Most people have words they don’t like. For me, it’s office jargon like ‘bandwidth, ‘blue sky thinking’ or ‘pinging’ emails. Eurgh.

For my brother, the most irritating word in the world is ‘delightful’. Years ago, he worked at an estate agency where ‘delightful’ was seriously overused; it featured in every advert and every property description. It even trickled down into normal conversation - delightful coffees, lunches, dates and holidays were had by all. Because of this experience, there are few things less delightful for him than the word itself.

Why am I telling you this? There’s no chance I’d have remembered such a trivial fact if my brother had just said “I hate that” and moved on. Because of the story, I still remember his disdain for ‘delightful’ more than a decade after he told me. Translate this into a more useful setting (like workplace training), and you’ll find that any information can be cemented in memory if it’s part of an engaging story.

There are three key elements that make great eLearning content. Firstly, it has to engage learners and get their attention (best achieved through dynamic visuals, witty voiceover and a good dose of humour). Next, the content has to deliver information in a way that makes sense of all the facts and figures – tricky when you consider the different ways individuals prefer to learn. Finally, it has to be memorable.

According to Paul Smith, a successful corporate trainer and author, around 40% of people are ‘visual learners’ who learn best from videos, diagrams and illustrations. Of the rest, 40% are ‘auditory learners’ (think lectures and discussions) and 20% are ‘kinaesthetic learners’ who understand through doing, experiencing or feeling. Storytelling is an unusual teaching method because it contains elements that work for all three.

As you might expect, those who learn through listening do well when they hear a story. Visual learners do too - because the descriptive element allows them to picture the scene and visualise information/scenarios in a way they aren’t able to when presented with lists of facts and figures.

Here’s what’s really interesting though - when listening to a story, our brains allow us to feel the same as we would if we were experiencing the subject for ourselves. This makes storytelling an ideal teaching tool for kinaesthetic learners because they still gain the ‘doing’ experience without actually being hands-on. Sound like something I just made up? I can back this up…

A Princeton neuroscientist called Uri Hasson delivered a fascinating TED Talk in 2016 called this is your brain on communication. If you don’t have ten minutes to watch the video, here’s the gist;

As a story is being told, activity in both speaker and listener brains align. On fMRI scans, you can actually see the same reactors light up in both as the story progresses.

“When she [the speaker] had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs.”

Basically, the minds of listeners react the same way upon hearing a story as they would if they were recalling an experience of their own. This means that lessons told through stories can implant ideas, feelings and experiences into the minds of learners. You don’t get much more engaged than that!

Training is pointless if it isn’t memorable. The last thing you want after investing in a learning and development programme is a bunch of employees who can’t remember enough to make use of the courses they take. That’s another great thing about learning through storytelling – it helps us to recall information long after it’s delivered.

 A great example of this theory in action can be found in a study by Stanford professors Gordon H. Bower and Michal C. Clark. Their experiment saw two groups of students tasked with memorising sets of ten, unrelated words. The control group were given their sets and told to remember the words in whatever order they chose. The second group were asked to embed those words into stories and remember them this way. When tested later, the students who constructed stories were able to recall six to seven times as many words as those in the control group.

 Now, imagine those words were facts about health and safety, sales strategy, marketing practices or whatever subject you want to teach. By conveying information through storytelling, it’s up to 7 times more memorable. That’s a huge difference - one that significantly impacts the ROI of eLearning content. 

Holly Helps (yes, that is her real name) is part of the innovative team at iAM Learning - creators of engaging animated eLearning content that improves performance and encourages professional development.

The iAM Learning library features high-end animation, likeable characters and captivating stories that make even the most serious subjects appealing and unforgettable. You can access the library free for seven days with a no-obligation free trial. 

Start exploring content from iAM Learning!

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.

False

Engagement and retention: the power of storytelling in eLearning

Now, more than ever, it’s important for employers to take an active role in supporting the health and wellbeing of their workers. Helping employees to build resilience can go a long way in creating a more mentally healthy workforce - and in turn, more productive and engaged teams.

In our recent webinar, we invited Dan Hunt, founder of The Mental Health Movement, and Jason Nightingale, founder of EABS Training to join us in a conversation around this important topic. 

Both former professional NRL players, Dan and Jason know a thing or two about resilience - on and off the field. They also share a passion for breaking down the stigma around mental health, and for helping to empower individuals with the skills and resilience they need to better support themselves. 

