In today’s fast-paced and competitive business environments, innovation is critical for success. 

So if you want your organisation to stay ahead of the competition and achieve growth, you need to foster a workplace culture of innovation. 

But how do you go about doing this? It’s easy to say “let’s be more innovative!” but what steps can employers take to make this happen?

In order to be truly innovative, employers need to create a working environment where staff are encouraged to generate and develop ideas. 

Team members who are able to come up with new concepts, or streamline old processes and solve old problems, will always be an asset to any company. And the ideas generated by these employees are what’s going to give your company a competitive edge. 

Here’s how to help encourage a culture of innovation, growth and new ideas in your workplace.  

More and more companies are setting up physical spaces to encourage greater creativity and innovation in the workplace. 

Intel, for example, has built an innovation Open Lab to facilitate and enhance open research and innovation opportunities for the company.

Martin Curley, director of Intel Labs Europe, describes the kitchen in the innovation lab as having whiteboards from top to bottom, all over the room, “so people can improvise and create prototypes in real time.” 

“There is a certain ambience in the room which lets people know they have permission and license to innovate,” he says.

Vodafone has also moved away from traditional office layouts and meeting rooms, focusing more on the creation of central areas where people can relax, have coffee and brainstorm. 

According to Rachel Mooney, Vodafone Ireland HR director, “different areas of the business were working in silos [which] tended to hold back new ideas and creativity.” 

The new working environment led to greater communication and innovation, by creating opportunities for conversation between everyone – not only across different departments but most importantly at different levels. 

In addition to giving people the right working environment and space to flourish, it’s also important to make sure employees have time to be innovative. 

Many workers are flat out getting through the everyday tasks and functions of their job. Especially if they’re running between back-to-back meetings. There often isn’t much time to come up with new strategies and ideas – strategies and ideas that could have the potential to really grow the business. 

In order to combat this, Google has created a “20%” program that gives its developers permission to spend 20% of their work hours on a creative project of their own. 

More workplaces are thinking like this, taking steps to ensure staff are given the time they need to come up with the big ideas.  

Don’t just listen to new ideas – use them

So you’ve taken steps to help your employees become more innovative and creative. 

But there’s no point encouraging employees to brainstorm and generate new ideas if they’re never going to be taken on board. 

When someone comes up with a great idea, use it! Listen to the fresh ideas your team members come up with – then implement them. 

Journalist Pamela Newenham, writing for The Irish Times, believes, “ideas have to be implemented or they’re not worth anything. To truly innovate, companies need to ensure a culture that supports new ideas and new ways of doing business efforts, but also execute those ideas.” 

This might sound a bit odd at first, but a huge part of innovation is about taking risks. 

That’s why it’s important to let employees know that failure is okay. After all, not every new idea is going to be a big hit or huge success. But how will you know, if you don’t try? 

If employees are too scared to speak up about a new idea, or worried about losing their jobs if it fails, things will just stay the same. Without innovation, there is no growth. 

As Laura DeCarlo, business success coach at Career Directors International, says:

“To learn to fly we have to test our wings… In the workplace, you either let them try to express their creativity or you will kill their drive and desire to contribute.” 

John McSweeney, head of innovation at EBS, has similar words on this topic:

“People shouldn’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. In an atmosphere of fear you will never get innovation.”

Within your company, let people feel safe to speak up about their ideas and concepts. Treat people’s new ideas gently and with respect. Some of these ideas will be responsible for taking your business to the next level.

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Supporting growth and new ideas in the workplace

Ask any office worker what’s most frustrating about their job and it’s highly likely they’ll mention meetings in some form or other. 

Too many meetings. Long, pointless meetings. Meetings that ended up being a complete waste of time. And the biggest one: meetings that could’ve been done over email!

If you’re feeling frustrated by the number of meetings you’re attending, you’re not alone.

Many employees know the challenges that arise from trying to juggle too many meetings – especially when those meetings often feel pointless, disorganised or counterproductive. 

You know the feeling: you’ve just got into the perfect work zone, feeling 100% inspired and focused, when your alarm goes off to advise of a meeting. By the time you get back to your desk and regain concentration, it’s only to have it broken by yet another meeting. 

