Remote workers have become increasingly common in today’s workforce, with more and more businesses supporting and encouraging the idea of employees working from home.

These days, many organisations are made up entirely of remote team members, working across different continents and time zones from their home offices, co-working spaces, city libraries, or local cafés!

While remote working has many benefits, for both individuals and their employees, it also has its challenges. Practising clear communication, staying up-to-date with collective goals, and maintaining productivity are all key to remote work.

If you’re managing remote employees, it’s important to know how to make the arrangement a success for the worker, as well as your team and organisation.

Here are some tips you might find helpful when it comes to managing remote employees.

While working from home has its definite perks, over time it can make you feel a bit disconnected from the team and regular office life.

There’s no doubt that collaboration technology is making remote teams just as efficient and productive as traditional workplace environments. However, as a remote worker, you’ll no doubt be missing out on face-to-face interactions with colleagues and managers.

A recent article in Forbes discussed how important it is for remote workers to remain networked as closely as possible with peers and leaders in the office. To achieve this, managers of remote workers should be scheduling regular face-to-face time with team members working away from the office, through Skype, FaceTime or Google Hangouts.

Having this ongoing contact between manager and employee will help anchor the employee back to the company, while also maintaining a positive working relationship between manager and team member.

Use collaboration tools to connect remote teams

In addition to face-to-face time over video calls, you’ll want to invest in collaboration tools that allow remote workers to stay connected to the team.

Slack is a very popular and handy collaboration tool, suitable for both small and large companies. Through Slack, you can link all of your remote workers together, allowing them to easily communicate and share files in real-time.

Programs such as Slack boost transparency and a feeling of team connectivity, giving employees the ability to chat with colleagues about their projects (or anything really!) and see what their team members are working on at any given time. You can also quickly and easily jump onto a voice or video call through the Slack platform, so your teammates are only ever as far away as the call button.

Invest in the development of remote workers

As a manager, you’re no doubt invested in the professional development of your staff. After all, helping employees to boost their skills, knowledge and experience is a key part of being an effective leader. It’s also highly beneficial to the business, as a company is only ever as good as its people!

Unfortunately, however, remote workers can sometimes be neglected when it comes to professional development – even though this is most likely unintentional. In the same way, employees who work away from the office on a full-time basis can often be overlooked for recognition or promotion. It’s harder to be noticed when you’re less visible.

To avoid this from happening, managers must make a conscious effort to include remote workers in ongoing training and development opportunities. Which is easy to do these days with the help of online learning.

Schedule quarterly sessions, to check in with their progress and identify any learning needs or skills gaps. Enrol them in relevant online training courses and modules. Let them know that you are invested in their development and growth, and keen to support their career goals.

Keep your remote team members in the loop

On that note, it may seem quite small and trivial, but one of the biggest challenges of remote work is feeling left out of the loop and distant from colleagues and teammates.

As a manager, it’s important that you make an effort to keep remote employees up-to-date with things going on around the office – large and small. Keep them informed of organisational news, such as recent hires, internal job postings, milestone events, exciting awards won… all of this will help remote workers to feel more included and connected.

Why not end your regular Skype meetings on this kind of catch up note? You might be surprised at how many good ideas come out over these less formal conversations.

Establish trust and communication with remote workers

To be effective at working remotely, employees need to be clear and proactive communicators. Being able to communicate well with managers is absolutely essential for remote workers. And vice versa.

For most managers, it’s easy to see when an employee is just having a bad day, as opposed to genuinely struggling with their workload. When your team members are right there in front of you in the office, you’re able to get a pretty good sense of how they are tracking.

However, when managing remote employees, especially those working in different countries and time zones, it’s much harder to know what’s really going on. That’s why it’s important to build a positive and trusting relationship with remote staff.

By establishing trust and honest communication, you’re letting remote workers know that they can come to you if they need help with their workload, deadlines, clients, or any factor that could be affecting their job. All of the steps above will help you to build that trusting working relationship.

Want to read more about working remotely? You may also like to check out our top tips for being a successful remote worker.

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.

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5 tips on managing remote employees

Despite our best efforts, when we form bad habits, it can be challenging to change them. Resolving to go to the gym three times a week is a start, but getting there and sticking to the plan is another story. 

