As our mobile devices become more intuitive and our reliance on them grows stronger, it makes sense that more and more students are looking towards mobile learning to help with their education. In fact, a recent study found that 59 percent of students had completed some sort of coursework on their mobile device, indicating a huge surge towards this new style of learning.

Not just limited to just your cell phone, mobile learning can also incorporate a wide range of devices on the go which can be used to complete coursework or enquire about your education. Tablets and smartphones are a simple way to stay connected to your training and keep on top of changing requirements or upcoming assignments.

Whether it’s corporate training provided by an employer or coursework for college students, the popularity of mobile learning is clearly increasing. With some trends indicating the current style of this mode of learning, it’s exciting to think about what the future may hold.

Although still a relatively new approach to learning, it’s clear there are already numerous benefits to be found with the mobile model. Here are just a few ways in which mobile learning offers a more tailored style to each individual student:

The number one benefit to mobile learning comes from the amount of flexibility you have to study anywhere and anytime. Mobile learning allows you to study on the train, your work break, even in the bathroom—so you can work from where it suits you best.

Due to the nature of the actual mobile learning content, students may find it easier to retain the information. This is because mobile learning offers “bite size” and manageable pieces of information and data that may be easier to process and recall.

Mobile learning is very much a convenience-based model—a great way to ensure you can access information when it suits you best. If you’re working on your computer and need to check something, mobile learning allows you to do this without interfering with your daily tasks.

Using mobile learning doesn’t just mean reading notes on your smartphone. Podcasts, PDFs, images, and video can all be accessed from your mobile device now, which ensures you won’t get bored with the coursework delivery.

As more and more people embrace mobile learning, it’s no surprise that learners are starting earlier and earlier. In 2012, for example, the average age of an undergrad online was 34, but today it has dropped all the way to 29!

Traditionally, distance education and eLearning were thought to be favored by the older student, but new evidence seems to be showing the contrary. This trend indicates that mobile learning will brow exponentially as the younger population clearly prefers a mobile-based approach to many aspects of their lives. An entire generation has now grown up with the convenience of information, entertainment and education right at their fingertips.

One obvious trend regarding mobile learning is how the current profile of the online learner has changed. Millennials are using their phones on the commute to work or in their downtime, and many are using this as an opportunity to get an edge by learning new skills.

A recent study by KPCB found that millennials valued training over any other office perk, including cash bonuses and flexible hours. By tapping into this demand, mobile learning can offer employers a way to improve the skills of their staff in a time that might otherwise be used frivolously.

The recent innovation of wearable tech doesn’t just reach the entertainment industries. Current trends of this model of learning see students using real life simulations to give them a hands-on approach to their studies, all thanks to mobile devices.

Using a virtual classroom can engage students like never before and give them valuable experience in real life situations. Whether it’s learning how to interact with customers or using augmented reality to simulate a workplace, there are countless opportunities for wearable tech to integrate with mobile learning.

According to Global Workplace Analytics, employees these days only spend about 50 percent of their day at their desk. This recent call for work-life balance has completely shifted the way we work and also has great implications for our training and education sectors.

Traditional training methods offered in the workplace such as day-long seminars and workshops are rarely flexible and force the employees to learn at a time and with a method that may not be suitable to them. By utilizing mobile learning, employers can stay on top of trends and aim to educate staff with a model that suits their individual needs and schedules.

The future trends of mobile learning are certainly exciting. Clearly, a continued focus on convenience and flexibility will continue to allow the student to study where and how they choose.

A major area of interest for the future of mobile learning comes with augmented and virtual reality, which allow the student to experience a simulated environment from the comfort of their own home or space of their choosing. These realities will take mobile learning to a whole new level and give the student access to virtual environments that were once only available in flight simulators and other high-tech learning arenas.

User generated content may also become a major factor in mobile learning, with students able to upload their own valuable content and contribute to the coursework. As this sharing of information is already prominent in other areas of social media and the internet, there’s no doubt that it will be useful in the education sphere as well.

Forbes: Five Trends Driving The Growth Of Mobile Learning In Corporate Education

US News Study: Many Online Students Use Mobile Devices for Coursework

False

Why you need to start thinking about mobile learning

Ever taken a photo while watching one of your favorite bands play? Or filmed part of a concert or performance on your phone?