When your calendar is constantly booked out with back-to-back meetings, it becomes very hard to find the time to carry out all those tasks discussed at meetings!

Obviously, many meetings can be great: productive, innovative, motivating and good for team morale. But we’re talking about the other kind of meeting: those that could’ve been done over email. Or not at all. 

Here are some things to consider when you’re being confronted by too many meeting invites. Or are not quite sure whether to set up a meeting, or stick to email. 

First, you need to ask yourself: do I really need to accept that meeting?

Most workers are just in the habit of accepting a meeting invitation the minute it pops up in their inbox. The thing is, you don’t need to accept every meeting invite that comes your way. 

In his TED talk, speaker David Grady discusses the “epidemic of bad, inefficient, overcrowded meetings [that] is plaguing the world’s businesses and making workers miserable.”

According to Grady, Mindless Accept Syndrome occurs when employees automatically accept meeting invitations – without agendas, without clarity of purpose, without knowing why they have been selected to attend and not knowing what they are expected to contribute nor to achieve.

You can learn to change this behaviour, by proactively questioning and considering each meeting invite that comes your way.

Before clicking that accept button, ask yourself:

Do I really know what it’s about? Can I add value by attending this meeting? Could this be taken care of over email or with a quick phone call? 

Of course, these kinds of questions also apply if you’re the person setting up the meeting.

If you’re not sure whether a meeting is necessary, think about these factors:

Do you need definitive answers or data from someone? If so, it’s better to ask the person to put them down in an email. This also allows them to think over and process your questions carefully, before giving their response. 

Do you need feedback on your document/project plan/strategy? This can definitely be done over email or one-on-one. Being in meetings where everybody is silently reading over something is not a good use of time for anyone. With an email, each person can review the papers properly then offer their feedback. 

Has anything progressed since the last meeting? If nothing has moved forward and there are is no action to take, you may as well stick to an email. This way, you can spend that time at your desk instead, working on getting things moving. 

Asking yourself these three questions will help you establish whether a meeting is actually necessary or if it could’ve been done over email. 

When something can’t be done over email or phone, make sure you’re making every single meeting as productive as possible – especially if you’re leading it. 

Unfortunately, while meetings are supposed to help improve your team’s business operations, productivity and collaboration, they can actually do the opposite.

That’s why it’s so important to make every single meeting as productive, engaging and efficient as possible. 

Meetings without structure are in danger of going on forever, and often employees will leave wondering why they were even present.

Follow these guidelines for better meetings:

Set an agenda – a simple meeting agenda, distributed in advance, is perhaps the most important tool in ensuring a successful productive meeting

Establish ground rules – stop people displaying disruptive behaviours in meetings, get the group to agree on ground rules about how your meetings will be run

Give roles and responsibilities – ensure that everyone involved is crystal clear on their roles and the associated responsibilities of those roles

Complete action and follow-up – agree on tasks (action items) that should be carried out, with clear deliverables and due dates for individuals

By changing the way meetings are designed, led and experienced, you’ll be enhancing your team’s productivity and engagement, while cutting down on pointless, frustrating meeting time. In the process, you might even make workplace meetings fun, and something that staff can look forward to!

How to avoid having that meeting that could've been done over email

Welcome to our first episode of The eLearning Assist Podcast for 2019!

In this episode, Go1’s VP of Marketing Scott Cooper talks to Louise Nott about all things onboarding. 

Louise is a member of the Employee Experience team at Amicus, who recently won a ‘Best Training Project’ award from LearnX for their awesome onboarding program. 

Amicus recently partnered with Go1 to improve the way employee onboarding and training is delivered across the organisation, so we’re thrilled to hear they’ve been recognised for the success of their onboarding program.

At Go1, we believe a successful onboarding program is key to employees feeling engaged, motivated and supported in the workplace – right from the get go. It helps to establish a solid working relationship between employers and their staff, and facilitates clear communication channels, with new hires knowing exactly where and who to turn to for help. It also sends the message that this is a company that cares about employee development.

As Louise says: “You want your team members to be able to get set up as soon as possible. You want them to be able to join the business and hit the ground running from day one.”

Throughout the podcast, Louise shares her tips on how to develop and roll out a good onboarding program, as well as providing some must-do items that will impact your learners from day one on the job. 

