Remote work teams are increasingly commonplace thanks to the prevalence of technological tools to facilitate this type of work structure. Many employers love the fact that they hire remote workers from a much larger pool. This makes it easier to find qualified candidates, and it may be more cost-effective to hire individuals who live in areas with a more affordable cost-of-living. Overhead related to office space, supplies, technology and more may also be reduced.

In order to take full advantage of the benefits of an efficient remote team, you need to pull together the right combination of tools and applications for them to use. Each team has unique needs for collaboration, communication and more, so there is not a top collaboration tool that all remote teams should use. Instead, review the features of some of these excellent options to determine which ones may be a good fit for your remote team’s needs.

RealTime Board is a well-designed collaboration feature that lets each of your team’s members contribute in different ways. For example, some individuals may post pictures to the group board, and others may use spreadsheets, graphs, charts and more. It has a whiteboard design with robust cloud-based storage, making it functional for most group needs. The base level subscription is free for up to three users, and it gives you three boards. With the base level subscription, the program can be integrated with Slack for improved functionality. A team membership for five users and unlimited boards is $40 per month, and a company subscription is available on a quote basis. There are also special memberships that are ideal for collaborating with clients or others outside of your firm.

Slack is another collaboration tool that is widely used in smaller and larger companies. You can link all of your remote workers together, and they easily communicate and share files in real-time. This program boosts transparency, allowing everyone to see what their team members are working on at any given time. It can notably be integrated with Salesforce, Zoom, InVision, ZenDesk, GoogleDrive and Jira Cloud for improved functionality and practical applications in many remote work settings. You can also create your own integrated applications as needed. Basic features in Slack are available for free and for an unlimited amount of time. The standard membership is $6.67 per user per month, and the advanced membership is $12.50 per user per month.

LeanKit is a group collaboration application that is design with Lean management principles in mind. It allows you and your team to visualize the entire work process and to monitor progress of projects through the process. It works with all methodologies, and this includes Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban and others. The application is customizable, flexible and scalable. Through its unique metrics and analytical features, you can learn about new ways to address inefficiencies and bottlenecks. There are three membership plans available, and these are the Select plan for $19 per user per month, the Advanced plan for $32 per user per month and the Premium plan that has pricing available upon request.

Asana is a collaboration resource that works well for remote teams. Each worker will have access to real-time data and updates on all projects that they are linked to. Conversations related to each project are visible on a well-designed dashboard. For each project, you can also see items that have recently been completed, that are scheduled to be completed immediately and that are planned in the future. It can be integrated with more than 100 other collaboration and communication apps, and it also is accessible on your smartphone through an app. The free version is available for up to 15 members, and a premium membership with more robust features is available for $9.99 per user per month with no limit on the number of members that you can have.

OneDrive is a Microsoft application that lets you store your documents in the cloud. You can access them from your mobile device, and you can share them with individuals who are linked to your account. Through the file sharing application, this becomes an excellent collaboration tool for remote teams. You can search for files, edit them, annotate them and more. The cost for this application is based on the amount of storage space you need and if you need sharing functionality. For example, you can enjoy this service for free with up to five gigabytes of storage space and no sharing capabilities.

MindMeister is a free team collaboration tool that offers mind mapping functionality to an unlimited number of users. You can see updates in real-time for instant collaboration. In addition to the mind mapping function, there is a sidebar for chatting, communications, voting and more. It has mobile functionality, and it is designed for both Apple and Android functionality. Its ease-of-use is a true benefit. For example, you can drag and drop items into the mind map, and you can easily create graphic images from the mind map for use in slide shows, reports and more.

AgreeDo may be a great application for remote teams that have frequent meetings or if you feel that your meetings are longer than they need to be. This application makes it easy for you to take meeting notes, create and share agendas, create task lists, generate attachments and more. There is a free basic version available with unlimited usage, but you will need a paid version for integration with Lotus Notes, Google Calendar, Outlook and other applications. The premium version is $7.9 per month per user, and the upgraded version is $12 per user per month.