If you’ve got a smartphone, and an active social media account, it’s very likely you’ve used both at some point – to capture, preserve and share an experience. However, with so many people keen to document these memories through a quick pic, many venues and artists are finding their polite “No Cameras” requests are being largely ignored.

Apple’s new patent for signal blocking device technology could soon change this, by removing the camera ability from our smartphones and taking the capability right out of our hands.

Some artists, such as Alicia Keys and comedians Dave Chappelle, Louis CK and Chris Rock, have already turned to devices such as Yondr, as a way of promoting a no phone policy at their shows. Yondr works by locking away attendees’ phones in soft pouches, removing the temptation to snap any photos and giving venues and artists the tools they need for phone-free spaces.

On entering the event or venue, audience members place their phones inside the Yondr soft case – when they step into the phone-free zone the case will lock.  Each audience member still carries their own phone on them, but won’t be able to remove it from the Yondr case to use it.

If attendees need to use their phone at any time, or in an emergency situation, they simply step out of the no phone zone and the case will unlock.

Introducing Apple’s Signal Blocking Device Technology

With its recently patented signal blocking device technology, Apple is taking this concept one step further, to effectively disable the cameras in smartphones at specific venues or locations. This means that in the not so distant future, our smartphone cameras may simply no longer work in certain situations, such as concerts, art exhibitions or events.

With signal blocking technology, infrared rays are used to force iPhone cameras to shut off at any venues where video, photo and audio recording is prohibited. As described in an article by The Atlantic, Apple’s new patent uses infrared technology, which can be picked up by the camera and interpreted by the smartphone as a command to block the user from taking any photos or videos.

For example, a venue could use an emitter placed on stage that would disable photography and recording in any phones that are pointed towards the stage, stopping people from taking pics and footage of the band or artist throughout the show. 

Using Signal Blocking Devices in the Classroom

This technology could also prove very interesting for learning environments, in that it has the potential to be used for all manner of applications other than photography.

In certain situations, such as a classroom or staff training room, smartphones have become a huge distraction. Teachers everywhere are frustrated by students’ addictions to smartphones, with students using their phones in class for texting, browsing and even cheating on exams. A similar scenario can be seen in workplaces, with employees wasting more time on their smartphones than before.

Just as musicians and artists ask attendees to switch off their phones during their concerts, teachers and managers can ask students and staff to put down their phones in class – but how effective is this method?

Signal blocking devices could remove this distraction from the classroom and workplace entirely, allowing students and staff to focus and become more engaged.

Keeping Staff and Students Focused and Engaged

Whether or not Apple’s signal blocking device technology can be considered effective and appropriate for learning environments, it opens up an interesting discussion around the distractions of smartphones for students and staff and the importance of keeping individuals engaged.

There are many excellent online training resources that can help you to make your learning environment as engaging as possible for your class or team members.

In the absence of signal blocking devices, why not check out some of the great courses in Go1’s marketplace – you can simply enroll and complete training modules online, at your own pace, using the Go1 platform.

How signal blocking devices will change learning environments

There are a number of reasons why an elearning course might fail. You might have chosen a poor user interface that your learners find difficult to navigate, for example. Or you might have chosen the wrong development team and the presentation of your content just doesn’t hit it’s mark. Maybe there was a communication breakdown between management and your learners that you failed to identify before you created your course and the topic isn’t as relevant as you imagined before. Here’s the problem: even if you get all of these elements correct, your content still might fail to gain traction if it’s not engaging enough for the learner.

In fact, this might be the #1 challenge that educators are faced with today. If you want to create elearning courses and content that are engaging (and have a real impact on your learners), then you need to take into account a few critical points.

To help you make sure you’re on the right path, here are a few guidelines to creating educational content that your learners will love:

1: Take the time to truly understand your audience

Far too many organizations develop content without taking the time to discover what their learners really want and will respond to. Before you start creating your content, it’s important to interview members of your target demographic and find out what they like and dislike when studying online. Find out what they’re most interested in and what they have liked in previous classes they’ve taken.

