In today’s workforce, it’s important to know how to handle complaints. You may think this is only relevant to people working in the hospitality or retail industries. But the truth is, customers can be internal, as well as external. No matter what position you hold, or industry you work in, you need to have the skills to effectively handle complaints.

Unfortunately, when it comes to handling complaints, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the emotions involved. Often the customer will be prepared before making their complaint – giving them the upper hand in the situation. When dealing with an unexpected scene, particularly when the customer is very angry or emotional, it’s easy to shut down and not know how to react.

However, with a little help, you can learn how to feel more confident and clear-headed when faced with complaints.

The most important thing to understand about these situations is that your actions and attitude towards complaint handling will have a direct impact on your organization or employer.

Did you know that 95% of customers will give you a second chance if you handle their complaint successfully? With every negative customer experience there is an opportunity to create a positive outcome. Employees who can handle complaints in this way, finding positive solutions to negative situations, are incredibly valuable to any company.

For managers and employers, teaching staff how to handle complaints effectively will help build brand loyalty and grow a successful business. While also making team members feel more comfortable in their jobs.

Learn how to use the LAST complaints handling plan

So how do you go about it? How can you teach your employees to handle complaints in a positive way?

 A structured approach to complaint handling is vital. If you try to handle complaints without a proper plan, you’re making a big mistake. With a system in place, your staff will have better control of the situation and greater ability to turn the outcome around.

The LAST Complaints Handling plan does just that, and is easy to apply to any kind of workplace or industry. Let’s take a closer look at LAST.

The first thing you need to do when faced with a customer complaint is listen! Make sure you don’t interrupt and give the person reassuring visual or verbal cues that let them know you’re paying attention. This shows that you are making the effort to empathize with their situation and understand their point of view.

The next important step in effective complaints handling is to apologize. Regardless of the situation, your customer will be looking for someone to take responsibility and offer an apology on behalf of the company. You will calm down your customer and go a long way in resolving the situation with the simple words ‘I’m sorry.’

When handling complaints, your aim is to offer the customer a solution to their problem. You can do this in a way that achieves a positive outcome for both the customer and your company, making it a win-win situation.

One of the best ways to do this is to simply ask the customer for suggestions of what they believe would be a good solution. Ask them what they would like you to do, to put the situation right and make them happy?

After apologizing, offering a solution, and resolving the complaint, you can thank the customer for bringing the problem to your attention.

This final step may sound a little strange at first, but saying ‘thank you’ to your unhappy customer helps reassure them that you appreciate their feedback – even when that feedback is negative.

Their feedback and experience will allow your company to make positive changes to the businesses, in an effort to prevent this from happening again.

Use eLearning to learn more about handling complaints

Keen to learn more about the LAST Complaints Handling system?

The 20-minute Complaints Handling eLearning course has been developed to give you the knowledge, skills and confidence you need to handle complaints at work. For managers and employers, getting your staff enrolled in this course is a great way to introduce them to the LAST system, and will give them more confidence in their own complaints handling skills.

For more insights, 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.

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Handling complaints at work is one of the most difficult things to do. However, if you know what to expect, it won't be as hard as you think.

How to handle complaints at work

You’ve just finished putting together a great new course and want to test out the knowledge of your learner to see how much of the content they have retained, but you don’t know where to start…

Don’t worry, the Go1 Quiz builder is here to help you!

One of the latest features we've added to the Go1 platform since the launch of Go1 2017 is our custom quiz builder. You can now quickly and easily create your own quiz in a matter of minutes, with our drag and drop tools that take the pain out of creating and managing assessments.

Navigate to the course you would like modify and select ‘Edit Course’ and module that you would like to add your quiz to, and then click the ‘Add an Item’ button.

From here select the ‘Create a Quiz’ option. Enter the name of your Quiz and add a description, then click ‘Create’.

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Select the assessment types that you want to include in your quiz by dragging the question types from the left to the right hand side. You can also edit your quiz name and description while the quiz editor is open.

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For each question type, move your cursor towards the three dots on the right hand side of the question block and click ‘Edit’, this will then open up the individual question editor. Fill out your assessment details following the instructions on left hand side, and if desired, you can toggle the response settings on the right hand side.