So how did the Amicus team create an award-winning onboarding program for their employees? Tune in and find out! 

In this episode, GO1’s VP of Marketing Scott Cooper talks to Louise Nott about all things onboarding. 

Louise is a member of the Employee Experience team at Amicus, who recently won a ‘Best Training Project’ award from LearnX for their awesome onboarding program.

The eLearning Assist Podcast: Tips from Amicus on Creating an Award-Winning Onboarding Program by GO1

You can also hear more about the company’s experience with Go1 here, with Louise and Scott talking more about the implementation process and how incorporating Go1 into Amicus’ onboarding program has impacted the employee learning experience. 

Don’t forget – the Go1 eLearning Assist podcast is available through iTunes, making it even easier for you to keep up-to-date with our episodes.

What’s the Go1 eLearning Assist all About?

Go1 eLearning Assist is a monthly podcast covering trending industry information. 

With each episode of the podcast you’ll hear from a different member of the Go1 team or industry expert, sharing their knowledge and expertise. Through the sessions, we’ll cover all aspects of learning and development from:

With our iTunes podcast you can simply tune in and catch up at a time that suits you.

Subscribing to Go1 eLearning Assist is easy. Simply go to the iTunes store on your device and enter ‘Go1’ in the search toolbar. When you see this image, you’ll know you’re onto the right one!

Press 'Play' to start listening. And don’t forget to click the ‘Subscribe’ button, to stay up-to-date with new podcasts as they're released.

If you have any questions about any of the items covered in the podcast please let us know as we’d love to help you out!

Also, feel free to contact us if there are any topics that you would like to see covered in future episodes. That way, we can make sure we’re talking about things that are important to our listeners!

Our eLearning Assist podcast will feature regular interviews with industry experts. If you think you'd be a good fit to be a guest, get in touch!

The eLearning Assist Podcast: Tips from Amicus on Creating an Award-Winning Onboarding Program

A good safety manual is crucial to keeping employees safe in the workplace. Writing a safety manual is a very important task, because the safety of many people is in your hands. A good safety manual should be easily readable, prioritize the important issues, be based on standards and regulations, and be well written and edited. Here are the five steps to writing a safety manual.

Write your manual with the regular reader in mind. That means keeping it simple and straightforward. The people most often reading your safety manual will be the employees who consult it during their workday. Yes, regulators and officials may occasionally read it to ensure it meets standards, but they will make up a small fraction of your manual’s readership. Your writing should be free of jargon. You will sometimes need to use technical terms to accurately describe a safety procedure, but don’t make things any more complicated than is absolutely necessary. Keep your writing clear and use short, basic sentences. Remember to explain any acronyms and symbols you reference. Introductory sections can be very helpful at providing a reference for meanings of symbols and acronyms. Write using the active voice, rather than passive, to improve clarity and understanding.  

Be sure to have the most critical safety concerns as your main focus. Be careful with the way you present your information. “Begin with introductory concepts before moving on to information that builds on those basics. Once you’ve covered the most important topics you can move on to related issues,” suggests Angela Cecil, writer at Assignment Help. Design your manual’s layout so that it is easy to read, a big part of that will be leaving lots of white space on the page. You can use a block of text to explain general information, but bullet points are better for information that can be easily broken down into point form. When going through step by step actions, a numbered list is a very good way of explaining things. Use headings and subheadings to break up your text into more manageable sections; this also works well for when a reader is looking to jump to a certain part.

Know the industry standards and regulations

It’s important that you reference the appropriate industry standards. The International Organization for Standards (ISO) is a good resource for when you’re beginning your manual. Make yourself aware of what the government standards are for writing a manual in your industry. Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) is a good resource to learn what practices and procedures must be covered in your manual. It’s extremely important to consult with, and follow, these regulations. Failure to comply can open your organization up to legal consequences and lawsuits. 

When you’re writing a safety manual it’s extremely important to get it right. People’s lives and limbs are at stake. It’s crucial you educate yourself thoroughly using the proper sources. Consult some professionals if you’re not sure where to begin. Spend a good amount of time educating yourself on your topic, as well as all the relevant regulations. Take advantage of all the good resources out there that exist to help you. Identify every hazard that requires documentation. You may even find it necessary to produce a series, rather than a single manual. 