Also, it’s important to keep in mind when you’re creating your content that not all of your learners will be arriving at your course with the same amount of experience or knowledge of the subject. This means you’ll likely need to tailor the material to fit the needs of a broader audience

According to a recent study funded by Microsoft, the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. That’s over a 30% drop! Studies suggest that this dramatic shift began taking place around the time smartphones entered the mass market, so the trend is likely to continue. This presents educators with a challenge: how can we keep our audience focused long enough to actually learn the material?

Multimedia helps solve this problem. By adding resources like audio clips, videos and interactive quizzes, you can shift the delivery and pacing of your material with enough frequency that each segment comes across as both novel and interesting. Keep things exciting and you won’t have a problem holding your learner’s attention.

If your material reads like an academic journal entry then your audience simply won’t be motivated enough to work through the materials. The best educational content is relatable to the learner and written in a way that they can easily access it.

For some audiences this might mean you need to write in a more conversational tone. Others might be looking for narrators and industry jargon they can relate to. Either way, it’s very critical to consider the right tone, style and language you use before you begin producing your content.

Humans are social animals and our instinct to share goes back thousands of years. Educators who understand this instinct can dramatically improve the learning experience for their audience. Some course designers, for example, have found that creating a private forum is an effective away to keep their learners engaged.

Others make use of platforms like Facebook and Google+ to encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences. Google+ is a particularly effective platform because you can take advantage of the hangouts feature to host webinars and conferences for your learners.

Telling a story is one of the best ways to keep someone’s attention and guarantee that your message “sticks” in their memory. According to a 2006 study by researchers in Spain, listening to stories actively stimulates multiple parts of our brain that aren’t normally engaged by simply processing written words.

By stimulating these areas—like the sensory and motor cortexes—your learners will be more likely to be fully focused on the content and their ability to recall the information will improve as well.

Creating elearning content is not as simple as putting together a PowerPoint presentation with a few stock images and calling it a day. If you want your learners to actually enjoy the process of learning and if you also want them to be more likely to recall and utilize the information that you provide, then your job is to provide content that will keep them engaged from beginning to end. Keep your learners in mind and follow the tips above as you create your content—if you do this then you shouldn’t have a problem keeping them interested in the material

How to create educational content your learners will love

Bill Gates once said that if he could have just one superpower it would be to “be able to read super fast.” It’s easy to see why: researchers suggest that more than 30% of our working hours is spent reading. Imagine how much more you could accomplish if you sliced that time by half?

Mr. Gates’ choice of superpower is a perfect illustration of the idea that knowledge is power, and the ability to learn and adapt is one of the keys to adding quality and depth to our experiences throughout life.  There’s no question that learning a new language, discovering how to cook a new dish, or broadening your perspective through the study of history and philosophy will enrich your life. However, learning requires one resource that is in very short supply these days: time.

We live in an increasingly fast-paced world with more and more demands on our waking hours. We try to stay in shape. We try to raise our families. We try to advance in our careers and spend time enjoying our hobbies—and sometimes it’s quite hard to keep up! So when we want to acquire a new skill, it’s no wonder that we instinctively ask, “How am I going to find the time?”

Online classes address this problem head-on

The first and most obvious advantage to online learning is the time saved—there’s no need to commute or hold your learning back to keep the pace of the other learners. You can go at your own speed and fit the classes into your own schedule. It’s efficient.

But there’s another—less obvious—advantage to online classes: accelerated learning.

Think about it: if someone told you that you could be conversationally fluent in a language within 3 months, you might be skeptical. But that’s exactly what learners are doing all over the world right now using online resources. The reason? Online classes give you the opportunity to eliminate everything that’s unnecessary and focus on the key details you need to actually put the language to use. Thanks to online learning you can find courses specifically built to get you “up and running” within the shortest amount of time.

The language learning content is already there and readily available, now all you have to do is focus on the few key grammar concepts and vocabulary lists you need. The rest is a matter of recall and repetition, which online courses are perfect for.

This brings us to another reason why online courses are perfect for accelerated learning: multimedia. Countless studies have shown that we learn the best when information is presented in multiple ways.