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Above your question setup, you will see two toggles - ‘Build’ and ‘Configuration’. The above step has completed the build portion of quiz setup, however by clicking on the configuration text you can further customize the way in which your user will experience your quiz. This includes allowing for skipping questions, repeating incorrect answers, making the answer order randomised and more.

Once you have set up your configuration, click ‘Save & Exit’ in the top right corner of the screen to return to the user view.

Click the big start button at the bottom of the quiz page to start your quiz and experience the same assessment process as your learners.

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Your quiz is now complete and ready to share with your learners! Start enrolling users into your course, and see how much of your learning material they have been able to retain.

If you have any questions about creating quizzes, please let us know so we can help you!

Don’t have a Go1 portal yet? Sign up for FREE!

Assessments made easy with the Go1 quiz builder

Humans tend to be social creatures. In general, we like to form connections, share ideas and interact with other people – particularly in the workplace. These forms of social interaction inevitably play a large role in the way we learn, resulting in the methodology known as social learning.

If you’re involved in staff training and development, it’s wise to consider incorporating social learning into your strategic plan. Through effective social learning, you can encourage greater connection and collaboration between employees, while helping to improve their individual engagement levels and knowledge retention.

Keen to encourage social learning in your organization? Follow these guidelines and you’ll be on your way towards building a successful social learning program in your workplace.

Before you can start incorporating these social learning steps into your training program, make sure you understand exactly what is meant by ‘social learning.’

Put simply, social learning is about learning by watching, then doing. Social learning theory says that we learn through observation – by watching someone physically demonstrating a skill or task, or describing it verbally.

With social learning, students are encouraged to master the skill or task through observation and instruction. The learning process occurs in a social environment, where “learners can carefully examine and evaluate the actions of others… a behavior or idea is typically modeled for the learner, and then they are asked to imitate or perform this behavior on their own.”

Social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+

Programs such as Google Docs and PowerPoint, where staff can create content and collaborate

Online courses, or eLearning courses, that encourage employees to connect through discussion boards

Brainstorming sessions, workshops and conversations between team members

Don’t confuse social learning for social media

However, while social networks and platforms are great for helping staff to connect, they can also be a huge distraction in the workplace. You’ll also need to have a solid social media policy in place, to help staff know the difference between what’s appropriate and not appropriate to discuss on social media.

So is there a better way to encourage social learning in your workplace?

The answer is yes. You just need to invest in the right tools. And eLearning provides you with the tools you need for effective social learning.

Although online courses may seem geared towards the individual, they actually provide learners with plenty of opportunities to participate in social learning. When using online courses for staff training, make sure employees are able to connect and collaborate with one another.

Encourage staff to share content, videos and resources with one another through the eLearning platform, to promote a truly social learning environment. Sharing comments and feedback with one another helps all parties to learn, improving engagement and knowledge retention.

While it’s essential to have these kinds of open channels for feedback and collaboration, some learners may also want the option of communicating with other learners privately – away from group discussion boards or social media platforms.

Instant Messaging (IM) allows individuals to share their knowledge and experience with other employees, while also helping to build a culture of collaboration within the organization. IM can feel less formal than email, encouraging team members to chat in ‘real’ time and real tones. So make sure your eLearning course has the option of instant or private messaging.

By following these steps, you’ll be providing employees with a number of different learning environments, as well as the right tools, for social learning. As a result, you can expect to see more skilled, productive and connected employees, helping your organization to achieve its business goals.


How to encourage social learning through eLearning

eLearning courses cannot be pieced together over night. They should be drafted, re-drafted, crafted and planned if they’re to be successful and engaging for students and learners. Nobody wants to be bored while they’re studying – learning should always be fun and inspiring!

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of tips that will help you draw-up an eLearning course that will secure maximum engagement from your students. This will help both you and them; they’ll learn more and you’ll be successful in your goal of teaching. Success leads to more success, so getting it right is important.

Here are some tips on how to structure a course that will bring about maximum student engagement.

In reality, the planning of a course is the foundation of its success. Without a solid foundation, your eCourse will flounder.