Tools will help your writing, editing, and proofreading

Be sure that everything in your manual is properly written, edited, and proofread. Don’t forget to check out some online resources for help with this task. Here are some good ones to get you started:

ViaWriting and SimpleGrad – Use these resources to ensure that everything you’ve written is grammatically correct. A grammar error is a great way to make yourself look like an amateur. 

Academized and UKWritings – Use these online proofreading tools, recommended by Academized review, to make sure you haven’t missed any typos. A manual with typos will not seem like a credible resource.

WritingPopulist and LetsGoandLearn – These writing blogs are a great resource and will provide you with tips from other writers. See what has worked for other people who have successfully written a safety manual. 

Australianhelp and Boomessays – Give these editing tools a try. They’ve been suggested by Essay Help Services and are guaranteed to produce writing that is perfectly edited. 

A safety manual should be a comprehensive guide to your workplace’s commitment to safety and cover the ways employees can reduce their risk of injury. Your safety manual needs to be based on expert opinions, as well as all government regulations and industry standards. A good manual should also be clearly written and cover every topic relevant to employee safety.

Grace Carter is a content proofreader at Top Canadian Writers and Student Writing Services websites. She helps with content management and reviews online submissions. 

The need to invest in learning and development is becoming very clear; it can improve employee capabilities and productivity, better-engage your talent and encourage higher staff retention rates. The question however we are often asked is, how do I actually build a learning culture that sticks with my users? Read on, to find out our tips on how to boost engagement with Go1 to make sure your learning program is positively impacting your bottom line.

A formal learning program involves outlining a clear learning objective (for example more knowledge or a new skill) which will be obtained by the training program.

Formal learning is often the primary type of training organisations focus on. The combination of the Go1 content and the course capabilities on the platform, make it easy to construct a learning program that works towards a clear goal. The platform also has the option for evaluation of learning via a quiz which you can track through the Administer reporting capabilities.  If you are managing a formal learning program and want to get users actively participating and completing their assigned learning, try incorporating diverse learning resources. Within a course, mix and match your corporate reading materials, with premium video content and conclude the learning with an assignment. The greater the variety, the more engaging the content will be.

On the topic of variety, with Go1 Premium you are in a unique position where you can access content from an extended list of different content providers. We encourage you to experiment with different providers, and make use of the different course formats, durations and learning items they all offer. This variety will better appeal to the different learning styles that your users will have.  If you are unsure what courses to include for different topic areas, each month on the Go1 blog, we investigate a different content area and highlight some interesting courses Go1 providers offer, check it out here.

Pro-tip: The platform makes it easy for you to assign due dates on courses, and enable notifications to remind users of upcoming due dates. This helps you learners stay on top of their workload and all of their upcoming learning is trackable from their dashboard. Don't forget, if you need to remind some of your learners who might be falling behind to complete their work, use the bulk notification feature to prompt them to log in!

Self-directed training is much more popular of late. Self-directed and informal training involves the learner choosing the activities and topics themselves. Formal training can also be self-directed, where your learner will select and carrie out their own learning goals.

Empower your staff to choose learning in areas that interests them. With direct access to over 6000 premium courses from their portal Explore, it is easy for your employees to take control of what informal training they undertake. Often your users are only logging in to do the formal training you've assigned them, without realising the value that a Go1 subscription can provide.  It's important as first step you collaborate with your staff to identify what interests or concerns them in a professional context such as learning how to use the Adobe Suite. Help identify and highlight Go1 courses that they could be completing, and let your staff self-direct their own learning in that topic area.  We've also made informal learning even easier with the personalised content recommendations, encourage your users to complete their profile in portal, so they can receive more targeted course suggestions.

If you are concerned about what content is accessible via Premium, and whether that content is in line with policy and company values.  You can filter down what your users can find and enroll in, via the Content Portal Selection tool, and therefore giving your staff only a subset of content to explore themselves.

Blend your online learning with face-to-face /online events 

Go1's new events functionality helps create more engaging and effective knowledge transfer. By including an online (webinar) or in person event as a part of your wider learning program, you can greatly improve the level of platform engagement. These events can be created for social learning opportunities (an example is: company lunch and learn) as much as they can also be training required for your company's formal compliance training - it's up to you!  You have the option to make your courses more comprehensive with pre-learning, better engaging your users with the relevant content before the physical event date. We find our customers with high portal engagement often have an emphasis on face-to-face events as a core part of their programs.