We can be overly optimistic when setting ourselves new goals, and failing to reach them creates a negative feedback loop. If this happens too many times, we might give up altogether. 

Luckily, researchers have simplified the process and identified a process known as the habit loop. With knowledge of this cycle, it is possible to re-program the most reluctant mind to repeat the desired behavior effortlessly - it just requires a little strategizing and discipline. 

Let’s look at how the habit loop works and how we can apply it to make learning at work a more natural process.

Discovered by MIT researchers, the habit loop is a basic neurological cycle that drives every repeated action:  

In his international bestseller, The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg explains that we can use our wiring to create new, positive patterns of behavior.

He adds that there are endless ways to form new habits. The way people create them depends on personality traits and the behavior they would like to embed. For example, getting into the habit of going to the gym is different to creating a routine of cooking at home more often. 

People also have different motivations for starting a new behavior. One person might want to go to the gym to build strength, while another to feel more energetic. These factors all contribute to how a person will form the habit. 

To account for these differences, Duhigg created the following framework to help anybody form a new habit over time:

Below, we’ll explore how to use this framework in the context of getting into a regular habit of learning at work. 

Using the habit loop to make learning at work easier 

Knowledge of Duhigg’s framework can help you to make professional development an effortless task that naturally fits into the working week. Busy schedules are a significant barrier to learning, but a regular session will free up your time to complete other tasks. Use the following guide to work towards a habit that sticks! 

To start a habit loop for learning, find a time you could allocate each week that is usually available to you.

This regularity will help your brain to trigger the new behavior into action with minimal effort. It is also important to remember that the average employee has only 24 minutes to learn per week. Setting aside just half an hour of your time could make all the difference and help you to get ahead. 

While not everyone works on a strict schedule, each of us can identify routine parts of the day. We do this to limit the number of decisions we need to make, which saves time and brainpower for other activities.   

Once you have identified a routine for learning, think about how you will reward yourself when you’ve completed that task. Perhaps you could organize to have lunch out with your colleagues afterwards or make yourself a coffee. Experiment with something that will motivate you, and when you find it, make sure you remember to reward yourself each time. 

3. Isolate the cue - connect with a motivation

How does learning at work benefit you? Perhaps those in leadership have made it a priority to help the organization move forward. Maybe remaining up to date with the latest research in your field is a necessary part of your work.

If your boss is asking you to learn and you can’t understand the purpose, communicate this feedback. You probably aren’t the only person feeling this way, and those in leadership should want to improve the experience. 

It is also essential that the learning you are engaging with is appropriate to your current knowledge and abilities. If the materials are too challenging or too easy, you will be bored and quickly disengage. 

Starting a new habit is often the most challenging part, and your brain will come up with all sorts of strategies to thwart your progress. 

If this experience is familiar to you, a plan might help. If you know you find it difficult to concentrate when learning at your desk, booking a quiet meeting room might make it easier. On the days you are learning, bring your headphones with you. Do whatever it takes to help you focus and get started.  

Another great strategy is working with others. If you and another colleague have both agreed to set aside a particular time in the week to complete learning, you will hold each other to account, and you won’t want to let each other down. 

Understand that Duhigg's framework is only a pathway to creating new habits: it won’t always work, and it can take time. It might be a real challenge for the first month or even the first six months, but stick at it, and you might find that you are soon in the habit of regular learning practice. 

At the very least, by sticking to a routine, you will have eliminated learning from your to-do list and saved yourself time for other tasks. 

Despite our best efforts, it can be difficult to change bad habits. Let’s look at how the habit loop works and how we can apply it to make learning at work a more natural process.

Using the habit loop to make learning at work easier

Go1 has partnered with foundU, a revolutionary end-to-end employee management platform, that covers everything from recruitment, onboarding, workforce management (including rostering and time capture) to training, payroll and reporting.

In an effort to empower its customer base, foundU will now provide their customers with an inbuilt learning management system and access to over 67,000 courses and other learning items created by local and international experts – to be accessed anywhere, at any time, on any device. 

enjoy a seamless learning experience for employees

manage time and attendance with time clock and geolocation

Renee Roussety, foundU’s Head of Product, said foundU is continuously striving to find innovative ways to help clients focus on their core expertise, while providing resources and tools to help them optimise their workforce from recruitment to payroll, all while promoting employee engagement. 