Content you include should be appropriate to the topic you are teaching with a clear structure. A clear structure is particularly necessary for courses of an online nature. eLearning is student-centered, as opposed to the traditional teacher-led approach of the face-to-face class, and this places the onus heavily on the student to find meaning to their course. As students cannot interact so easily as a traditional classroom, explanations cannot be sought so easily. However, if you plan well then this purpose should be overwhelmingly obvious.

Plan, plan and plan again. Iron out confusion. Make things easy. Unlike a high school, eLearners often aren’t always required to be in the class. With poor planning you will guarantee that they are not.

Make sure there is a reason for everything students learn

Every stage of the students’ journey should be sign-posted along the way. For learners, this creates confidence, enthusiasm and engagement. Each lesson carries from the next and covers the key points of any topic. Resources are offered to make clear the necessity of learning this key point. If a student doesn’t understand why they’re learning about, for example, compliance regulations in the insurance industry, then they simply won’t engage. Nor will they learn.

The relevance of topics to the overall intention of the course is vital.

Like building with Lego, each single brick – or each class – should fit perfectly with the previous one until they reach the desired teaching objectives. As a teacher, your goal is to communicate the desired learning objectives of the overall course, so each class should be structured to add-up to this end point.

Allow students to put skills they have learned into practice 

Engagement follows successful learning, and the successfully learned skills or knowledge of your students can be exhibited through exercises where the skills they have learned can be practiced.

After each successfully learned segment of the course, allow students to show both themselves and yourself the use of their new knowledge. Affirming student learning will promote their engagement with the course.

One way to do this is with the use of interactive demonstrations, quizzes and short tests, which should reflect what has been taught. Tests like these, though they don’t need to be overly formal, can be used as a method of measuring the success of the students in meeting their learning goals.

Collaboration can also be used to demonstrate their learning. Learners can work together to produce work to show the class. Projects that require co-operation between two or more students are ideal ways for learners to practice the methods of the classroom.

It is the duty of the teacher of an eLearning course to make themselves available to be contacted as easily as possible. The lack of support for eLearning causes quick drop offs in engagement when the going gets tough. Students who cannot find support will suffer.

Learner-to-learner access points such as online forums are ideal. Questions can be asked and answered, answers can be sought between students, and teachers can log-in to ensure full comprehension if needed.

Learner-to-teacher access is always a big help. Email is frequently the easiest and most manageable route to achieve good communication.  As the teacher, you can use email to send out additional resources or class notes. Actions such as these keep students engaged in the course and receptive to instruction. With online courses, student drop-out rates are higher than face-to-face classes but with continued communication to promote a sense of involvement and intention in their learning, students can become fully engaged with their course.

So there we have it. Though we cannot tell you exactly how to go about planning your online course, these steps should help you to tailor a course in a way that will maximize the engagement of pupils. This will help students to learn and enjoy the process more completely, and bring increased success to your teaching.

How to get maximum engagement out of your eLearning course

Technology is pervasive. Whether we’re checking our phones, or getting our updates from TV news, we’re constantly connected. It’s incredible to think that even radio is a relatively recent technology, having become mainstream in just the last 100 years!

This lust for technology can be used to motivate more workplace learning but you have to be careful. Meaningless tech gimmicks quickly fizzle, and bad implementation of technology in learning can be truly off-putting

Unfortunately, the history of people trying to leverage technology to educate has often fallen into one of these extremes. Compliance training was transformed from workplace stand-up meetings to checklist-driven death-by-PowerPoint sessions. Gamification was meant to motivate legions of staff, but in many cases superficial ‘badges’ were found to be patronising by the very people they were designed to engage.

It doesn’t need to be all doom and gloom. We just need to think through the detail of the implementation and understand the reasons behind any use of technology.

One of the major opportunities is fairly obvious: our mobile devices now allow us to engage on the go. But we should pause and think what is going to work best for the medium.

I’ve often seen mobile learning feature un-optimised SCORM files or videos with captions that are nearly impossible to read. When people are engaging via a mobile device, the content, experience and purpose of the training must be designed with mobile in mind.