You understandably need your remote team to be as efficient and productive as possible. When collaboration and communication issues are holding your team back, implementing the use of one or more of these exceptional tools may be a smart idea. Try out several applications soon to determine which ones have the right features and platform to meet your team's needs.

Joe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer, marketing consultant and an ultimate tech enthusiast. You can find the longest content he’s ever written here. Feel free to contact him . Feel free to contact him @bmorepeters

False

7 collaboration tools for efficient remote teams

How would you decide, do you go with your gut?

It’s not uncommon that we make decisions on whether we trust on some instinctive level which is difficult to articulate. If we go with our gut this makes it difficult for us to then establish what we can do to ensure that we can in turn be trusted.

Trust is important, not just in our personal relationships but also in business.

I am sure you are familiar with the old saying, ‘trust takes years to build and seconds to break’ but in today’s business world we don’t have years, we might only have moments.

As gut instinct provides no clear definition of trustworthy behavior or attributes, how do we learn about trust and how can we apply this to ensure that people will be willing to trust us?

Skillsoft’s course “The Building Blocks of Building Trust” breaks this down into some basic tools that we can use in any business setting to help understand and build trust.

Skillsoft outline some key indicators that will help you evaluate a person’s trustworthiness.
Are they: truthful, honest, accountable, respectful, authentic and competent?

Being able to identify these factors will help you recognize people with whom you can build trust and in turn exhibiting these attributes will increase your chances of being trusted by colleagues and associates.

With these basic building blocks, we can then look to demonstrate and develop trust with our colleagues, simple right?
It’s never that simple!

We go on to learn that whilst you might think it’s the complex cognitive brain that would assess a person’s trustworthiness, on first interaction it’s not. It’s actually the primitive brain that first decides if they are a threat or danger. What this teaches us is that to make a trust connection body language and demeanor are also essential, or that gut does play an unavoidable part on the trust assessment.

An objective of this module is to provide you with strategies that you can adopt which should help people open up and engage with you. Once the connection has been made, you’ll have a foundation from which you can build trust.

The course covers concepts on building and demonstrating trust. It looks at how trust can be broken and what you can do to rebuild trust in a business environment.

I am not going to give it all away as I do recommend that you take the course.

I will say that whilst some are basic concepts sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the most difficult to define and the great thing about e-learning is the repetition and reminding us about important elements of business that we can often forget to use.

If you struggle with developing business relationships or would like to 30 minute refresher on what’s important in developing trust it’s worth setting aside 30 minutes of your day to complete ‘The Building Blocks of Trust’ by Skillsoft and let us know if you feel it added value to your working relationships.

I recently did Skillsoft’s course – “The Art of Staying Focused” and it gave me some great pointers on how to be more efficient at my workplace by implementing a few simple practices. High levels of productivity are directly proportional to focusing on a task as opposed to doing multiple things at once.

The art of staying focused all day is not an easy task. The human brain is frequently on over-drive, thinking about several things at once. Meditation is something I personally do to help me keep a calm and collected mind. In a workplace environment, there are quite a few different forms of distractions that can hinder your efficiency. I’ll attempt to cover a few here and also go over Skillsoft’s solutions (which I heavily agree with) to those problems and how to get more stuff done within limited time frames.

Almost everyone is guilty of procrastination. One way to overcome this is to set up simple rewards/motivators at the end of each task. For example – If you have 60 minutes to get a task done. Break your time into 2 slots. Consciously work hard for the first 25 minutes and then take a small/coffee break for 5 minutes. Repeat this again and you’ll notice that by applying the focus-reward principle, you will have achieved more.

Prioritize your most important tasks first. The 80-20 rule states that 20% of your activities account for 80% of your results. It’s important to realize what your 20% is and assign more priority to those tasks. Another factor that might hinder performance is fatigue which can be countered again by taking small breaks. Get some fresh air, walk around the office space if you have a job in front of a computer screen.