Multimedia helps you learn faster and recall more information

This is one reason why some medical students will use flash cards, quizzes, drawings, and even iPad applications as they study. When you need to process a large amount of technical data, scientific names and principles and then memorize them in a relatively short time, you need to use multiple approaches to reinforce what you’ve learned.

In this same way, the best online classes use 21st century tools as a part of their content delivery strategy so you can better recall and use what you’ve learned. Blogs, webinars, podcasts, online forums, social media, study groups and videos are all excellent tools that help the modern learner shorten “the learning curve.”

This multi-media approach is one reason why some people report learning more in a single month-long online course than they did in an entire semester in a traditional university. Colleges have been paying attention. Over the past decade, more and more universities across the world have embraced the online classroom because it’s both efficient and tremendously effective. Princeton, Harvard, and MIT, for example, all offer free and paid class options for distance learning.

Online classes are revolutionizing our ideas of education and how we learn in general. Accelerated learning is one of the greatest benefits to this exciting and relatively new platform that gives you more options than at any time in history. In fact, with the right tools, there’s really no limit to what you can learn and what skills you can develop.

Now, thanks to online classes, you can develop a level of proficiency in multiple skills in a fraction of the time that it would take you if you were using traditional learning methods. You now have more information at your fingertips than anyone has had at any time in history. The question is how will you choose to use it?

Online classes and the secret to accelerated learning

Unfortunately, sexual harassment continues to be a significant issue in Australian workplaces. According to Safe Work Australia, one in three people (33%) have experienced workplace sexual harassment in the last five years, including 39% of women and 26% of men. 

Accordingly, workplace sexual harassment is an extremely important issue, with serious, far-reaching consequences for both employees and employers. Individuals who experience workplace sexual harassment face an unpleasant, hostile or dangerous work environment, often daily, with a high risk of physical or emotional harm. With productivity and motivation likely to suffer due to the harassment, their career progression can also be affected, and they may even be forced out of their job and income.

Companies also suffer the consequences of sexual harassment in their own way, becoming liable to negative impacts such as poor work culture, low morale and productivity levels, and financial stress from higher staff turnover.

With this in mind, we'll look at the importance of strong, well-defined sexual harassment policies to help prevent workplace sexual harassment. 

Being free from sexual harassment is a basic human right. Under Australian law, we all have a legal right to live and work free from sexual harassment. For employees, this means both during working hours and at any form of work-related training activities or functions.

As an employer, regardless of whether you’re a large-scale organisation or a small business, you have a responsibility to maintain a workplace that is free from sexual harassment. Employers and managers must take active steps to promote a safe and positive workplace for their employees.

The Australian Human Rights Commission defines sexual harassment as “any unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour, which makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated.”

Sexual harassment can take many different forms. Whether someone is staring inappropriately, making sexually suggestive comments, telling or emailing inappropriate “jokes” or subjecting you to unwelcome physical contact – all of these examples are considered sexual harassment and must be addressed.

To do so, Safe Work Australia recommends taking the following steps to prevent workplace sexual harassment: 

Create a safe in-person and online work environment 

Create a positive and respectful workplace culture 

Address unwanted or offensive behaviour early

Provide training and education on preventing sexual harassment

Implement safe work systems and procedures 

Encourage workers to report any sexual harassment

Quickly respond to reports of sexual harassment 

The key to preventing sexual harassment is for employers and management to ensure that they have a clear policy in place, that defines sexual harassment, outlines unacceptable behaviour, and has clear consequences.

Implement a professional sexual harassment policy and provide ongoing training for all staff to make it clear that sexual harassment is 100% unacceptable in your workplace. Make sure that you and other managers encourage the prompt reporting of incidents and always act immediately on any complaints that involve sexual harassment.

In group environments such as the workplace, sexual harassment can have an unfortunate cumulative effect on other staff who witness the behaviour, serving to reinforce and normalise negative male/female stereotypes – especially if the behaviour is not stopped immediately. This is why it’s so important to speak up when you see or hear something unacceptable, even if you’re not in a management position.

If you are in a management role, you have an opportunity to make even more of a difference to how your staff think about sexual harassment in the workplace. Take a walk around the office or job site, taking note of any offensive posters, calendars or screensavers, and have them removed immediately. Make it clear that your sexual harassment policy is to be taken as seriously as it deserves to be. Keep the conversation going. Do more than just the bare minimum and initiate a positive, lasting change in your work environment.