For instance, it’s particularly suited to bite-sized, on-demand training. Allowing people to quickly look up material or engage with short snippets is much more likely to be effective.

It’s also possible to make mobile learning location aware, intelligently surfacing site inductions or training for specific locations based on where the user is.

Another opportunity for tech-driven workplace learning is to take the “work” out of it. I have a personal mantra that you shouldn’t need to learn how to learn. There are great ways technology can make learning anybody’s habit.

Developing a chatbot for your staff is a great way to deliver learning and training options into your internal communication tools (it can work on Slack, HipChat and Skype). Staff can ask the chatbot to look up certain information or to find guides or courses on specific topics.

(There’s a learning chatbot Walmart wishes it’s staff hadn’t heard of: read our article.)

Making learning content easy to access is beneficial, but making this happen in a communication and collaboration tool is even better. Most of the skills and information we acquire at work comes from informal learning, and chat systems are fantastic tools that mirror this style.

As systems understand more about the capabilities of each staff member, learning can be delivered at the right level to help plug gaps and extend skills. This is already a common feature for many education apps geared towards the school market, and I don’t think it will be long before it’s common in workplace training.

Personalised learning, chatbots and mobile-optimized bite-sized-learning may all sound futuristic, but the reality of what works in education is largely the same with and without technology. Understanding that is the key to making learning tech truly engaging.

This article was originally published by HR Magazine

Tap into technology to motivate more workplace learning

Considering the fact that the average customer loyalty rate is only 5%, it takes little imagination to see the incredible benefits to a business if it is able to give that number a significant raise.

Indeed, customer loyalty, it’s fair to say, is one of the most important aspects in the success of a business; returning customers are the bread and butter of an organization, regardless of its size.

Consider some companies with fierce customer loyalty. Apple, for example, still has one of the most devout customer bases and they have, in effect, a generation of customers who have grown up with Apple products. Customers know the product inside out and considering a change of brand is almost unthinkable.

Though Apple is a company in a million and in many ways unique, there are many ways to carve out a loyal base of customers. The benefits are simple, but here is a small selection:

Steady Cash Flow – With a loyal customer base businesses can be more certain of a steady cash flow due to returning clients. Expansion, growth and a secure financial future are the dividends.

Referrals – Loyal clients send others your way. Simply put, clients are loyal because they think the product or service you provide is of a high standard and a fair price. Happy customers spread the word so that others march right to your door. This type of brand advocacy is worth far more valuable than even the best marketing.

Predictability – Customer behavior is far more predictable when a company has customer loyalty. Planning inventory and stock is less risky as sales forecasts are based less on possibility and more on past experience.

The customer loyalty course is designed to explain how to build a loyal fan base. To do this, the course breaks down a fair complicated process into easily comprehended stages:

Introduction – The course begins outlining the case for making customer loyalty a priority for your business. It explains how prosperity in many countries has provided many more options for consumers, and consequently, customer loyalty is on the decline.

Consumers are happy to leave one company for the benefits that new customers are offered at many others and this has created a focus on gaining new customers, but all too frequently, at the cost of losing those who are loyal.

Why is Customer Loyalty Important? – The course then goes on to explain why a focus on bringing in new customers should not be at the cost of customer loyalty. This message is underscored by revelations such as; gaining a new customer costs five times that of retaining a current one. But the reasons for a customer to stay loyal to you are not the same as those that attract new clients.

So then, what are the best methods to ensure loyalty in your customers?

Turn Customers into Loyal Fans – This section explains what does and does not work in creating a loyal fan base. For example, do most consumers treat reward cards as a way to express their brand loyalty or as a way to save money? It’s likely the latter reason. Rather than discounts or freebies, superb customer service is the best way to retain customers.

This section is also broken into three smaller parts to instruct users on the methods to improve their customer service:

Power of Surprise – Leverage the enjoyment of surprises by offering little thank you gifts, or spending time actually searching out your client to say hello.

Appreciation is Key – Acknowledge your appreciation by simply saying thank you. Touches like these stay with people and aren’t common. Stand out from the crowd.

Acknowledge Mistakes – When you provide a service that doesn’t meet customer expectation, listen and improve. Offer a small gesture of apology and they’ll likely return.

