Change is an inevitable part of growth for any business. As organizations take steps forward, certain aspects of what they do will improve, while others remain constant or slip back. 

Currently, we are experiencing a period of growth unprecedented in human history, labeled as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The World Economic Forum describes this time as “a new chapter for human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions.”  

In light of this shift, change management is becoming an increasingly popular area of research and is now recognized as a formal vocation. The discipline aims to help organizations successfully navigate current advancements in technology and knowledge.

Here, we present the main goals of change management and suggest how organization leaders can use the underpinning theories to guide their employees through times of change. We will also explore the role of learning and development in the process. 

According to online learning provider MindTools, change management is a structured approach for ensuring that management teams thoroughly and smoothly implement changes and that they achieve the lasting benefits of change.

From a simple change to an organization’s systems to alterations in policy or strategy, change management can help organizations maximize their potential and limit the damage change can inflict. 

McKinsey & Company found that “70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support.” Change managers aim to increase the chances of new initiatives sticking by ensuring employees are supportive of the process. Paying attention to the employee experience makes it 30% more likely for organizations to successfully implement new strategies.

Communicating changes to employees, no matter how small, can make a significant difference to how that change is received. If employees are kept in the loop and know what to expect, they are far more likely to support each other and those in leadership to make the changes necessary. 

Jay Tankersley at Vital Learning emphasizes that it is critical to communicate the following aspects of change to team members: 

The direct effect the change has on your team

The impact the change has on individuals’ daily work

With these pillars of communication in place, organization leaders are far more likely to see employees invested in the changes they make to strategy, with buy-in being a critical element to the success of any new initiative. 

When an organization goes through a period of change, employees will form expectations along the way. If their roles and responsibilities are going to alter, being as transparent as possible is vital. Elizabeth Baskin, CEO at Tribe, Inc., explains that while transparency is essential during times of change, it isn’t always appropriate to be completely open with employees and that they understand this. 

The best outcome is to be as honest as possible, without revealing sensitive information. Baskin adds that as long as management teams give employees an idea of what to expect and information they can and can’t have access to, they are far more likely to accept the difficult decisions. 

While productivity may slow initially during times of change, this will bounce back as employees grow accustomed to new situations and requirements. Research shows that re-organizing workplaces has a significant impact on productivity in the long term. If those in leadership accept this initial downturn, the rewards will come over time. Although progress may be slow at times, it is essential to avoid looking for individuals to blame or single out.

Uncertainty can also add to stress and tension, creating undue conflict between team members. While a certain level of anxiety is a necessary part of growth and development, if this reaches an unhealthy level, managers can support employees with stress management techniques. 

As an organization moves forward in a new direction, employees will likely have to adapt and learn new skills to contribute to the process.

An effective way to improve productivity during times of change is to engage employees through learning. Will they need to learn new skills as their roles and responsibilities change? 

From a management perspective, those in leadership can also use this time to identify skills gaps across the organization and seek to address these through learning initiatives. Are there gaps in employee knowledge that leadership teams need to cover? Will equipping employees with these new skills help the management team to execute on their new strategy? Asking these questions will help those in leadership to take full advantage of learning opportunities as they arise.

5. Support employees to become autonomous 

As a preventative measure, before a change occurs, it can be helpful to support employees in becoming more autonomous. Developing this quality requires trust on the part of management, which is built over time as teams get to know each other and learn how to work together. 

For example, in a strategy meeting, the management team might identify that the organization is falling short of their targets in a particular area. When those in leadership communicate this to employees, they are far more likely to reach solutions independently if they have the confidence to work autonomously. Offering professional development in skills such as creativity, problem-solving, and design thinking can all help employees to take the lead as their organization develops. 

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.

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Coping with change from a leadership perspective

In the age of widespread access to digital content, the way we consume media is becoming far more individualized. Instead of watching a show on TV with family or friends, we can now watch a series of our choice. We can do this on our own or with others, and we can select what we want to watch when we want to. 

Similarly, the way we engage with learning content is changing. We no longer want to learn in large groups, nor do we want to be taught the same information as thirty other participants. We can find the answers we need for ourselves at our own pace. 

Research shows that when organizations focus on the quality of L&D, they can boost productivity and employee satisfaction. A large-scale analysis of employee surveys also revealed that career development is the second most important driver of employee satisfaction and ongoing engagement. 

In light of this research, we are going to look at how organizations can better support employees through L&D practices, and make suggestions for how to make improvements. 

While each employee has a role to play in their professional development, it is the responsibility of the organization to create a culture focused on L&D. 

Towards Maturity, an organization assessing the effective implementation of learning innovation found that in an unparalleled era of change for organizations, there is an excellent opportunity for L&D to deliver strategic value.  