Make sure that sexual harassment training is ongoing, with refresher training sessions held at least once a year to remind staff of the policy and reinforce its key messages. You can also hold separate sessions for managers and supervisors, to educate them on the policy and make sure they are aware of the correct procedures.

To get the ball rolling on these staff refresher courses, we recommend the short online courses Sexual Harassment training for Supervisors and Managers and Sexual Harassment Training for Employees. 

These courses feature modules from world-class training providers on identifying workplace sexual harassment, preventing workplace sexual harassment, and anti-bullying. 

Also available online, and perfect for follow-up training sessions with managers and supervisors, is a short course called Subtle Sexual Harassment – Management’s New Responsibilities.

This course goes beyond the basic definitions of sexual harassment, to examine legal liability issues and questions of personal responsibility that managers must face. It also offers guidance on important factors to consider when creating an effective sexual harassment policy, as well as practical advice on how to handle reports and complaints.

Whichever training tool you decide to use for your teams, you’ll be getting staff engaged and thinking about the issue – which is a step closer to creating a safe and positive workplace free of sexual harassment.

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 support your team’s learning needs.

Sexual harassment continues to be a significant issue in Australian workplaces, so, we explore the importance of sexual harassment policies in the workplace.

The importance of sexual harassment policies in the workplace

We recently looked at the importance of Professional Development Programs for staff and the many benefits they bring to employees, as well as organizations overall.

As a manager, you can use Professional Development Programs (PDPs) to help your team members develop the professional skills and abilities they need to achieve their career goals. Continuing to be challenged in their roles is a very important part of employees feeling satisfied, rewarded and energized at work. 

When creating development programs for staff, you want them to be as engaging as possible, something more than just a stack of papers to be signed off as a standard HR procedure or token gesture. 

Online training courses such as Managing Professional Development have been created specifically for managers, to provide you with the skills and techniques you need to develop yourself and your workforce. For anyone in a managerial role, taking the time to learn more about professional development is well worth the investment. 

Here are some other ideas you may like to consider when creating professional development programs for your team.

Emphasize the importance of ongoing learning in your organization’s culture.

A 2015 study by Deloitte revealed that companies with high performing learning environments rank in the top for employee engagement – demonstrating how important learning is to engaging and empowering people.

Engage your teams regularly in discussions about their learnings and current projects – make it an informal environment so staff can feel relaxed and look forward to sharing knowledge with each other freely. You might like to schedule a weekly walk with your team, or lunch in the park for these discussion sessions.

Make sure you lead by example. Pass on books or online articles you’ve found interesting to your team and encourage them to share industry news or projects that they find inspiring. Keep people reading and learning.

Learning and development needs to stay relevant to be of any use. These days, new skills and knowledge can become not so new in a matter of months, particularly in technical roles and creative industries.

This emphasizes the importance of ongoing training for employees. Invest in your staff’s professional development with regular courses, workshops and seminars – whether online or face-to-face, or a combination of both. Provide individuals with plenty of opportunities to constantly refresh their skills and acquire new ones.

In an article about improving employee development programs, the Harvard Business Review recommends companies focus on providing flexible learning options to staff.

“Telling employees they need to engage in more learning and development activities with their already heavy workload often leaves them feeling overwhelmed… Companies must respond by adopting on-demand and mobile solutions that make learning opportunities more readily accessible for your people.”

Make sure staff have the resources and skills to access flexible training tools and allow people to learn in the best way possible for their specific needs and learning styles.

Support Work Across Cross-Functional Teams 

Another way to energize staff and give them the opportunity to develop their skill sets is to support movement across cross-functional teams – that is, teams that support common organizational goals, through different skill sets.

Encouraging an employee in your marketing team, for example, to spend some time with the digital media team will allow them to learn new skills, share organizational knowledge and be inspired by fresh faces. You never know what exciting new projects may be sparked by different teams collaborating on information and ideas.

Encourage Staff to Be Honest About their Goals

In previous years, professional development tended to be more a case of patiently moving up the same ladder at the same company, one rung at a time. But that’s not the reality for today’s workforce. It’s very likely that you have employees in your team whose aspirations lie beyond their current employer. And that’s okay!