On the day, throughout the webinar, Dan and Jason was joined by Go1’s Social Impact Manager Cam Cliff to discuss: 

how building resilience is a key component of positive mental health

how working remotely can effect mental health

how to remain resilient during times of uncertainty 

how we can support each other in times of stress

Tackling mental health: a conversation on resilience with Dan Hunt and Jason Nightingale | Webinar

Dan Hunt, Founder of Mental Health Movement

During his own career as a professional athlete, Dan struggled with and overcame many adversities. Using the power of personal story and lived experience to break down the stigma preventing people seeking help, Dan’s work with The Mental Health Movement focuses on driving change by altering society’s perception of mental health issues and those struggling with them.

The Mental Health Movement specialises in providing workplace training to organisations wanting to better support their staff and create a culture where it is ok to not be ok, and it is ok to ask for help. Using an evidence-based framework, Dan’s team has trained more than 200,000 people from miners to construction workers and office folks.

Jason Nightingale, Founder of EABS Training

Jason’s work also focuses on helping individuals to build resilience and confidence in themselves. Motivated by people, their stories, their journeys, growth and personal development, Jason is dedicated to making a difference to an athlete’s learning experience.

Jason is passionate about sport and business and the correlation between both. Drawing from experiences from his time as an Elite Athlete, Jason is genuinely interested in helping Elite Athletes find their confidence and self-belief to expand their horizons outside of professional sport. The purpose of EABS is to make a difference in the lives of athletes, to take the overwhelm out of transitioning, and to empower athletes to take the next steps towards a successful business.

We would like to thank both Dan and Jason for joining us on the day for this enlightening, honest and candid discussion.

In this webinar, Go1's Cam Cliff was joined by Dan Hunt, founder of The Mental Health Movement, and Jason Nightingale, founder of EABS Training where they discussed the importance of resilience for positive mental health.

Tackling mental health: a conversation on resilience with Dan Hunt and Jason Nightingale

In the beginning, eLearning courses were longwinded, text-heavy and hard to digest. They weren’t designed with the user in mind (you know, the people actually taking courses), and didn’t always offer the best learning outcomes.

As with all successful digital products and services, eLearning has developed and improved with time. Nowadays, successful courses incorporate a masterful blend of design, UX and psychology to deliver lasting outcomes and real professional development for learners.

“But what about the ones that don’t do this?”

eLearning is just like any other product or service on the market; if it isn’t doing what a user needs, it isn’t good enough. Perhaps that sounds harsh but hiding from progress won’t help anyone.

For modern learners, it isn’t enough to reel off facts and figures, drone on for hours with dull PowerPoint slides, and then expect users to thank you for the experience. To deliver eLearning content that works, you need to have it all - high production values, engaging content, interesting scripts, snappy delivery and extensive, ongoing research into learning behaviour.

“Isn’t it enough just to give them the facts and tell them to remember?”

Absolutely not. For a start, that approach is really, really boring. But - beyond simply making courses more enjoyable - understanding the way people perceive, process and recall information is essential for providing training that sticks.

When designing effective content for eLearning courses, you need to consider learner experience, behaviour, cognitive process and other factors. This should include real thought about various factors including typography, use of colour, tone of voice/point of view, emphasis and more.

For many, typography is an afterthought (if a thought at all), but this can have an enormous impact on the success of a course. Keep your audience in mind when choosing a typeface - after all, they’re the ones who need to read and retain this information.

The simplicity and readability of a sans-serif font ensures the bulk of your content is clear and easy to read. Think Futura, Helvetica, Calibri and Verdana.

Conversely, a serif font will include little flourishes and decorative details that draw the eye and work really well for titles and/or CTAs. Examples of serif fonts include Georgia, Palatino, Times New Roman and Baskerville.

NOTE: Sans serif fonts tend to be easier for dyslexic people to read and understand. Find out more about this by visiting https://www.dyslexic.com/fonts/ 

Putting emphasis on certain words or phrases using different font size, weight, colour or italics will help you to highlight critical information and is a great way to draw attention to any calls to action (CTAs).