Become the champion of Go1 for all learning and development

Outside of undertaking a course, much more can be done to build engagement with corporate learning and professional development.

Often formal learning programs are implemented to be quite static, with the expectation staff, for example, complete a compliance course annually. Ad-hock consumption of learning or reminders to log-in doesn't support engagement.

It's important you look at integrating Go1 into your internal ways of working. This could mean:

Making Go1 learning something consistently reviewed during staff and management 1-1 meetings

Becoming the company champion and facilitating internal reminders and awards for completing learning (leaderboard style)

Put time aside to staff help discover what they could be learning, or what they need to up-skill in. Review what they complete.

Use Go1 Awards which are inspired by trends in gamification, as a tool to track ongoing learning. From the day they are on-boarded, encourage your staff to track hours spent on personal and professional development.

Make Go1 your organisation's single source of truth, when it comes to knowledge sharing.

Go1 has the features to track informal knowledge sharing and general corporate information via content uploads in courses, so we suggest making Go1 a learning and information repository for your staff. Allow it to be accessible by all (or certain) staff based on the parameters you set in a group/or sharing to the whole organisation, making the social learning process more accesible in your organisation.  We've found especially for regionally dispersed staff, having the ability to make a recording or notes available from an event or social learning activities like Lunch and Learns, makes your jobs easier.  It makes Go1 the single source of truth and one place for your staff to go to find out more information.

The ability for your learners to also upload external learning for their professional development awards,  further supports the concept within your organisation that Go1 is the only place users need to go to complete and manage their training.

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As we move into the new year, we’ve been talking about things you can do to start the year off on the right foot, with tips to help you crush your goals in 2019 and make it your best career year yet. Taking the time to invest in your professional development is top of the list when it comes to boosting your career.

Whether you’re aiming to land a promotion, secure your dream job, or move your career in a new direction, spending time on professional development will help you get where you want to go.

Doing this will also show employers – both current and potential – that you’re committed to improving your skill set and capabilities, through continual learning and developing. And you’ll also be proving this to yourself, while growing more confident in your skills all the time.

If you’re going to get serious about professional development in 2019, you’ll want to check out what’s on offer through online learning.

Online courses are one of the easiest and best ways to help you get from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future. There are eLearning courses covering a huge range of professional development topics, from role-specific skills like programming and graphic design, to plenty of courses aimed to improve your interpersonal soft skills such as communication, teamwork and dealing with change.

Ready to get learning? We’ve hand-picked five of the best online courses to help you take control of your professional development and kick start the new year on a positive note!

Improving your communication skills can be a great place to start if you want to stand out from the competition and reach your career goals.

Because regardless of where you work or what you do for a job, being able to communicate with colleagues, stakeholders, clients and senior leaders is one of the most important skills for any employee. And if you want to move into a management or team leader position, you’ll need to know how to communicate effectively with your team.

This online course, How to Communicate Effectively, will help you find the right methods and channels of communication, to help lead you to more engaged and productive working relationships.

You’ll leave this course with plenty of tips and tricks to use, and a clearer understanding of the environment you’re trying to create within your workplace. Added bonus – improving your communication skills won’t just benefit your work life – you’re bound to see positive benefits in your personal life also.

Another skill that’s incredibly valuable for professional development is knowing how to work well within a team. Which also means knowing how to handle and manage team conflict.

Many people naturally tend to shy away from difficult conversations or conflict – if that’s you, you’re not alone! But unfortunately, avoiding conflict won’t make it go away. If anything, it will only make it worse, as negative emotions continue to boil under the surface and grow larger in magnitude.

When members of a team are in conflict, it can also begin to affect their other team mates, causing rifts and division and resulting in a toxic work culture.

With the eLearning course How to Manage Team Conflict,  you’ll learn how to get to the bottom of team issues, learning practical ways to tackle conflict head on. The course will provide you with plenty of tips for how to communicate and restore balance, while helping you to become an ace team player.

If you work in a customer-facing role, you’ll want to be sure your service skills are up to scratch. But improving customer service skills can greatly help your career, no matter what position you’re in – because we all deal with customers daily, whether they’re external or internal to the business.