Let your staff know that it’s acceptable to discuss career goals outside of the company, and encourage them to include those goals in their PDP. You’ll show your genuine interest in their growth and future, even if that future lies outside your company. Good managers will want the best for their staff, even if that means taking their career in a new direction.

Promote Volunteering and Mentoring Opportunities

Talk to your team about looking into volunteer opportunities or mentor programs. Both will present new and exciting challenges, and a way for employees to learn different skills, build their professional networks and feel re-energized in their career.

Through volunteer work, your organization will also be giving back to the community and assisting positive change. Meaning you’ll be helping others in need, as well as your own staff.

Hopefully this article has given you some useful information and highlighted the importance of bringing fresh energy and ideas to professional development. By applying a modern approach to PDPs and taking the time to talk genuinely with your staff about their futures, you’ll increase their engagement and ultimately their performance, making it a win-win situation for all.

How to develop an engaging professional development program

If you work in a customer service role, you’ve no doubt had your share of unhappy or angry customers.

No matter how good you are at your job and regardless of your industry, mistakes can and do happen – products can be faulty, orders can be lost and miscommunications with clients can occur. Some people will also simply be dissatisfied with your product or service.

Dealing with dissatisfied customers is never easy, particularly if they become angry or abusive, and technology has brought new challenges for customer service. Through social media channels, customers have a direct and instant platform and audience for their feedback, including any negative experiences and complaints. All over the world, we’re sharing and ingesting unfiltered opinions on brands, companies and organizations, to a very vast and engaged audience.

With potential customers having ready access to this information, and often basing choices on their fellow customers’ reviews, it’s become even more important for companies and customer service reps to handle unhappy customers in a successful way.

The benefits to customers are clear – by handling complaints and resolutions well, companies (from small business owners to large scale organizations) are offering better service, better outcomes and better solutions.

But did you know that these benefits can also extend to companies and employees? Handling unhappy or angry customers in a proactive and successful way is:

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

Successfully handling customer complaints is hugely important for your business, with the way you respond to negative feedback making a big difference to customers’ perceptions of your brand.

The best way to respond to complaints is to see them as an opportunity to turn the situation around. With every bad review, angry caller or negative comment on social media, you now have a direct shot at making that customer happy – with how you’ve handled the situation and what you’re offering them as a solution.

When handled well, unhappy or angry customers can be turned around, becoming even more loyal to your company than before.

The Domino’s Effect – Turning the Situation Around

Sound strange? Let’s look at Domino’s, the pizza company, and how they successfully handled negative feedback from their customers.

When faced with unhappy customers and poor reviews, the company responded by changing their pizza recipe, inviting customers to try the new product and leave their honest feedback in social media channels.

“You can either use negative comments to get you down, or you can use them to excite you and energize your process of making a better pizza. We did the latter.”

Customers had a great response to Domino’s handling of the situation. They appreciated that the company showed proactive, transparent responses to criticism and worked to address the situation and find new solutions.

This shows us how important and powerful the successful handling of customer complaints really is.

It’s Important for Staff to Feel Properly Equipped

As well as being important for both your customer base and company, it’s also really vital that you know how to deal with angry or upset customers for your own wellbeing.

Most retail, call centre and customer representative staff will have received training for their roles, however many workers can still feel unequipped to handle really difficult customers or situations. Dealing with people who are upset, or worse, angry and aggressive, has the potential to completely ruin anyone’s day and takes a lot of energy from an individual. If these situations are occurring frequently, employees will very quickly start to resent their job and the people they deal with. You want to avoid that, for all staff.

If you’re someone who struggles dealing with unhappy or angry customers, it could be worthwhile to invest a little extra time into your customer service training. You can learn new ways to communicate with dissatisfied customers, reaching positive solutions for both parties.

Start Your Customer Service Training Online

Online courses such as Dealing with Angry Customers offer very specific suggestions on how you can achieve that, minimizing the negative impact these types of interactions have on both you and your customers.

This course is great in that it recognizes the fact that things can go wrong for various reasons and aims to prepare you for when they do.