Turn off notifications for all your social media applications. Attempt to physically move away from busy/noisy areas in the office space. Grab a meeting room when doing tasks of high priority. Set a ‘Do not disturb’ status within your company’s internal chat/communication channels when you’re doing something important.

Exercising is great. Even if it’s for 30 minutes, taking a break to go out and work out has been known (and scientifically proven) to make you more energetic in your workspace.

It’s okay to say no sometimes. If you’re over-worked and your colleagues keep piling on more stuff for you to do, there are ways to decline it in a polite way. If it’s your manager assigning you a task when you have other high tasks priority going on, it’s good to ask your manager “Do this task take priority over the other tasks I’m currently engaged in?” Telling your colleagues that you’re over-committed helps you from adding additional pressure on yourself

These are just some of the tips you can easily integrate into your work life. Personally, I’d also recommend taking 20 minutes off during the day to practice some simple breathing techniques or meditation practices. Find some quiet place outside where you’re not likely to get distracted and focus on nothing. Blank your mind and just breathe. I’ve seen great results from that. All the practices mentioned above and easily be implemented. It might take a little bit of practice. However, the results are worth the minimal effort you put in 

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

The art of staying focused is not an easy task. However, with strategies like meditation, exercise, and more, you'll be able to master the art of staying focused.

The art of staying focused

At one time or another we have all procrastinated. Every day in the business world we are faced with so many tasks to do. What procrastination means is to keep putting a task off for as long as possible.

We have all done it at one stage in our careers we put of creating that excel spread sheet or that PowerPoint presentation, we lose focus and it’s all done in the last minute which is the biggest cause of low productivity in the workplace.

“I'll do it later’’ we have all heard that in our office, putting a must do task off for a certain amount of time because it may be dull, boring complicated or all three. So, there are a few different types of procrastinators here;

1. Unmotivated
2. Indecisive
3. Unorganised
4. Easily distracted

Identifying the reasons why you procrastinate

Here you must look at why am I putting this task off for so long. Is it that the project is too hard, do you need help, and why are you procrastination so much.

Many factors come into play here. You could be stressed, have strong emotions, time of personal crisis, financial worry, are you a type of ‘Yes’ man/woman who takes on way too much work? These are factors that can contribute.

The solution to some of the above factors can be as easily as having a mental health break, exercising and taking care of your body, making sure you get enough sleep, eating healthy and watching your weight. Even avoiding coffee may help. People think coffee is great but it only reaps short-term benefits.

A particular matter that has helped me is using focusing techniques like mediation. It is very important to take time out and to recharge and refresh yourself.

Beat Procrastination by getting motivated

Sometimes we all can get a lack of drive with a certain task, we are only human after all. I found using positive or negative visualisations to help you get it done. Asking yourself what will happen if I don’t get the report done? My boss will be very unhappy with me. On the other hand, visualise the presentation going well, the clients loving it and making heaps of commission.

Here, I think it is of vital importance to learn how to break the task down into bite sized chunks.

Also, you must reward yourself when the task is complete. Go see a movie or go to a new restaurant. Rewarding yourself is very important.

Beat procrastination by being more decisive

“I’ll do it later ” this ladies and gentlemen is the motto of a Procrastinator.

We do this because of a fear of failure and we over analysis the situation. Here we must learn to be brave. Focus in getting started and don’t get overwhelmed, take the first step and go forth from there. What can really help here is setting milestones and deadlines for yourself and reward yourself where appropriate.

Beat Procrastination by organising your time

We often tackle the easy tasks first ‘low hanging fruit’. Then we put off the important task till later in the day. What is so important to remember here is the fact that we have more energy in the morning than what we have in the afternoon. So, taking advantage of the time of day when you have the most energy is the most productive way to get that hard task done first.

Start all the tasks you hate first, and another great idea is to start a task list off when you finish work for the following day before you leave the office.

Overcoming procrastination; admitting is the first step

When you’re creating online learning content, you need to make sure it’s available to all learners. This means making your content accessible to everyone, including users with hearing, vision or motor impairment.

Whether you’re developing an eLearning course or any other form of online training materials, accessibility is a very important part of the design process.