“Training and upskilling employees is a crucial element and we’ve partnered with Go1 to ensure foundU customers have seamless access to relevant courses, created by some of the leading providers in corporate training,” Renee Roussety said.

Go1 Partner Manager, Hanan Wagie, said “We’re thrilled to be working with foundU, particularly to help customers with their workplace training needs. Go1 provides organisations with a really easy way to find, book, deliver and track all their corporate training. The partnership means companies working with foundU will be able to seamlessly access the world’s largest and ever-growing content marketplace from within their foundU platform. The growing library has courses covering compliance through to soft skills, all available in one easy monthly subscription.”

foundU + go1

Finding the the right end-to-end employee management and training solution can be hard, but with the foundU and Go1 integration it no longer has to be. Interested to know more? Register your interest here.

Go1 is the single end-to-end solution for all your business training needs. Go1 Premium gives you unlimited access to a growing library containing thousands of learning resources, from top training providers around the world – all accessible through foundU’s employment management software.  

With Go1’s Premium library, you’ll have the freedom to choose from an ever-growing selection of content providers, to find the best training content to develop your team. The growing library has courses covering compliance through to soft skills, all available in one easy monthly subscription.

Payroll and HR doesn’t need to be hard or complicated, it just needs to be effective.

The foundU platform has been developed to simplify workforce management and payroll – in one, end-to-end system. Say hello to paperless onboarding, easy to build rosters, automated payroll and full-suite reporting. We’ve streamlined and automated the complex – so you can focus on your business. No other solution comes close.

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.

Using foundU to access Go1's extensive marketplace - Go1

Accessing Go1’s extensive marketplace on foundU’s end-to-end employee management software

Victoria Houchin, Business Development Manager for Training Alliance at the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, talks about the importance of providing high-quality training to employees in the disability industry. 

The disability industry has undergone significant changes and growth over the past few years since the introduction of the NDIS, and the dust is yet to settle. With the sudden increase in numbers of clients as well as providers, most providers felt the chaos with registering to become an NDIS approved provider as well as change the way that we cost our services.

We must first appreciate the NDIS for what it is, a huge step in the right direction for people with disability, many of which now have access to funding or more funding and able to utilise fantastic supports that enable them to live a fulfilling life. 

Nonetheless, the Quality and Safeguards Commission is here (replacing the Ombudsman) and all providers are or have undergone audits to ensure they provide a quality service. Most are given some minor improvements to make and more often than not, staff training is at the top of the list.

Training in the disability industry has peaked and dipped in it’s popularity over the past few years because of the impact that the NDIS introduction had on most organisations bottom lines, and as an RTO who’s No.1 customer base are disability providers we noticed that organising regular or comprehensive training became difficult with most providers simply trying to keep their head above water with the changes.

David Moody, the newly appointed CEO for NDS released a sobering message on November 1st 2019 regarding the interim report for the Aged Care Royal Commission, titled “Neglect”. From this report he states that there is an expectation of the focus of the upcoming Disability Royal Commission to look at:

restrictive practices including significant attention to the use of medications as a restraint;

quality of food and attention to oral health;

health and medical care including pain management;

It’s a great idea for all organisations to carefully look at each of these points, as well as all of the NDIS Practice Standards and understand exactly what they are doing to support their clients to the absolute best standard, and be able to evidence it. 

Over the past 75 years Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA) has supported people with disability to build enriching lives. Training Alliance, as a division of Cerebral Palsy Alliance has developed all of our training through the expertise and experience of CPA and our industry partners to be specifically for the disability and health sectors. 

CPA offers a range of cost-effective in-person, Nationally Recognised and online learning that supports many organisations across Australia to upskill and prepare staff to provide an excellent service.

Our online learning is a great tool for providers who need comprehensive, time efficient and cost effective training for their teams. It’s especially great for organisations who may have regional locations that can be difficult to find in-person training.

Our online learning library offers a range of essential health and compliance topics for Disability Support Practitioners. It is used as a full induction and refresher program for many organisations, and others choose to blend our online and in-person courses. 