The colours you use in your course are more important than simply making it look pretty. There is a wealth of information about colour symbolism out there and, unfortunately, much of this includes more opinion than fact. There is no denying however that many colours come with common associations and emotional triggers. A few examples to consider include;

Blue:  Associated with calmness, stability, integrity and trust (that’s why so many banks use it)

Green: Widely associated with health, nature, safety and calm

Black: This can feel foreboding, but also sophisticated, elegant and powerful depending on context

Purple: Inspires thoughts of luxury, royalty, wisdom and opulence

Red: Danger, violence and aggression can come to mind but also power, energy and passion

Orange: Associations include creativity, joy and success

Yellow: Invokes thoughts of happiness, sunshine, confidence and optimism

Pink: Love, compassion, sympathy and beauty are common associations 

NOTE: Be sure to consider your learner’s background when selecting colours for your course. For example, some westerners perceive red as angry or dangerous while, in Chinese culture, this is a popular colour that symbolises luck, joy and happiness.

The narrative perspective you choose when writing your script (first, second or third person) will have a major impact on learning outcomes. For example, using the second person perspective puts the learner at the centre of the action. It focuses the reader’s attention by making them feel like they are being addressed personally. 

Unless you have an eidetic memory, you probably don’t remember everything you have ever read or been told. Nobody does. We do, however, tend to recall the first and last parts of a story, list or lesson. This psychological phenomenon is known as the serial position effect or, separately, as the primacy effect and recency effect. 

If you take advantage of this tendency, you will help learners to recall critical information long after your course has been completed. The best way to do this is with a summary at the beginning and end of a course, along with a few strategically placed recap quizzes throughout.

There is much to think about when designing an eLearning course, and considerations about both user experience and behaviour will go beyond the items covered here. It's all about engaging learners and creating an experience they enjoy, understand and remember. If you keep this objective in the front of your mind as you design and build your course, you will be on your way to making something truly great.

Tom Moore is the Chief Operating Officer for iAM Learning, the bitesize animated eLearning library. He's a leader, parent and expert storyteller. Tom is passionate about leaving the learning landscape better than when he found it. He was an integral player at Learning Heroes, SAP and two of the UK's largest transformation programmes. iAM Learning is his latest adventure!

When designing effective content for eLearning courses, you need to consider learner experience, behaviour, cognitive process and other factors. Here's how.

Great eLearning demands more from creators, and does more for learners

In the same way that the internet has changed the way in which we consume music and entertainment, advancements in technology continue to impact the way in which we learn. 

Thanks to the internet, the scope of education has far outgrown the bounds of a physical classroom or training room. Schools, universities and organisations now expect learning to be adaptive and delivered in the flow of work, catered specifically to their students or employees. 

At the same time, learners now expect to be able to access and consume learning content, at their own pace, and on their own device. 

We are seeing the eLearning industry continue to transform, both from a format and a delivery perspective. And it’s an exciting time. 

The evolution of subscription-based streaming for learning

There’s no doubt that streaming through apps and devices has become the new norm, whether you’re listening to music, watching a movie, or learning something new.

Over time, we’ve seen the evolution of music move from physical products, in the form of records, cassette tapes and CDs, to digital streaming. 

Spotify, amongst other players, realised that consumers wanted more of an uncapped music experience - and a flat subscription fee was the answer. For musicians, Spotify provided an easy way to upload their music, increase their audience, and get paid a percentage each time their song was played. To date, the Spotify platform has paid artists over $2 billion in royalties.

We are now seeing a similar trend across the learning industry, with more learning content being created and delivered in digital format. In this way, the subscription-based streaming model is set to play a key role in the future of learning. 

How subscription-based streaming works for creators

Just as the convenience and flexibility of streaming is benefitting learners, subscription-based streaming can also provide great opportunities for learning content creators. 

To understand the benefits of subscription-based streaming for content creators, it can be helpful to turn once again to the parallels of the music industry. 

Let’s look at Spotify’s payment model. Here, D.A. Wallach explains how Spotify pays artists:

"People need to transition from unit-based thinking to consumption-based thinking in terms of royalties. We feel the metric of success should be based on how many people are listening to your music over a period of years, as opposed to looking at how many units are shipping in one week. 

People are used to seeing big numbers from a unit-based model, but that's really front-loading what is happening. Comparing iTunes sales with Spotify payments over a two month period of time is not a great way to look at things. What we are trying to create is a system in which you earn royalties forever for good music, and the time horizon is simply different than what folks are familiar with now.”