Do you feel confident that you have a basic understanding of web accessibility, and why it’s so important in online learning?

Here are some things you need to know about accessibility, so next time you’re creating an eLearning course, you won't be excluding any members of your learning community.

Accessibility challenges the barriers that affect a person’s access and contribution to the web. This includes all visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities or impairments that make it difficult or impossible to use online content.

The internet is an important resource in many aspects of life – including education and learning. It is essential that online learning content is accessible to all, while providing equal opportunities to people with disabilities.

Accessibility also benefits older people with changing abilities due to aging, or those with English as a second language. Or even temporary disabilities like a broken arm. It provides ease of access to the internet for each and every user.

Web accessibility guidelines also form an important aspect of making sure your content is compliant.

In fact, in many industries, accessibility is a legal requirement – so it’s imperative that your business meets compliance in this area.

If you’re working in the learning industry, you need to be aware of these laws when preparing training materials. Take the time to learn about accessibility guidelines and how you can evaluate your current programs for compliance.

Accessibility is about making your web content more accessible to users with impairment or disability, allowing them to better navigate your website or learning materials.

So how do you make sure your training content is accessible to every learner?

Audio and video content can be difficult for learners with hearing or visual impairments to access, so providing transcripts for audio and video content helps.

When incorporating video content into your eLearning course, make sure it has closed captioning. It is best practice to always turn captions on. This will benefit learners with hearing impairments, as well as those students whose first language is not English.

Visually impaired people may use screen readers to listen to, and navigate through, online items. You should be using Alt Tag descriptions and text for your online images, to assist visually impaired learners.

You can also provide course materials in alternate formats, such as large print, Braille, and electronic or audio formats.

Make Content Accessible from the Very Start

Maureen Orey, author of Successful Staffing in a Diverse Workplace, has this advice for eLearning professionals.

“The time to begin thinking about accessibility is not when you are testing your course in the pilot phase.”

She says it’s important to integrate it into the early stages of the design process.

“Keeping accessibility in mind from the start will save you time and money.”

Orey also considers accessibility a critical part of “working to create a culture of inclusion (not just compliance)” – an excellent point.

There are many ways to practice accessibility with your learning content, and these are just a few factors that will help make your content accessible to as many people as possible.

For best practice guidelines and tips, take the time to learn more about web accessibility and universal design practices. Your learning content will be more effective, compliant and highly regarded when you pay attention to accessibility.

Everyone has heard of motivation but not everyone knows exactly how to find it or what motivates different people. To really understand motivation and motivating, you need to start with the basics.

So what is motivation? Motivation can be described as the reason behind people’s actions, desires and even needs. It is key to find what motivates different people in the workplace and use these motivating factors to achieve an end goal which will be beneficial for both the employee and the organization.

Regardless of the industry or vertical if you will, managers across the board face a common issue in keeping employees motivated. Having motivated employees can be a key factor in whether or not an organization is successful, nothing can drain a culture quicker than a group of employees who are not motivated and have lost interest in the work they are doing. This is why today a push for leadership to maintain motivation levels high is a priority, a motivated employee is one of if not the most important assets an organization can possess.

So how has Skillsoft addressed the issue of motivation effectively?

They have put together a great mix of tips and ways to both find what motivates employees and keeping employees motivated. The content is well structured and easy to follow, great way for anyone in a leadership position to gather insights into the methodology behind motivating employees.

Motivation can be broken down into two main categories, extrinsic and intrinsic. Maslow is most well-known for mapping these out in the hierarchy of needs (Maslow’s pyramid), basic needs which motivate us are usually referred to as extrinsic and as you move up the pyramid the needs become more complex and are known as intrinsic motivations.

When one’s intrinsic motivators are known they can be used to great affect and employees can be greatly motivated under the right leadership.

Involving, validating, and developing employees

Simple ideas or concepts but they are easily overlooked or forgotten, bringing it back to the basics ensures a great workplace environment. Creating a feeling that all belong, making employees feel appreciated and ensuring personal development is a focus through goal achievement all ensure motivation is maintained at a high level amongst employees.