Get started with CPA content through Go1 today!

The importance of providing high-quality training to employees across the disability industry

At Go1, we aim to bring you the best training content from around the world, to suit the unique and diverse needs of your learners. 

Today, we want to introduce you to Mind Tools - a well-known content provider creating high-quality, practical, on-demand resources to help learners enjoy happy, successful careers, and contribute positively to the success of their organisations. 

Mind Tools’ range of training resources have been specifically developed to help you to become an effective and inspirational manager and leader – whether you're new to the job or have years of experience. 

Through our partnership with Mind Tools, Go1 Premium customers will now have access to an extensive range of online training resources to help boost management, leadership, and personal self-development skills. 

Introducing MindTools- digital training to boost management, leadership, and self-development skills

Learn more about the Go1 x Mind Tools partnership

Mind Tools are really at the forefront of what is going on in the world of learning at the moment, in terms of trends and what people are demanding. These days, people are looking for self-directed learning for a continuous learning environment. 

Mind Tools provide access to self-directed resources, in a variety of formats, to work for different learning styles - giving people access to what they need, at the point they need it. 

You can also be sure that you’re getting the very latest training content, with Mind Tools’ in-house Content team updating or producing a new resource every working day using academic research, credible sources and expert advice.

Mind Tools have a wide range of online courses in Go1 Premium, available to Australian customers. 

Get started with Mind Tools content here!

Mind Tools - Leadership and self-development training - Go1

Introducing Mind Tools - digital, on-demand training to help boost management, leadership, and self-development skills

In the last 30 years, research shows that the number of companies offering remote working options had tripled. In this rapidly shifting workplace environment, autonomy is becoming a necessity, rather than a nice to have. 

This need for a more autonomous approach also applies to workplace learning. Traditionally, facilitators led professional development opportunities and guided groups of employees to develop knowledge or set of skills. 

In the digital age, learning opportunities are available to participants as and when they need them, which presents the opportunity for employees to lead their learning, and drive progress from the bottom up. Research suggests that informal rather than formal learning accounts for up to 75 percent of learning within organizations. 

The question is, how can those responsible for workplace training help employees develop the skills needed for autonomous learning? 

What are the benefits of autonomous learning?

The Ethics Centre describes autonomy as “the idea that every person is in control of their thoughts and actions and can be motivated by ‘internal’ forces like choice and reflection.” 

In this sense, autonomy is a philosophical concept, rather than a skill that employees can develop. However, individuals can become more autonomous in their approach when they develop specific soft skills, such as self-confidence and problem-solving.

On a systemic level, this level of independent thought can be challenging, particularly in a large organization. Nevertheless, autonomous work is a necessary part of progress, and organizations need to embrace it to keep up with the pace of change. 

While sometimes difficult to manage, encouraging autonomy also gives employees the headspace and confidence they need to make creative contributions - an equally essential skill in today’s work landscape. 

How to encourage autonomous learning in the workplace

Before learners can start to direct their learning and make the process autonomous, organization leaders need to develop the appropriate learning culture. This process includes building trust between team members at all levels. 

Towards Maturity (now Emerald Group), an organization assessing the effective implementation of learning innovation describes how organizations can achieve this using their “Transformation Curve” roadmap. They summarise the journey into four stages: Optimizing Training, Taking Control, Letting Go, and Sharing Responsibility. 

When organizations make learning and development a priority, ensure that the appropriate systems and processes are in place, and train employees in using these systems, they can begin to relinquish control. They can trust employees to make appropriate decisions for their development that will also benefit the organization as a whole. 

Perhaps the most important soft skill to develop in becoming an autonomous learner is problem-solving. In schools, teachers aim to strike a balance between encouraging students to ask questions and making their way forward independently. As adults, we continue this balancing act: developing problem-solving skills is a lifelong process. 

Autonomous learning isn’t the same as independent learning. While an employee may have identified an area of their work that needs development, they may need to collaborate with others to learn new skills or find answers.  According to the 70:20:10 model for learning and development, 20 percent of knowledge acquisition happens through speaking and interacting with others. Encourage employees to ask questions and speak with their team members about the courses they are taking, or skills they are developing. 