Final Summary – This section quickly ties together the threads of the course and asks how you can implement them into the business where you work.

This course covers many aspects of customer loyalty, and to do this it includes a variety of resources for the learner.

The videos act as the engine of the course to drive the learner to further appreciation of why customer loyalty is so important and how to create it. Other resources sure-up the message, but the videos are the main player. Use these to drive your understanding.

The four-page customer loyalty fact sheet feature the foundations of the course message. Without the researched facts that are provided in these pages the course would be only conjecture. All the hard details can be found right here; everything’s spelled out in black and white.

The course description is a simple one-page document that signposts the way. It allows users to easily navigate through the course and find their place. Use this if you get lost!

The market’s shifting sands always offer new customers benefits for pulling up anchor and heading elsewhere. While it’s important to gain further custom and bring new clients in, this shouldn’t be sought at the expense of loyal customers.

Like keeping a partner in your personal life, it is important to show customers that you care. Without reminders every now and again, the reasons behind why a client should use your service, the loyalty of your customer may falter.

Though rates of customer loyalty are lower than ever, those that stay are also worth more than before. Loyalty breeds trust, and with it a bond that runs deeper than the bottom line.


Customer loyalty: How to turn your customers into fans

Onboarding is an incredibly important task to ensure that customers are retained. Without onboarding, a customer may feel adrift in their new service, not knowing how to take full advantage of the service – or they might feel neglected entirely. This is a huge error, with a recent Harvard Business Review study pointing out that 85% of executives said successful customer onboarding is vital for long-term customer loyalty.

But it’s important to remember that although the end goal is to generate and retain customers to increase profitability, this shouldn’t be your primary aim when organizing your onboarding process. It should be clear what you can offer the client in return for their custom, that they can achieve the desired outcome. This is where retention comes from.

Online learning is a great part of this, and in this article we’ll address why.

Before we get to the meat of the subject, let us first take a few moments to ensure we understand its main term. So, what do we mean by onboarding?

Onboarding is the name given to a process of familiarizing and integrating employees, or in this case clients or customers, with the products or services that your company provides.

The onboarding process can be seen in two main ways.

Employees – New employees can be taught, via online learning or other means, the rules, regulations and expectations of a company. They can be informed of the steps that they should take in carrying out the tasks of their job. Their progress can be checked, and appraisals are given to give them clarity on their position.

Clients and customers – This is very different. Onboarding with customers means that a company is able to exhibit its value to a customer in such a way that the customer considers their service or product worthwhile enough to continue using and ideally, to build a long term relationship with.

Why online learning is so useful in gaining more customers

Now the concept of onboarding is understood, we can look at the reasons as to why online learning is so effective in gaining more customers. While it is only one of many ways to attract clients to a business, online learning is perhaps the best method. There are many uses of online learning and multimedia in the onboarding process.

Time is becoming expensive and this means that people want to gain a lot by only sacrificing a small amount of their time.

Consider the recent crazes in physical fitness training. High-intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Microworkouts are both examples of gaining the maximum result in the minimum amount of time.

Online learning, being mobile and broken down into manageable chunks, is the educational equivalent. Customers can learn on-the-go and whenever they want, making use of their “dead time”. In turn, this leads to greater long-term use of learning resources and better retention of customers.

The easy use of goal setting abilities is another feature that makes online learning a huge boon in onboarding more customers. Facebook’s use of likes or Twitters re-tweets system makes use of human biology by rewarding us for using the product. Likes and retweets are effectively awards that we desire.

Likewise, the goals that eLearning offers (think of DuoLingo’s Ingots system) drive our desire to reach them. We want to achieve the next badge by finising the course. In this way, customers can be tempted to continue using the service.

This is useful for educational tools as it allows students to really learn, but it is also a fantastic way to retain customers after onboarding.

Colorful videos full of concise information that clearly tell a user exactly what they need is a very appealing offer. Rather than sift through mountains of text or FAQs, videos and exercises offer a way to learn and then test that learning, in a simple and unfussy style.

Potential customers do not want to have to work to access a service or find information. eLearning services serve it straight to the customer.