We believe Go1 Premium, as a subscription-based streaming model, delivers similar benefits for creators of digital learning content.

The benefits of Go1 Premium for learning content creators 

So how does the Go1 payment model work to support creators of digital learning content?

By becoming part of Go1 Premium, we can help content creators reach a larger, more engaged audience. As a Go1 Content Partner, you have the potential to reach millions of learners, while establishing a recurring income. 

Our model is pretty straight forward. We aggregate our subscription revenue and pay out royalties based on a pro rata share, in accordance with the popularity of a piece of content. 

If your content accounts for 1% of the total number of minutes consumed per month, you will get 1% of total subscription revenue, multiplied by your individual revenue share percentage. 

Go1 Premium also connects creators of digital learning content with the largest names in technology. Recently, we launched our integration with Microsoft Teams and have also partnered with names like D2L and Saba to provide content to their customers. 

This means that companies can integrate with your content more seamlessly throughout their own ecosystem, resulting in even more reach for you as a Content Partner and higher remuneration outcomes.  

We feel this has far greater earning potential for you, the creator, versus that of a one-off purchase model. 

Have more questions about the Go1 model? We’d love to hear from you. 

The benefits of subscription based streaming for learning content creators

Just as the convenience and flexibility of streaming is benefitting learners, subscription-based streaming can also provide great opportunities for learning content creators. Learn more about how the Go1 payment model works to support creators of digital learning content.

The benefits of subscription-based streaming for learning content creators

At Go1 we believe in the power of learning and we’re dedicated to helping organisations provide the best professional development opportunities to their teams. 

We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised over US$40 million in a Series C funding round, enabling us to continue supporting more organisations in keeping employees learning and developing. 

As part of the round we welcome new investors including Madrona Venture Group and Salesforce Ventures who joined alongside existing investors, SEEK, M12, and Our Innovation Fund. 

Since founding the business in 2015, we’ve seen more businesses understand the importance of investing in skilling and training for their teams. Recently, we’ve seen more organisations than ever turn to online training for these needs. 

Our model of partnering with content creators around the world has allowed companies to do that, supporting employees across a broad range of roles and industries to stay connected to their learning and development. 

With user engagement more than tripling over the last year, we’ve been pleased and humbled to be able to play a growing role in assisting businesses and employees in navigating the new reality of remote working. 

We’ll be using this funding round to further improve our product and continue to scale our team. 

This funding will also enable us to expand our content provider partner network, allowing us to offer even more courses to learners and further enabling companies to empower their employees through learning. 

Additionally, we will double down on relationships with global platform partners, enabling more learners to access Go1's content library in a variety of ways, through an ever-growing list of platforms and partnerships.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our current customers and partners for their incredible support and for joining us on this journey. We could not have done this without you. 

As a result of the funding, there’ll be more exciting things happening at Go1 in the near future - so stay tuned! 

Go1 raises over US$40 million in Series C funding

The world of learning looks very different today to what it did a mere 3 months ago. University campuses are closed, home-schooling is widespread, and most face to face corporate training is cancelled. As a result, educators and content providers need to adapt how they produce content to be is easily accessible to learners online, while still delivering effective learning outcomes. 

One tool that can help with this transition is How Too – an online software product that gives people with no background in learning and digital design the power to make great digital learning content. 

The tool is easy to brand, provides full access to an integrated How Too media library of contemporary photos and hand-drawn media, as well as gives users the facility to upload their own media for the digital learning modules they create. How Too allows the inclusion of videos, audio, images and immersive interactions to best engage the learner and help them unlock their potential. 

Meet How Too

How Too was created and developed by Savv-e, Australia’s leading digital learning agency, with the goal of putting best practice digital learning creation within the grasp of everyone, whether or not they have a background in education or instructional design skills and experience.

With over 20 years in the eLearning industry, co-founders Lisa Vincent and Jenny Barltrop are excited by the opportunities How Too is bringing. 

“There are plenty of tools out there that help you create nice looking content and interactivity,” says Jenny. “But if that content doesn’t hit the mark in terms of what the learner really needs to think, feel and do to get their job done, there’s really no point.”

In addition to this, the tool is the only online learning development software that meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards for the use of the product and the courses created from it. 

“While taking accessibility precautions is a good business move, simply put it is just the right thing to do. We are proud to have created a tool that looks out for everyone and makes sure they are able to participate in all technologies and designs,” says Lisa.