Professional discourse can also be an excellent marker for whether or not employees are both engaged in learning and benefiting from it. Listen in to the informal conversations in the corridors (where appropriate!) and gauge the level of interest. 

Being open to learning something new is about having the confidence to take risks. If you fear failure, you are unlikely to engage with learning, because the risk of not understanding a new concept is high.  When we don’t know how to do something, we need to put ourselves out there to build the skill or find answers. 

Failure and learning from mistakes are all part of this process, and making learners aware of this can be helpful. When those in leadership model and openness to failure and making mistakes, this will filter down to the rest of the organization.   

5. Provide engaging, personalized content

Personalizing learning is the difference between content being engaging or boring. Content needs to address an individual’s learning needs as accurately as possible, and advancing technology is helping to simplify this process.

If employees have access to learning content that is both engaging and appropriate to their needs, autonomous learning becomes a natural process.  As ideas or questions spring to mind, they will have the necessary tools and information to hand.

If they can select content and develop in areas they have chosen themselves, they will be more motivated and interested in the subject matter. The success of any learning and development strategy rests on how engaged employees are in the process, at it is crucial to keep track of this continually. 

A one stop shop for all things training, Go1 makes it easy to compare the best training options available, and find the right resources for your professional development, compliance and business training needs. 

Encourage your learners to own their personal development training, by giving them the flexibility to search and select courses that reflect their professional interests. This helps your employees take the learning outside of the workplace, so they can access it whenever and wherever they want.

Supporting employees to become autonomous learners

As we begin a new decade, remote working is an accepted and sought after feature of the workplace. Between 1996 and 2016, The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that the number of companies offering remote working options had tripled.  

This shift has had a significant impact on the nature of workplace learning: organizations are now allocating 59 percent of training budgets to online tools. 

With these statistics in mind, both managers and employees have had to re-evaluate the professional development process. The question is, can employees still benefit from learning collaboratively in a remote working environment?

Despite the changing makeup of the workplace, providing employees with opportunities for collaborative learning is critical. 

Learning with others works well for several reasons. According to the 70:20:10 framework for workplace learning, approximately 20 percent of people gain knowledge through social interaction. Whether the teaching is conducted face-to-face or online, social relationships between participants are crucial for the learning to be meaningful.   

Collaborative learning also creates opportunities for employees to share knowledge, an important element of a thriving workplace learning culture. 

Towards Maturity, an organization assessing the effective implementation of learning innovation (now Emerald Works) explains that knowledge sharing is an essential element of the collaborative learning process:

“Informal and social learning [is] encouraging the interchange of ideas and mutual support to facilitate personal and business goals, collaborative problem solving, and innovation.”

However, it is important to keep a balance and to give participants independent learning time. Employees need time to process their thoughts, to reflect on the knowledge they have gained, and to decide how to put what they have learned into practice.

Finding opportunities for collaborative online learning

While collaborative learning between colleagues can be more of a challenge with remote working, leaders can still create opportunities for employees to benefit from learning with others. Here are our top tips for building a collaborative, remote learning environment:  

For employees to receive the benefits of social learning, they need to be able to build relationships with fellow participants. This need for interaction applies both to learning conducted remotely and in a face-to-face context. 

Human connection is as necessary today as it was before the advent of online learning, especially when participants interact less with their instructors and peers. 

The task for leaders is to look for opportunities for remote workers to build relationships. These connections will directly impact the quality of the learning experience.

Many online learning providers build group seminars into the courses they offer. While lessons can take many different forms, most sessions will be led by a facilitator via video link either recorded or live. A discussion window also appears at the side of the screen for participants to make contributions or ask questions. Participants typically log in together, at a pre-determined time. 

Seminars are an excellent way for whole teams to learn collaboratively if this suits the requirements of the organization. Again, it is crucial to ensure there is a balance of learning opportunities. Ideally, employees should have time to learn both collaboratively and independently to remain engaged in the process and reap the benefits of both styles of learning. 

Many online courses also include discussion or comment sections to encourage learner collaboration. Even when participants log on to a session on their own, they can discuss topics and benefit from learning with others.