Good old-fashioned customer service is still one of the most important factors when it comes to deciding to do business with a company. It’s no good having the most up-to-date tech gear or fancy office suites if your business doesn’t deliver on customer service. And these days, with the huge impact of social media, providing good customer service has never been so important.

89% of people say they’ve stopped doing business with companies because of poor customer service – that’s a huge percentage! This online course, Customer Service Success, is designed to give you the skills you need to provide great customer service, so you don’t become one of those companies.

The course content has a strong focus on improving your listening skills, as without this fundamental skill you won’t be able to respond to your customers’ needs.

You’ll also learn about paying attention to your body language and gestures, as well as the words and language you use in the work environment. All of these things have a significant impact on how customers perceive you and the company you work for.

Just as customer service is central to many other jobs outside of the retail or hospitality industry, project management skills can be super important for employees in all kinds of roles.

When it comes down to it, project management skills are a set of techniques and tools that focus on helping you to achieve goals and manage your workload more effectively.

As an employee, taking the time to improve your project management skills can be a great way to boost your career, while making yourself more valuable to employers and building your confidence at work.

Project Management Fundamentals takes you right from the beginning of PM, so it’s great for anyone who is new to the subject or is keen to start their study from scratch.

The online course explains the basics of project management, including:

Establishing project goals and objectives

You’ll receive plenty of practical tips for how to keep your project on track, manage your project team and report on project performance.

All jobs have their unique challenges and stressors. In our increasingly fast-paced world, employees should do their best to be aware and conscious of the potential signs of low mental health or burnout and to take action before it starts further impacting their health.

While online courses can’t replace the guidance and expertise of a mental health professional, they can help individuals understand more about the importance of taking care of their mental health in the workplace. These resources can also help managers and employers learn how to support their employees in this area, which is incredible important.

Take a look at Positive Mental Health. This eLearning course provides a good foundation for understanding the various components of mental health and wellbeing and has plenty of information on particular tools and methods that can prove helpful in promoting positive mental health in the workplace. It wraps up the equivalent of a day’s course in an online format that you can get through at your own pace, and in your own safe environment.

You’ll learn about self-care in relation to good mental health, wellbeing and resilience, and how to identify specific methods which can be applied to support people experiencing low mental health.

Remember – professional development training needs to be continual, not just something that you tick off once a year. It requires ongoing investment of your time, focus and energy, to get the best results. So make it your new year resolution to keep it up all year round!

5 professional development courses to help you get ahead in 2019

Happy new year to all our Go1 followers! We hope you had a refreshing and relaxing break over the holiday season and are settling back into the swing of things at work.

As always, these first few weeks of January are the perfect time to think about setting some new year resolutions and career goals for the year ahead.

This year, you might have your heart set on getting a promotion, landing your dream job, or moving your career in a new direction. Maybe you’re entirely happy in your current role, but want to improve the way you manage deadlines, or develop new leadership skills?

Whatever your goals are for 2019, taking the time to invest in your professional development is one of the best things you can do for your career. By taking charge of your own development, you can make sure you’re filling in any skills gaps and keeping up-to-date with current knowledge in your industry. You’ll also feel more in control of your own happiness and direction.

Here are three things you can do to start the new year off on the right foot, while making 2019 your most successful career year yet!

Set Clear Career Goals for the Year Ahead

Have you never really been all that keen on setting new year resolutions or goals?

That’s fine – if you’re happy to find yourself in the exact same place this time next year. But if you want to change things up, you’ll need to get real about goal setting, especially when it comes to your career.

Like it or not, goal-setting is the best way to achieve results. To get where you want to go in 2019, you’ll need to map out a clear pathway of what you want the year ahead to look like. Goals, both short and long-term, act as a catalyst to help direct you where you want to be.

Take some time to look back at 2018 and take stock of the year’s events. Think about what you achieved professionally. Also think about what you wish you’d done differently. Is there anything you weren’t proud of, or could have handled better? Opportunities you didn’t take advantage of because you were too busy, or scared, or just couldn’t be bothered?

These questions will help you identify things you need to improve, work on, or eliminate, in order to reach your goals.