During this period of physical displacement, when online learning is an absolute necessity, institutions and organisations need to be more prepared than ever to create digital learning experiences based on frameworks which are well-researched and guaranteed to be effective for the learner. To this end, all How Too templates are pre-designed learning experiences that are beautiful and widely accessible. 

To find out more about How Too and how it can help your organisation create engaging online learning content, sign up for a free 14-day trial here. 

This blog post is thanks to our friends at How Too, who are helping educators and organisations turn their content into engaging online experiences through proven (and beautiful!) digital learning templates. 

Today’s blog post is thanks to our friends at How Too, who are helping educators and organisations turn their content into engaging online experiences through proven (and beautiful!) digital learning templates.

When face-to-face is cancelled: turning your content into engaging online learning

In the modern era, increased productivity is on the mind of every employee and business leader. There are thousands of tips out there claiming to help us rattle through the most critical tasks. But do they work? Or are they creating more distractions? 

Here, we explore two popular systems for productivity and explain why they are useful. Ultimately, the goal is to understand what helps you to get motivated and focused on your tasks. 

It is important to note here that there are several tools dedicated to team productivity and project management. These guidelines focus on productivity for individuals, rather than teams. 

Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to make tough decisions every day about which of the many tasks he had to do was most critical. To make this process easier, he came up with an accessible system known as the Eisenhower Matrix. 

This diagram explains how to set the matrix up. On one axis, you consider whether your tasks are important or not. On the second axis, you think about whether the tasks are urgent or not. This system helps you to place tasks on the grid and identify which you need to prioritize: 

Rather than have a long list of items circling in your head, the matrix organizes tasks into categories to identify which are the most pressing. The tasks that need to be done first are those that are both important and urgent. Using this system can both reduce stress and increase focus. 

This is a time management trick developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The idea is to tackle a piece of work you need to get done in 25-minute intervals, followed by a short break. Follow these steps to get started:

Focus solely on tackling the task (don’t get distracted by anything else)

Towards the end of the session, review your progress

Repeat three more times, followed by a more extended break

Repeat this as many times as it takes to get a particular piece of work done. At the end of each session, record what you achieved, and your next goal. 

Why does it work? One reason is our reward systems. If we promise ourselves a reward at the end of completing a section of work, such as a break, we are more extrinsically motivated to complete the task. Extrinsic motivation can help us get started, particularly with tasks that are not interesting. Awareness of how you are spending your time also helps you to become more focused. 

This article also includes an extensive list of helpful suggestions for boosting productivity.

Whether or not productivity hacks will work depends entirely on your personality. If you are easily distracted, tools that help you to remain focused will make all the difference. If you are naturally diligent and conscientious, you might be able to forgo them altogether. The most important thing is that you tailor systems. These tips might help you to form strategies that work for you:

Your personality plays a huge role in your ability to be productive and how best to overcome slowed output. 

There are certain traits in our personalities that remain fixed throughout life. The ‘Big Five’ personality traits are currently the most accurate measure we have of our characters. The five-factor model is organized into extraversion-introversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.  

Research shows that where you sit on this scale remains relatively consistent throughout life, but you can take action to balance or accentuate certain traits when you need to. 

Knowing where your personality sits can be hugely helpful and relevant to your ability to be productive. If you are introverted and work best in quiet environments, your focus will be dependent on being alone. Communicating with others often could be overwhelming, and you could quickly lose momentum.

When testing out a new productivity hack, it is essential to build in time for reflection. If you don’t, you won’t know whether the system you’re using is working for you, or if you need to personalize it. 

If you are using a time management technique like Pomodoro, be sure to include a minute or so for reflection at the end of each session. Record what you got done, and whether or not that met your target.

If your targets are consistently higher than what you can achieve, you might need to adjust your expectations for what you can get done in a given amount of time.

The American Psychological Association explains that growing your attention span is one of the most effective ways to boost productivity. 

Many productivity hacks are designed to improve focus on a single task. When you are testing out a new tool, reflect on whether it helps you reach a state of deep concentration.  

If you can be aware of what you are doing at any given time, rather than lost in thought, you will be more productive and happier. The brain is only capable of doing one task at a time, and you risk reaching cognitive overload if you attempt too much at once. 