Online learning has a clear and immediate impact on customers because it provides value to them. Clients are more likely to pay for services if they believe it improves them in some way, as eLearning does.

Online learning courses minimize time to value for a business, a very precious benefit.

So there you have it. Because of the nature of learning courses, a small amount – for example, free access to the first video of a course – can be offered to whet the whistle of potential customers. You’ve demonstrated your product and customers are happier to pay for a product they know works.

To make sure that online learning becomes the force for onboarding that it can, it is necessary that your resources are varied and high in quality.

Another important point to remember in the onboarding process is to continue communication even after a customer has onboarded successfully. With online learning, this could mean suggesting similarly themed eLearning courses or send occasional quizzes to test a customer’s knowledge. It is vital that customers do not feel forgotten about.

Finally, asking for feedback from successfully onboarded customers is a good way to learn about the successes and failures of your online learning process. What did they enjoy? What did they find too easy, or not related to the product?

Only by asking these questions will you be able to perfect the onboarding process and see the value of online learning in onboarding and retaining customers.

Using online learning for customer onboarding

Keeping track of your training programs can be tough work, especially if you have a mix of in-person workshops and programs combined with an online component. Not any more though, thanks to Go1!

Training managers have had their work cut out for them as they have had to keep track of all of the in-person programs that they run, as well as checking that against how their team has been going with their online training. Traditionally the two training types have been kept separate.

As we recently discussed in a session with Micro-Learning expert Julie Watson, online learning has been the go-to tool for businesses across the world in recent times. As online course took center stage, this meant that the more traditional workplace training formats, including in person workshops and day long seminars, took a back seat.
Over the past few years we have seen the rise in popularity of blended learning. Pushing to mix up the classroom and online learning, blended learning is the most effective and ideal training scenario for most organizations. But managing these programs, and ensuring that employees are meeting their requirements has been a challenge.

We are excited to be able to bring all of your training, online and offline, together in one platform with our new live event tools in Go1.

As part of the recent launch of Go1 2017, you are now able to include an in-person event or workshop as a part of a course. Simply create a new module, but instead of adding your learning content via the “Add an Item” button as you normally would, click the 3 dots in the top right hand corner of the module block, and select the “Add Event” option.

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From here you can enter your starting and end dates and times, the location information for the event, and how many seats are available for learners to attend. You may wish to run multiple events in this module with the option for users to select from a range of dates and times to accommodate all users.

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Once you have created your event you can also add any additional information related to the in person training to the model. This could be required reading, information that learners are to review after the session, or event a follow up assessment to see how much the attendees learned.

Once the events are completed, Administrators can mark the attendance for all attendees to ensure that everyone required has completed the in-person event.

Traditionally, after completing a training workshop or seminar your employees head back to their desks and within days will forget that they even attended a session until the next workshop rolls around - which is some cases can be up to one year!

By including your in person training events as a part of an online course you can start to build a culture of sustained learning. This means that both before and after the workshop takes place the employee can start working through a course or series of courses, and the in person event can really focus on covering the most impactful elements that be delivered more effectily in a workshop setting.

This process also means that the days of whole day training events can stay in the past. Shorter but more frequent events coupled with ongoing short courses can allow employees to complete a short amount of training each week, every week. Over time this results in a more in depth understanding of the topic and a more engaged team.

By adopting this sustained learning model, you are building a culture of learning and continual development in your team, which ultimately leads to a more productive orgranisation.


Include in-person training with your online courses

It’s official – social media is everywhere, with the majority of people in the United States using it. If we’re not liking a Facebook update then we’re probably Instagramming our newest holiday photo. But what happens when our use of social media enters the professional realm?

There are now a growing number of social media mishaps that can play havoc on the reputation of businesses and individuals. With too many examples to name, this is an issue that organizations need to get right, so that they don’t fall victim to a mistimed hashtag or unintended Tweet.

If you still need convincing, then here is a quick list of the benefits derived from social media awareness:

What is and isn’t acceptable – issues like bullying in the workplace can become uncontrollable problems if taken over to social media. This blurring of lines between professional and private spheres makes these sorts of problems very difficult to resolve.