Leveraging motivation through workplace systems

Workplace systems are not just a way to monitor and critique employees, they can be powerful motivators if used in the correct manner. Linking systems to an individual’s motivators can ensure personal growth, up-skilling and outline a path for career progression.

No two employees will be the same in terms of motivating factors, although it may be a difficult task, leaders need to dig deep and understand each individual on a person level. By linking company objectives to personal motivators employees will feel they are achieving what is important to them while working towards a company objective.

Everyone understands that having employees motivated is crucial, When you introduce better practices to understand individuals the benefits for the organisation can be endless.

With ‘Motivating Your Employees’ you can have everyone feeling like personal goals are being met while achieving company goals as a whole.

One of the biggest questions once completing a training module or course is always how effective was this or did I actually learn something. Not to worry, a great way to measure this is provided. A simple exercise sums up the course and tests the knowledge that has been acquired to ensure that the content matter has been understood and attained.

With Employees motivated and morale high there is no limit to what can be achieved in any organization. So now with motivating your employees this can be achieved and the tools are at your disposal.

Believe it or not, most people have an incredible memory, they just don't know how to use it. Other than repeating something multiple times, most of us have never been taught memory techniques that really tap into the power of the human brain.

By completing Skillsoft’s course on Improving your Memory Skills, you'll learn basic memory principles and learn how to use them to memorize and recall almost anything, including speeches, passwords, faces, and lists.

As someone who is terrible at remembering a person’s name right after I have met them, I thought this would be an ideal course to gain some tips on how I might better remember a potential customers name that I want to work with, I believe it will definitely help.

This course is ideal for anyone and everyone looking to improve their memory and recall and covers some key objectives on improving your memory skills. Taking just over 20 minutes, this course can really save you a lot of time trying to remember some simple things in life.

Repetition - Easy really, repeat something over and over again or just the next day, the following week and then month.

Exaggeration – I liked this one, by exaggerating the story either by making it bigger, smaller or even funny -  it really does help to remember it.

Imagery – If you associate an image you want to remember, it forces you to focus.

Focus – basically no multi-tasking. By concentrating on what you are doing or wanting to remember you will have a better chance to memorizing it.

Basically, a brain shortcut to help you remember something.  Quite an old technique, but one that’s still around as it obviously works.

Identify the steps of the memory palace technique

Memorizing lists by using places that you are very familiar with.  Improving your memory skills will show some great examples of using rooms around your house to help you remember things on your “to do” list.

Some very simple but fantastic tips to avoid those awkward situations when you forget a person’s name.  After watching this part of the course, I think I will forever remember ‘Bendy Wendy’.

Recognize tips for memorizing text that you’ll later need to recite from memory

From saying it out loud, reading it backwards or making mistakes, the key thing is repetition.  But repetition is time and something we all lack.  This section of the course really helps improve how you remember text you will need to recite later.

Create strong passwords that are easy to remember

After watching this, I don’t think I will need to write down my passwords anymore and I may even be able to produce stronger passwords also.

In conclusion, if you're looking for methods and techniques to improve your memory, as someone with a self-proclaimed terrible memory, I can highly recommend Skillsoft’s Improving Your Memory Skills course as a great course to help any person improve their memory skills.

In today’s fast-paced business environments, creativity is critical for success. It’s important for teams to know how to brainstorm and build on creative ideas, to stay innovative and ahead of the competition.

Even though creativity is something that can’t really be taught, it can be facilitated and fostered.

In any role, or industry, employees need to know how to generate, incubate and verify the workability of ideas before implementation. This is a really important process – because after all, failed ideas waste money, time and resources.

Why not take a look at this short online course, specifically designed to help you improve your creative process?

Verifying and Building on Creative Ideas – an online course

The Verifying and Building on Creative Ideas course covers a variety of techniques used to verify and build on creative ideas.