4. Communicate your priorities to your team

One of the biggest distractions at work is instant messaging, emails, and notifications. Sometimes, messages will be both important and urgent, but you can’t set up your entire day waiting for a task like this to come in.  

Trust that, in most cases, if you switch your notifications off while you are focusing on a particular task that the world won’t fall apart! This attitude can be challenging if you are in a position of responsibility. Ultimately, if you can focus on urgent tasks when you need to, you will be a better leader and provide better support to your team. 

Sophia is a freelance writer who specialises in thought leadership, opinion pieces and content creation for learning publications. Her work focuses on the latest research in learning theory and practice. She regularly contributes articles on workplace learning and personal development to the Go1 blog. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

How to make productivity hacks work for you 

At Go1, we partner with the best training providers from around the world, to bring you content that is sure to engage, excite and meet the unique needs of your learners.

We are very pleased to introduce you to iAM Learning – the new brand from the pioneers of Learning Heroes – providers of characterful content all driven through the power of beautiful animation, characters and stories.

iAM Learning is disrupting the learning content space. No more endless PowerPoints that you can’t wait to skip through. They use the art of storytelling to bring content to life and to engage learners throughout their bitesize courses. Plus, with stunning animation and interactive courses, they are making learning accessible to businesses of all sizes, shapes and across all sectors.

(What's the Story) Learning Glory? - The Notorious i.A.M

iAM Learning has over 40 courses live - with a roadmap of content planned out for the next 12 months, taking the total learning content to over 150 titles! All of these will be available to Go1 Premium Customers. 

have been crafted and curated by subject matter experts, from educational psychologists to H&S practitioners

every course is delivered through character-led screenplays or stories ranging from superheroes to wrestlers – and even a course on COSHH inspired by Breaking Bad!

every bit of animation is hand-drawn and lovingly crafted

all courses are CPD approved with IOSH approval for all health, safety, compliance and mental health topics coming throughout 2020

come with a variety of blended learning resources ranging from workbooks to infographics (with every course subtitled with a transcript and podcast).

Collections from iAM Learning include Health & Safety, Policy & Compliance, Mental Health & Wellbeing, Cyber Security & Data, Leadership & Soft Skills and much more to come!

iAM Learning has over 40 courses available on Go1 Premium, accessible for customers in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the UK, Asia, North America, South America and Africa. 

Change the way your workforce trains and retains today.

#NotAllContentIsMadeEqual #TrainingJustGotInteresting

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.

iAM Learning - Storytelling and animating content - Go1

Introducing iAM Learning – storytellers, wizards and animators of learning content that we know your learners will love!

Giving your employees the opportunity to upskill at work has never been so important. In the current climate of economic uncertainty, broadening your team’s skillset will allow them to easily adapt to evolving roles, offer them new challenges, and improve your company’s employee retention levels. 

However, upskilling should be a priority year-round - a recent Hays survey of 1253 employees found that 96% considered upskilling as ‘important’ or ‘very important’. 84% wouldn’t consider a role without skill development opportunities, and 47% would not want to join a company that didn’t provide opportunities for training.

The good news is that implementing a programme to offer learning opportunities to your staff does not need to be costly or time-consuming.

COVID-19 social distancing measures have had a massive impact on large gatherings, live events, and face to face interaction on all but the smallest levels. It is highly likely you will have employees who are feeling displaced, especially if their roles involve regular person to person contact. 

Currently, there is no definite end date for this situation, so now is the ideal time to explore ways to upskill these employees. Providing them with an opportunity to learn new digital skills will help them to successfully pivot to changing demands in their role, and benefit other areas of your company.

Providing role-specific training for your employees is an attractive proposition that will both strengthen the skill set of your workforce, and increase staff engagement. However, it is also a worthy investment to offer your employees the chance to take on a personal learning project, whether it be improving their design skills, practising a new language, or learning to code. 

By encouraging your staff to extend their knowledge in an area of their choice, it will heighten their engagement during a time of distraction and change, and also provide them with new skills which can benefit your company long term.

Hiring new staff is a costly, time consuming and labour intensive process. Firstly you have the obvious costs of advertising the role and time spent assessing applications, whether that is done through an agency or your own HR staff. But on top of this, research by MIT Sloan found that new hires take between 8 and 26 weeks to start working at full productivity levels, and this drop in productivity reduces the company’s overall annual revenue by 1-2.5%

Upskilling current staff members will require an initial investment, however, the ability to transfer them into new roles will save your company huge amounts of time, money and effort which are inevitably required during the hiring and onboarding process. The MIT Sloan research also noted that internal transfers reach full productivity level in around half the time that new hires take.