3. Encourage learning discourse amongst colleagues

According to the 70:20:10 model, social interactions account for approximately 20 percent of learning in the workplace. Much of this learning will happen organically, but leaders can also facilitate learning discourse. 

One way to get employees talking is to include a learning discussion in weekly team meetings. This opportunity applies equally to employees working remotely, who might dial into a conference call or meet face-to-face once a week to check in with their colleagues. 

Leaders can also model discussion about learning at appropriate times. Perhaps somebody in leadership recently learned something new. They could share that experience with staff when giving a presentation, or if they have questions, they could ask a relevant team member for help using learning-appropriate language.

Online courses can serve as a foundation for social learning opportunities. Those responsible for learning and development might set up a reflective discussion relating to a session next time team members come together for a meeting. 

The content found in online courses can also feed into other types of learning. While logging in and completing an online course will help employees in their professional development, it is essential to maximize the opportunity and help them to build on the experience with others. 

In the modern working environment, where spare time is increasingly difficult to come by, it is crucial to allocate time for team members to collaborate. Whether you achieve this with your team in weekly meetings, either face-to-face or online, encourage colleagues to think about what they have learned recently, how they are going to apply it, and anything useful they might be able to share with the team. Creating opportunities for a learning debrief enables employees to share knowledge when time is otherwise scarce.

With Go1 Premium, you’ll have unlimited access to a growing library containing thousands of learning resources, from top training providers around the world - all in one easy subscription.  

Creating a collaborative online learning environment remotely 

At Go1, we partner with the world’s top training providers, to bring you the best training content available. 

Today we want to introduce you to ViaUp, an Australian-based content creator focused on strong narratives, high-quality design and just a little bit of fun to make sure people feel engaged, enriched, and most important of all, entertained when undertaking eLearning.

Through our partnership with ViaUp, Go1 Premium customers will now have access to a range of extraordinary interactive learning experiences that can create positive lasting change within the workplace. 

ViaUp prioritises user engagement and experience, using story-telling techniques to bring their content to life, creating corporate learning that resonates. 

Introducing ViaUp - Learning with character

Learn more about the ViaUp x Go1 partnership here

ViaUp courses are developed with the fundamental principles in mind - that organisations can achieve their missions if they ensure employees understand and appreciate the importance of:

Created in collaboration with leading subject matter experts, ViaUp’s learning material is relevant and at the forefront of current discussions and trends on the subject matter. 

ViaUp = Interactive and engaging corporate training - Go1

Introducing ViaUp - bringing fun to corporate training with engaging interactive learning experiences

Imagine for the last month you have been preparing for a pitch with your colleague. You spend days meticulously compiling data to win over your superiors. Despite working as a team, your colleague is more charismatic in the presentation: the audience hangs on her every word. Without intending to, she receives the bulk of the praise and recognition for the work.

The halo-effect is one example of the cognitive biases built into the human brain. Our overall impression of a person influences how we feel about his character, or what she says. We find it difficult to look at the cold, hard facts, and this can lead us astray. 

No matter how objective we try to be, we are all at the whim of our brain chemistry. A number of these biases exist and can wreak havoc with our ability to make level-headed decisions. Understanding what they are can help you significantly in the workplace - even help you to gain an advantage. 

A cognitive bias is an error in judgment or thinking that occurs as we make sense of the world around us. Our brains are powerful, but limited in the amount of processing they can do at any one time. Biases are generalizations created by our minds to deal with large amounts of information more quickly.  

Instead of taking the time to think logically and objectively, our brains will jump ahead to using this pre-programmed system. This flaw can lead us to make poor decisions or take action without considering all of the facts. This comprehensive list from VeryWellMind explains each of the biases in more detail. 

Knowing about the cognitive biases wired into our brains can be useful. We can use the information to influence our decisions and actions at work. Here are our top tips for stepping back and preventing your biases from taking over: 

1. Do your best to look at all the evidence

Confirmation bias is when we favor information that supports our existing beliefs. Rather than remaining open to new information that could change our point of view, we opt to stick with what we know and discard additional details.