Let’s say you didn’t go for that higher role because you weren’t feeling all that confident about your public speaking skills? Or you let yourself get really run down and burnt out at work? You can then start outlining a plan of attack – to improve your interview skills, manage your stress levels… you get the idea. Identifying the areas in which you want to see positive change is the first step in achieving your goals.

Make sure you’re setting goals that are realistic, specific, and measurable. Your new goals will help keep you on track and accountable throughout the year. Put them somewhere visible and check in on yourself regularly.

Get Real About Whether You’re Still on the Right Track

Start the year by thinking about exactly what it is you want from your career. If you feel that you’re getting what you need from your job and employer, that’s great!

But if you’re dragging yourself back to a job that you hate, use the fresh energy of the new year to look realistically at your work satisfaction. Because you’re most likely on the wrong track.

One of the main reasons why people are unhappy in their jobs is that their work, career or employer is at odds with their values. Often, employees won’t even realise their dissatisfaction stems from this mismatch – there’s just a general feeling that something isn’t quite right.

While not everyone can have the luxury of working in a job that aligns perfectly with their values, or feels endlessly emotionally rewarding or meaningful, it is important to find some satisfaction in your daily work – even if that job is simply a stepping stone to somewhere else.

This year, think about what your personal values actually are. What motivates and inspires you? What are your passions? This will help you identify what exactly it is that you need from a job role and an employer (besides a pay cheque).

If you’re stuck in your current role for the time being, get to work on an action plan that will help move you further towards a job or industry that is more in line with your values. This will allow you to stay true to yourself and your goals and derive more happiness from your current situation.

Improve Your Skill Set with Online Learning

Those goals you set in step one? The career track you’ve identified in step two?

This is the learning pathway you need to be on in 2019. And professional development training is what’s going to help get you there.

Many employees rely solely on the training provided by their employer for their career development – but there’s nothing stopping you from spending your own time learning and developing new skills. With so many online courses and eLearning solutions available, there’s never been a better time for employees to take charge of their professional development.

Think about the gaps in your skill set that are preventing you from achieving your goals. It’s very likely that you can find high-quality eLearning courses that provide training in those areas.

It’s not just technical skills that can be developed through online learning. Many employers these days are placing great emphasis on soft skills – those skills that help us become better communicators, leaders and team players.

Online training and eLearning courses are great for brushing up on your soft skills, while also showing potential employers that you’re committed to self-improvement in this area. And if you’re looking to change fields or industries, you can identify the courses you need to complete to move forward in this new direction.

As we said before, whatever your goals are, there’s nothing to stop you from learning in your own time and it’ll be well worth it in the long run!

Get ready to crush your career goals in 2019

As 2018 draws to a close, we’d like to thank all our readers and followers for your ongoing feedback and engagement throughout the year.

We’ve covered many exciting and interesting topics over the past year on the Go1 blog, exploring all aspects of learning and development.

To close out the year, here’s a look back at the top five most-read articles of 2018!

#1. Building Rapport with Customers Through Customer Service

There’s an old saying that customers first buy into the person and then into the product.

That’s why it’s important to know how to build good rapport with your customers.

It’s no good having the most up-to-date tech gear, fancy coffee machine or cool open-plan office – if your business doesn’t deliver on customer service you’ll find it hard to stay ahead of the competition.

This article looks at how building rapport can bring big benefits to a customer service scenario.

When people have a solid rapport, communication and ideas are able to flow easily. They feel ‘in synch’ with each other and are likely to have a good understanding of where the other person is coming from.

Being on the same page as your customers is an important step in meeting their individual needs and finding the best solution for them.

So how do you make sure that you’re able to build rapport with your customers?

In business, you can’t afford to be indecisive.

Decision making is an important skill you’ve got to have if you want to progress. It doesn’t matter what industry or role you’re in, you will always use decision making in your everyday working life.

In this article, we discuss how decision making is a skill that you can master with effective training.

Over time, you can learn more about the thought processes involved in decision making, to become more adept at identifying problems and analysing different solutions to find the best outcome to move forward.

When you know the process of decision making, you can become more efficient in the workplace, encouraging innovation that leads to new products and services and milestones.

 Find out more about using decision making to boost your career.

#3. Why You Need to be Monitoring Employee Professional Development