It’s focused on telephone customer service, so is particularly suited for call centre operators or customer service reps who are on the phone a lot, however the techniques can also be easily applied for face-to-face service. Throughout the course, you’ll learn 5 communication skills and 16 techniques that you can use to handle specific situations when customers get angry.

Another helpful online course available through the Go1 course marketplace, Angry Customers focuses on building positive relationships with your customers. You’ll learn problem resolution techniques and tips for keeping cool and defusing anger. 

Both courses will better equip you for the next time you’re faced with an unhappy or angry customer at work. By investing some extra time and energy into your professional development, you’ll feel stronger and more confident in your role and happier in the workplace, which as you can see, brings benefits for all.

How to handle unhappy and angry customers

Do you ever hear friends or family complaining about feeling ‘stuck’ at work? Maybe you’ve also felt that way sometimes, becoming restless or bored with your job, or dreading the arrival of each Monday morning.

Many people can become unhappy in their jobs after some time, especially if they no longer find their work exciting or challenging. Continuing to be challenged in your role or occupation is an important part of feeling satisfied, rewarded and energized by your work.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to make sure you keep learning, developing and growing within your role, organization and industry. Professional Development Programs (PDPs) are a simple and effective way to address this need, in the form of personalized action plans that get you from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future.

As a Manager or Team Leader, you can use Professional Development Programs to help your team members refresh or develop their skills in many different areas.

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.

Managers can work with staff to create a PDP, identifying their individual goals, strategies and desired outcomes for learning and development.

PDPs have become an essential tool for successful companies and organizations, as they have significant benefits for both employees and their managers. Let’s look at some of these benefits.

Taking the time to work with your team members on their professional and personal development will help them feel engaged, supported and more in charge of their career path and future. 

By providing sufficient learning and development opportunities to your employees, you’re helping them to learn new skills, experience professional and personal growth, and be better placed for career advancement. You may be surprised to hear that lack of opportunity for advancement and growth is the leading source of stress in the workplace, ranked even higher than low salaries – this certainly highlights the importance of these factors for your staff’s satisfaction.

Employees who receive ongoing training at work report being happier in their roles than those who are either untrained and in over their heads, or unchallenged and feeling stagnant. In fact, over half of today’s workforce considers professional development to be a contributing factor in their job satisfaction, with 58% of Millennials expecting employers to provide them with relevant learning and development opportunities. For the younger generation, it seems that the ability to participate in ongoing training at work has become more of a ‘must have’, rather than a ‘nice to have.’

Outside of the office or away from the job site, learning also helps to keep our minds sharp and active, providing further benefits for an individual’s personal life and wellbeing.

Putting the proper energy into staff development certainly makes for a better workplace culture, which in turn has a positive impact on performance and results. It can also be a great opportunity for Managers to reclaim more of a mentoring role, passing on skills and knowledge to their teams, and in turn, the organization.

Furthermore, with technology developing at such a rapid pace, it’s never been such an important time for companies to invest in structured learning and development for their employees. With PDPs, employees can continually refresh and upgrade their skill sets to keep pace with advancements in ICT, meaning their business won’t get left behind.

Learn More About Personal Development Through Online Training

Online training courses have become a very successful and popular way for staff to receive ongoing learning and development in the workplace.

Your team members can simply enroll and complete training modules online, using a Learning Management System. With the Go1 LMS platform, you can engage staff in self-directed development, through customized training modules they can access anywhere, anytime. 

With more and more staff working out of the office or remotely, online learning is a very effective and flexible approach to learning and development. You’ll also be giving team members the opportunity to take responsibility for their own learning and allow them to complete their training at their own pace.

For Managers interested in finding out more about this topic, there’s even an online course about the importance of PDPs – enroll in Exploring Professional Development to start your own online learning. Throughout the course you’ll look at how discussing future opportunities with staff can increase engagement and ultimately their performance, with professional development offering greater opportunities for growth within the organization.

Hopefully, by investing more attention in your team’s learning and development they’ll soon be on the path to greater work satisfaction, with those Monday morning blues a thing of the past!

The importance of professional development programs

Part 3 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

Sticking with what you know is always a safe way to get an idea up and running, but stepping out of your comfort zone and daring to change can be the push you need to reach your full potential.