When you find new evidence or data, try to look at the information with fresh eyes. We don’t advocate throwing all of your prior experience out of the window. Still, it can be helpful to keep an open mind when presented with an idea or piece of information that challenges what you already know. It could help you to develop your experience in a particular topic or make you more aware of the latest advances in your field. 

The availability heuristic is when we place higher value on information that comes to our minds quickly. If we have experienced an event or found out a piece of news recently, we tend to think it is more likely to be accurate, as we are more easily able to access the thought or memory.	

When you are brainstorming ideas for a new project, allow yourself enough time to come up with a range of possibilities. Perhaps speak with your colleagues and ask for their input. The first ideas you come up with won’t necessarily be the most effective. Ideally, you should draw on information from a variety of sources to know which plan is best before proceeding. 

The self-serving bias can be challenging to manage. Naturally, we want to tell positive stories about ourselves to stay hopeful and enthusiastic about the future. However, when something terrible happens, we tend to assume that it wasn’t our fault and that forces beyond our control are to blame. 

When good things happen, we are quick to give ourselves credit. This bias can cause all kinds of problems if we want to make progress in a particular skill or area at work. If we are unable to see our faults when learning something new, we are unlikely to make progress. If we blame external forces or others when things go wrong, not only will we annoy our colleagues, we will fail to understand the adjustments necessary to get better. 

Attentional bias is when we pay attention to certain things and ignore others. We tend to focus on topics we are interested in, have experience with, or think about regularly. When making important decisions, we might fail to consider essential criteria because they aren’t readily on our radar. 

When making a decision, it can be helpful to make a list of all the criteria that might affect your choice. Involve trusted colleagues in this process, as they will likely think of different approaches to you. You can then carefully evaluate each aspect of the decision you need to make, without missing vital information. 

We also tend to favor the first piece of information we hear when coming to a decision. While the anchoring bias can make it difficult for us to come to reasonable conclusions and evaluate all of the critical information, it can also be helpful. If we are the first to bring a piece of information to the table, we are far more likely to be heard and noticed. If possible, be careful not to rush and share the first idea that pops into your head! 

Go1 is your employee's gateway to professional development growth. With courses that cover numerous business functions, we help your staff grow into their role by unlocking their potential. Content is at all levels of difficulty and is suitable for any employee, in any department, in any region

How to handle cognitive bias in the workplace

At Go1, we partner with some of the best learning content providers from across the world, to bring you up-to-date specialist training for your industry.  

Today, we want to introduce you to Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA) - one of Australia’s leading disability providers with more than 75 years’ experience in providing world-class services for people living with a broad range of physical and neurological disabilities. 

CPA has leveraged this extraordinary expertise to develop a registered training organisation committed to creating high quality content, based on extensive experience, evidence-based knowledge, patience and research.

Through our partnership with CPA, Go1 Premium customers will now have access to high quality, evidence-based training for individuals and organisations in the disability and community sector.

CPA imagines a world where people with disability are fully included, active and contributing members of society, realising their full potential. Technological innovation has the potential to reduce barriers and become a powerful driver of inclusion. With their training at the forefront of the disability sector, you can feel confident that you are accessing the most relevant information out there. 

Introducing Cerebral Palsy Alliance - high quality, evidence-based training in the disability sector

Learn more about the Go1 x CPA partnership

The organisation’s in-depth understanding of disability supports the development of a skilled and confident workforce, armed with the skills to meet the changing demands of the growing sector, and deliver great outcomes to people living with disability. All CPA online courses are created in consultation with their partners, and incorporate their own expertise as a service provider and training organisation. 

Disability Support Practitioner, Robert Doyle, further cements this by stating that CPA training has given him “that confidence to go in there and do my job as best I can.”

CPA offers a wide range of recognised qualifications and specialist training courses to support people working in disability, students and those looking to join the disability and aged care workforce of the future. Training content covers a wide range of specialist topics including:

Promoting health for people with disability

Workplace health and safety (WHS) awareness and duty of care

Get started with Cerebral Palsy Alliance content here!

Cerebral Palsy Alliance - Evidence-based training - Go1

Introducing Cerebral Palsy Alliance - providing high quality, evidence-based training for individuals and organisations in the disability sector

Helping you reach your training goals with the latest insights, trends, and advancements in L&D

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