The course gives a really clear explanation of the five-stage creative process model:

You’ll be presented with case study scenarios of employees going through the process, all the way from research to implementation. Throughout the course, you’ll see how important the steps of generation and incubation are to the creative process.

You’ll learn when to use research and when to use simulations to check the workability of an idea. Because while the early stages of brainstorming are generally free from rationale and critique, all creative ideas need to be put into practice, to make sure they'll actually work.

This eLearning course will provide you with helpful tips for checking whether your creative ideas are realistic from an organisational viewpoint. This is about verifying your ideas and testing out the idea for workability, through feedback from others or by key people and using simulations.

While either method may work, one method is usually preferred, depending on the situation. Course participants will be given a handy online table, with specific criteria you can use to help you decide which method is most appropriate to your situation.

Giving you confidence to generate and build on creative ideas

Upon completion of this online course, employees will feel far more confident in using the five-stage creative process model.

Recognise each stage of the creative process

Understand the purpose and activities of the verifying stage

Identify criteria for adopting both canvassing and simulation methods

Come up with criteria-based questions to evaluate the effectiveness of a creative idea, before implementation.

Putting in the time to understand creative process will help individual staff members, teams, and your organisation as a whole, through greater innovation and creativity.

As the course narrator says, “if you want to boost your creativity and come up with innovative strategies, following the creative process model might be the answer!”


Get the Verifying and Building on Creative Ideas course with Go1 Premium

Helping your team to generate and build on creative ideas

Did you know that only 13 percent of customers think a salesperson truly understands their needs?

While a lot of companies believe they’ve got decent sales call process, in reality, customers clearly disagree. Here at Go1, we think we know why this is – most sales people talk too much.

Of course, selling techniques take a lot of persuading and convincing customers that they can benefit from a product or service, but there’s one problem that we see a lot: sales staff are simply not listening to their potential new customers.

This would definitely explain why customers think that nobody understands their needs and obviously this translates into lower sales for your business.

It’s true that sales calls aren’t necessarily easy. In fact, lots of employees are super nervous when they first start out  and don’t know what they’re doing. You really do have to develop the skills and a good technique for a quality sales conversation.

So, how can you help your employees learn how to make successful sales calls? Well, the best way is through providing sales call training.

This is definitely an investment that will see a return for your business since quality sales conversation turns into more business, which leads to bigger profits and more customers. All of this equals success!

A lot of businesses think that the era of sales calls is over. But, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While the rise of technology has meant that sales techniques have changed, there’s still a lot of success that comes with making sales calls to new and existing customers.

In fact, we found out that only 24 percent of people actually open sales emails. On the other hand, sales calls are more personal and interactive – and get better metrics overall. They allow you to really engage with a customer and it offers that human element that shows your business is real.

This is important to customers – they want to be offered more than just a quick sale. They want a positive experience and to build trust with you.

Of course, we all know that sales calls are only effective and productive for your business if they are done successfully. That’s why it’s important to provide your employees with the training they need to feel confident and know how to interact with customers over the phone.

At the end of the day, you don’t want to be too corporate. You need to keep customers engaged and interested in what you’re offering them.

You’ve got to stand out from the crowd and not be like all the other sales calls they receive. You want to build rapport by listening to them and offer them something of value based on what they talk to you about.

This is where our Go1 Premium e-learning course comes in. This is the best way to get your employees up to speed and increase your customer satisfaction and business profits through training.

The Sales Call Flow course is exclusively offered to Go1 Premium customers and its engaging material will make sure that your employees are well versed on how to handle sales calls and secure business for your company.

Your employees will learn all about the eight steps they need to ace their sales calls and the course explains how quality conversation is what the sales call flow is based on.

From learning about how to greet and open a sales call to how to end the conversation and secure the sale, your employees will know how to connect with your customers and secure profits for your business.

This e-learning course is just what you need to get started on sales call training and the content takes around 15 to 20 minutes to complete. In addition, there is a short assessment at the end that lets you test your employee’s knowledge and see how much they’ve learned from the course.

It’s important to remember that practice makes perfect. By providing your employees with training on how they can conduct their sales calls, you can make sure that the needs of your customers are being met.

