe. We held a workshop on March 18, having given people the option of virtual participation via livestream. Over half (about 30 people) took that up for reasons such as convenience as well as safety. We kept our booking for a large room so we could spread tables out for social distancing. We learned a great deal about keeping virtual participants engaged which is the great challenge in remote learning. In all honesty, the experience was not as good as being there in person, but much better than simply being an isolated observer.
   

3. Adapt in-person learning delivery by decentralising, using multiple small-group video conferencing, use local people as trained trainers.
   

4. Promote and enhance digital learning. There is clearly an opportunity to accelerate the trend towards digital learning
   

5. Explore alternative digital learning strategies. Some companies are thinking about migrating from in-person to all-digital formats, and the McKinsey authors suggest several principles:

   1. Re-think the learner’s end to end experience

   2. Set priorities for learning and focus intently on the content needed to achieve them

   3. Design for shorter interactions and provide more time between sessions to strengthen learning

   4. Focus on human connections where possible, creating intentional, meaningful interactions

   5. Support a seamless learning experience from first contact to last and ensure the same learning experience for all participants

Our Active Manager Programme adheres to all of those principles, especially around shorter interactions and more time to strengthen learning. The focus on human connection is evident in the Active Learning System ecosystem – participants get their learning from the video content, their peers the Co-lab (in-person or virtual), their facilitator/coach and their Leader Coach.

In respect to virtual versus in-person Co-labs, virtual live sessions are not as powerful as in-person, but they still work well enough. And because they are small groups of 5-7 people they do not pose the same contagion risks as large scale workshops.

In short, the Active Manager Programme is very well-suited to sustaining learning during the COVID-19 phase. The Breakthrough Company has developed deep technical and content expertise in creating the highly effective online and blended learning experience. We stand ready to partner with you rapidly develop and implement a comprehensive workplace learning strategy for the greatest challenge of our times – and beyond.

We are deeply committed to continuous learning and innovation. As the COVID-19 situation rapidly developed over the weekend, we needed to reconsider our in-person workshop scheduled for Wednesday. We met on Monday at 9.30am, and our initial view was to simply replacing the workshop with a webinar. But we wanted to create as engaging a learning experience as possible. As we talked it through, we decided that we would give people the option of attending in-person and also via livestream. By 1.30pm, we had completed the design, and in less than 36 hours Ryan Castle had done a complete system build for live streaming (including acquiring more powerful processing power for multiple streams).

McKinsey also have a number of suggestions for creating engagement and community feel in virtual live sessions. Here’s how our practices accord with those suggestions.

MCKINSEY TIPS	BREAKTHROUGH PRACTICE
Before the session
Ensure you are comfortable with, and have tested, the technology	Fully tested by 8.30am
Make participation easy by providing local-access dial-ins, as needed, in addition to any weblink	Used Zoom (as we have for the last 3 years)
Dedicate a moderator to manage speakers and discussion	Ryan focused on the remote experience, running the multiple cameras, screens and chats
Send materials in advance via file sharing, and remind participants prior to starting	Dispatched printed handouts two days before the event, and emailed a webpage with instructions and notes to download
During the session
Keep video on, look at the webcam, and use gestures as in person	Mike Ashby is an experienced presenter who managed both the in-room and the virtual audience (in synch with Ryan)
Use online tools such as polling and chat to gather input	Constantly through the day
Consider features such as virtual breakout rooms to encourage participation	Breakout rooms were used for virtual discussion groups. These worked best when they were facilitated
After the session
Distribute any work products or follow-up information as needed	Done
Solicit participant feedback on content, delivery, and technical experience	Done
Escalate any technical issues and identify workarounds or solutions	Next step is to bring virtual audience into room using dedicated screen