There are many easy and cost-effective ways to implement upskilling opportunities at your company. Lengthy and expensive external courses are not always the best solution.  Here are a number of methods you can use:

Stretch opportunities are when an employee takes on a project or task outside of their usual role and skillset. This can be a fantastic method of on the job upskilling. An added bonus of this initiative is that your team will further develop their collaborative skills and problem-solving abilities.

Stretch opportunities generally require a staff member to shadow another colleague or be mentored by one. This learning experience can also be supplemented with online training modules. This assists the employee with developing the skills required for unfamiliar tasks and reduces the amount of time their colleague needs to spend on training them.

Offering self-led learning opportunities in the workplace gives your employees the chance to develop particular skills and knowledge that will benefit your company. 

A survey of Generation Z workers found that opportunities for growth were their number one priority when searching for a new job, ahead of generous pay, job security, flexible hours and healthcare benefits.

With the average employee having just 24 minutes per week to dedicate to learning, microlearning modules are an innovative method to incorporate into your company L&D. 

Microlearning breaks training down into small, bite-sized chunks, with lessons that generally include a short text or video element followed by a quick assessment. These can often be completed in 10-20 minutes, which makes them a very effective way to maximise the limited time your employees have for learning.

Providing upskilling opportunities for your employees is incredibly beneficial to both individual staff members, and your company as a whole. Not only does it increase employee engagement and company loyalty, but it also makes your team more adaptable and well rounded, and drastically reduces your hiring and onboarding costs.

In the current economic situation, upskilling is particularly important, however, it should be a focus for your company year-round. 

Upskilling your team: why it should always be a priority, but especially now

There are a number of different cyber threats that you need to be both aware of, and actively trying to prevent in your workplace. These range from the classic phishing calls and emails, to increasingly sophisticated attacks using tools like Artificial Intelligence to bypass company data security systems. 

Luckily, there are a number of effective methods you can employ to reduce the risk of these attacks on your company systems and data.

This is one of the longest-running forms of cybercrime, and hackers are constantly developing new ways to trick people into revealing sensitive information. Social engineering attacks are reliant on human error, as opposed to badly protected systems and software. 

Generally in email form, phishing is the attempt to gain valuable personal information such as bank details, credit card information or system passwords. These scams can be very sophisticated, with information, email addresses and company branding all appearing to be authentic.

Phishing attacks are popular with hackers as they are effective, cheap, and easy to do. With a minimal investment of time and effort, these strategies are low risk but can result in high rewards.

The term malware covers all types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, adware and bots. It’s essentially any kind of software created for the purpose of stealing data or damaging devices and systems.

Ransomware, such as the Petya virus, has the ability to freeze or shut down computers – from a personal device to the servers of an entire organisation. Once this occurs, hackers and cybercriminals can extort money from companies or individuals in return for decrypting the virus and allowing access to devices.

While Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are both useful tools in the fight against cyber threats, they can also be used against us in more sophisticated attacks. AI can be used as a weapon to breach security systems as it permits a face or voice to be superimposed over another, and this allows a hacker access to previously protected data.

Endpoints are generally end-user devices like PCs, laptops and mobile devices. With the use of cloud-based systems, SaaS providers and enterprise networks on the increase, cybercriminals have larger attack surfaces and more vectors to choose from when bypassing security systems. It’s important to note that attacks will begin at the endpoint, even if this device isn’t the actual target.

Cyber attacks are costly events for a number of reasons. Aside from the obvious expenses incurred when repairing your systems and recovering data, you may well be hit with fines and legal costs. On top of this, the time spent rectifying the issue will cause a drop in overall employee productivity, it’s highly likely you will lose customers, and the damage to your company reputation may be irreparable. Recent research shows that cybercrime costs the Australian economy over a billion dollars annually.

How to prevent cyber threats in your workplace

Unfortunately, many companies have experienced the negative effects of serious cyber attacks. The good news is there are a number of ways you can prevent these, including:

Ensuring your antivirus programs, firmware and firewalls are up to date

Employing a policy of least privilege for your users; this limits the systems and resources available to the minimum required for each particular role 