It’s all about a quality conversation, which involves talking and listening.

With Go1 Premium, you can meet all of your training and compliance needs right in one place. You can gain access to thousands of courses, including the Sales Call Flow course and make sure that your employees can grow and learn with your company.

In addition, we offer an advanced reporting and tracking system, which lets you keep an eye on everyone’s progress. You can see how employees are performing on their training and make sure everyone is up to a standard you are happy with. With a 24 hour support team, help is always on hand when you need it.

Now is the time to focus on your sales call training and make sure that your business offers excellent customer services and generates new leads all year round. Don’t start tomorrow – start today!


Get the Sales Call Flow course with Go1 Premium

How to improve your sales call flow with quality conversations

Are you monitoring employee performance and professional development in your team?

Keeping a close eye on the performance and progress of your team members is as much for their benefit as it is for yours. Because when we talk about monitoring performance, we're not talking about micromanaging people, or watching each individual staff member like a hawk – it’s about taking the time to help employees develop.

Many employees become unhappy in their jobs after some time, especially if they no longer find their work exciting or challenging. Professional development is the best way to help staff feel continually challenged, rewarded and energised by their work.

How Professional Development Programs Help Staff

If you’re an employer or manager, you should be taking the time to sit down with each team member, to devise a personalised action plan that will help them plan for their career.

Having a professional development program in place will help employees identify the skills they want to refresh or develop. These can be role-specific skills, for example graphic design, or skills that are focused more on personal development, such as becoming more resilient to change, responding well to feedback or dealing with challenging situations or people.

This also helps staff to identify goals, while coming up with realistic pathways, strategies and timeframes to achieve those goals.

Outside of the office or away from the job site, learning also helps to keep our minds sharp and active, providing further long-term benefits for your personal life and wellbeing.

How Professional Develop Programs Help Organisations

As well as helping staff to take charge and direction of their career, there are obvious benefits for your organisation.

When you invest time and energy into your employees, they’re far more likely to be productive and high performing. This certainly makes for a better workplace culture, which in turn has a positive impact on your company’s reputation, results, and profits.

Fast-paced advancements in technology mean learning and development tools are always changing, offering us more options and more solutions all the time. But you can rest assured that your business won’t be left behind, as your employees will have the skill sets to keep up-to-date with industry advancements.

Professional development also assists knowledge sharing, as managers reclaim more of a mentoring role, passing on skills and knowledge to their teams, and in turn, the greater organization.

Monitoring Employee Performance through Training

So you’ve invested in professional development for your staff, through increased employee training. How do you know if you’re getting a good return on this investment?

That’s where performance monitoring comes in – you need to think about how you’re going to track employee performance.

Consider how you can measure improvements in staff skill levels. Technical skills can often be measured quite easily, in tangible figures and numbers. Productivity itself is a very good indicator of the success of your company’s training methods, allowing you to see if your training program has been effective.

In this way, professional development programs should aim to improve staff competencies and increase productivity, while helping employees set goals for their career.

You also want corporate training programs to help bridge any skills gap present in your organisation, helping to improve the gap between the skills your business wants and needs, and the skills your employees currently have.

Learn More About Monitoring Employee Professional Development

Need a little more help getting started with employee professional development programs?

The Monitoring Performance and Professional Development course looks at the process of assessing and improving work quality, through the creation of employee development programs.

This online course will help employers and managers understand the importance of planning professional development. You’ll learn how to analyse each team member’s past performance, to identify strengths and challenges before setting goals and plans for personal improvement.

You might also like to check out our tips for creating effective professional development programs. This article is full of helpful advice, to help make your learning and development programs even more effective for your staff.


Kickstart your Professional Development program with Go1 Premium

Why you need to be monitoring employee professional development

Welcome to the Go1 blog. Helping you to achieve your L&D goals through the latest learning and development insights, trends, and technology.

Blog

petrol_green

Have you caught the latest episode of L&D in 20? Don't miss an episode. Subscribe now!