Keep a clean reputation – when a problematic tweet is sent that includes a company name or logo, a company might unfairly reap the consequences. Keep a good reputation by setting clear guidelines.

Hold on a second – explain how private and public spheres are so porous now and that what a person might post can be seen by anyone – including bosses. Remove the risk of error by understanding simple rules. Before posting employees should give themselves a second to think – do they really want colleagues to see this?

Social media is unavoidable. It’s likely that a company uses Twitter or Facebook to promote itself and communicate with possible clients, and if that’s not the case, then your colleagues will almost certainly use social media to some degree.

And social media has blurred the lines between public and private life. They are, to some extent, now one and the same. It is therefore very important to understand what is and what is not acceptable to post on platforms that are public.

Not only can social media mishaps cost money and hurt the reputation of a company but personal attacks carried out via social media can cause a great deal of suffering to staff and destroy workplace unity.

Social Media Awareness training is a valuable tool to reduce the possibilities of these dramatic problems and offer leverage for a company should a social media mistake be made.

The use of social media shows no sign of falling away, so it is important that you act now to protect yourself and your business.

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.


Social media awareness is essential for any high-performing organisation. As such, we'll analyse what you need to know about social media awareness.

Why social media awareness matters

Social media awareness is essential for any high-performing organisation. As such, we'll analyse what you need to know about social media awareness. 

If you’ve read our previous article on the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace, you’ll know that the statistics speak for themselves when it comes to EQ. This is because research shows that emotional intelligence is one of the most important factors in maintaining successful relationships – both personal and professional.

Employees with highly developed emotional intelligence, or EQ, are far more likely to be successful in their careers, professional working relationships and personal lives. Did you know that 90% of top performers have high levels of EQ? And can expect to earn $29,000 more annually than employees with lower levels of EQ? These individuals are also more effective when it comes to handling conflict, performing well under pressure, and leading and managing teams – all of which are very desirable traits for an employee.

Fortunately, your level of emotional intelligence can be developed and improved over time. As with other soft skills in the workplace, such as active listening or effective communication, you can learn how to develop and use your EQ, to improve working relationships and help keep your emotions in positive balance.

As Travis Bradberry, author of the best-selling book ‘Emotional Intelligence 2.0’, explains,  “emotional intelligence is the other kind of smart.” When you start to develop your EQ, you’ll notice a greater ability to monitor your own and others’ feelings and emotions – and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions.

Have you ever worked with someone who seemed to know exactly what was needed in any situation? It may have been a colleague who instinctively knew if you needed some alone time. Or a manager who could always sense when you needed a little extra support.

These people most likely had high levels of EQ. Because social awareness and empathy are a large part of emotional intelligence, these kinds of employees and managers bring a comforting and comfortable presence to the workplace. They know how to recognize and manage their own emotions, without becoming overwhelmed by them, and are therefore able to be more productive, effective and happy workers.

Develop Your Emotional Intelligence Through eLearning

Keen to get started on developing your own levels of EQ? Why not start by learning more about emotional intelligence in the workplace, through the short online course Emotional Intelligence.

During this interactive eLearning course, you’ll learn how to improve and use your emotional intelligence for better workplace outcomes. The course will give you an insight into the different elements that combine to form emotional intelligence. While there are various approaches and theoretical models associated with emotional intelligence, there are four fundamental ways you can develop your EQ and boost your career:

Self-awareness – recognizing and identifying your emotions, reducing their intensity and allowing you to manage emotions more easily

Self-management – learning that your emotions and behavior come from you, not from anyone else, and you are responsible for them

Social awareness – paying close attention to how you’re interacting with others, through body language, active listening and asking questions

Relationship management – developing the ability to listen, empathize and respect others to build positive working relationships.

As you can see, by taking this course you’ll be on your way to becoming a much happier and more successful employee. You’ll feel more confident, empowered and effective in your actions and relationships, with these positive benefits also overflowing into your personal life.

Everyone, at all levels of an organization, will benefit from taking this short eLearning course. Enrol today, and get started online, all in the convenience of your own home – in just 30 minutes!

Improve your emotional intelligence and boost your career

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