Embracing change can be hard and take a lot of courage, but sometimes to achieve greatness you need to take a step in a direction that you might not be confident it and try something new. Changing the way that you think could be the difference between mediocrity and success.

In the final part of this Master Class series, Joy talks about how embracing change has led her to be in the position that she is in today, and helped her to create a number of amazing organizations.

You can enroll in Joy’s ‘Why Not Dare?’ course by clicking here 

Dare to change and reach your full potential!

You can also check out the other parts of this Master Class here:

Introducing The ‘Why Not Dare?’ Master Class 

‘Dare to Ask’: Part 1 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

‘Dare to Listen’: Part 2 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

‘Dare to Change’: Part 3 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

What does it mean when people talk about mastering a skill? 

Most of us have heard about the 10,000 Hour Rule popularized by writer Malcolm Gladwell, which states that to become world-class in any field it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. But is this the only path to mastery? Does it all come down to endless repetition?

What makes the difference between proficiency and mastery?

One expert doesn’t think so. In his book, Mastery, author Robert Greene claims that there is a specific journey that most of us take to becoming true masters in any field. According to Greene, this is as true for painters and sculptors as it is for salespeople and entrepreneurs.

Greene claims that the first step in your journey is about discovery— exploring your natural talents and finding out what your strengths and weaknesses are. For some people this process begins by rebelling against a particular individual or social institution (picture the young man who chooses to go to art school because his father wants him to be a lawyer).

During this stage it’s critical that you are aware of your primary talents. Mozart, for example, knew as a child that his natural abilities were of the musical variety. Once the skill itself is chosen then the second step on your journey begins.

Now that you know what it is you wish to master, you must begin discovering how you learn. Not everyone acquires and applies knowledge the same way: some people spend years in passive observation, while others take a more active and hands-on approach to learning right from the beginning.  Either way, during this stage it’s very critical to identify the patterns of thinking and inefficient processes that hold you back.

In order to be better than 99% of the population at any one thing, you must know how to keep going when others give up. For some people, an apprenticeship will provide the guidance needed to move effectively through the second stage of mastery.  Sometimes you will make accelerated breakthroughs in your skills, while other times you will need to embrace the tedium that comes from practicing your craft.

As you move forward with your journey, you may need to alter your perspective. You may need to step outside of yourself and watch your learning process from the perspective of an outside observer. At this point you will take a critical eye to the details of your learning process and eliminate the things that are holding you back—while at the same time adding to the ones that are helping you improve..

After you have begun your apprenticeship and you’ve started to discover how you learn, it’s time to go deeper into the processes themselves. If you have chosen a mentor you will begin molding their ideas into your own and there will be a healthy back and forth exchange that will help you gauge your progress as you develop. This is what great coaches do for their athletes, providing them with continuous feedback in their technique and conditioning to help them stay on the path to success.

The fourth stage of mastery is all about social intelligence. Now that you’ve acquired the specific processes necessary for developing your skills, you’ll need to learn how to navigate your social environment effectively. Great artists, for example, must learn how to market themselves to gallery owners and interact with the public in a way that helps them build a following. Entrepreneurs must learn how to court investors and managers must learn how to get the best out of their people.

During this stage it’s absolutely critical that you avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of social intelligence: envy, conformism, rigidity, self-obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness, and passive aggression. You must also learn how to read people effectively so that you can identify who will help and who will hinder you on your journey. Finally, you must understand how to develop the appropriate persona that will draw people to you.

The final stage of mastery is about activating and accelerating your creative learning process. You must avoid becoming complacent with your skills and knowledge and continue to give your mind the fuel it needs to make new associations between different ideas. By this time you will have internalized, shaped, and modified the rules to fit your unique personality and strengths.

At this point you will be adept with the creative process and understand how to focus on both the strategies and tactics required to make you the best of the best. Picture any athlete, filmmaker, artist or businessperson at the height of their career and you’ll understand what the results of this level of mastery can be. Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, Michael Jordan leading the Chicago Bulls, Charles Darwin developing his revolutionary theories—these are all examples of what true mastery can accomplish.

Mastering a skill is not about memorizing facts or learning formulas. It's about understanding why things work and then applying them. Learn more here!