Organizations can achieve this using their “Transformation Curve” roadmap, which describes how they can develop their learning culture. They summarise the journey into four stages: Optimizing Training, Taking Control, Letting Go, and Sharing Responsibility. 

Researchers also identified six dimensions that impact upon an organization’s capacity to transform:

Governance and decision making: aligning of learning strategy to business goals and objectives, with the smart use of evidence to support decision making.

Formal learning: building an efficient, active portfolio of learning resources to address skills gaps and support learners’ career development.

Informal and social learning: encouraging the interchange of ideas and mutual support to support personal and business goals, collaborative problem solving, and innovation.

The role of the learning professional: adopting business-focused and tech-savvy facilitation of L&D through blending performance support, training, and expert advice and guidance. 

The role of the manager: driving the achievement of organizational goals and championing transformation and committed to individual and business advancement through learning.

The final dimension is directly related to employees being accountable and responsible for their learning:

The role of the individual: ensuring that self-directed learners are purposeful, curious, confident, social, connected, adaptable, and take ownership of their L&D.

Bringing the research together, here are our top tips to help employees in your organization reap greater rewards from your L&D strategy:

1. Make learning and development a priority

When organizations prioritize learning and development, employees can become more agile and adaptive, meaning they have an improved ability to cope with and respond to the rapid rates of change expected of them in the digital age. 

One way to shift the focus to L&D in an organization is to build it into your organization's values. 

Values underpin every decision and action in your organization. It is important to mention them often, so employees know precisely what their team aims to achieve. Clearly defined values also make it easier to attract employees who share your organization's beliefs.

When these values include the importance of learning and development, this will filter down to every aspect of operations. Employees will be far more likely to understand how learning fits in with the broader purpose of the organization. They will also want to develop skills that help them contribute to the organization's mission.  

2. Give employees access to high-quality learning content

Employees also need to have engaging content and access to a wide range of materials to suit their learning needs. A great way to cover all the bases is to provide them with access to a well-stocked content library. The Go1 Premium platform is home to a growing collection containing thousands of learning resources. 

In the current workplace environment, employees want to direct their learning. Deloitte Insights explains that corporate learning departments are changing from education providers to content curators and experience facilitators. Their task is to develop innovative platforms that turn employee learning and development into a self-driven pursuit.

Organizations are moving away from facilitator-led programs and opting to develop tools for employees to curate their own learning experiences. Relinquishing control and empowering learners is a difficult step to take, but a rewarding one. When learners can take ownership of their learning, this increases engagement. They can also address gaps in their knowledge independently.

4. Encourage employees to share knowledge

When working in a team, knowledge is only useful when it is shared with others and communicated. Employees should be encouraged to share information. Teams could even build knowledge sharing into team meetings, where employees and those in leadership share interesting articles, books, videos, or podcasts they have come across recently. 

Peer-to-peer learning also needs to be high on the agenda. Across an organization, employees will have a wide range of skills and knowledge, and staff members should be encouraged to share what they know. Social learning is one of the most effective ways to acquire new information and expertise. 

5. Create a safe haven for open communication

It is essential that employees feel safe talking to each other and those in senior management about areas they need to focus on for professional development.  

Admitting when we don’t understand a concept or process can be difficult and makes us feel vulnerable. When those in leadership positions model positive learning behaviors, employees will feel more confident speaking up. Helpful behaviors include asking questions, seeking out opportunities for feedback, and sharing examples of great work.

When employees see those in management modeling this behavior, they are far more likely to feel comfortable with it themselves.

Five top L&D tips to help employees get ahead in 2021

As part of our goal to increase the love of learning, we have been hard at work introducing a new type of learning for our learners to enjoy; audio!

Employing our new audio learning item type, content creators can offer lectures, music, audio books, and more, all through Go1.

Whether you find that you learn better through listening, enjoy learning while travelling, or find that you don’t have the time to sit down and watch something and would prefer to learn while going about your day, you will especially benefit from this new format.

skip forwards or backwards within the audio

change the playback speed to better catch the contents of the audio at their own pace, or speed up to suit their learning needs.

🚀 Early access program - try this feature for yourself!

Get involved and join us in trialling this feature. If you are interested in becoming an early adopter, sign up here and for any questions, please email us at product@go1.com.

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Experience lectures, music, audio books and more through our new Audio learning type

Early access available: learning through listening

After receiving extensive feedback from our Early Access participants and following the full release of the new content player 1-Player, we are excited to announce a number of enhancements.

🚀 New improvements to our Content Player

The below improvements to our new 1-Player display have been released to all portals over the last several weeks:

Visibility of due dates for courses, modules and learning items so that learners are always aware of any deadlines

Module descriptions, removing the need to return to My Progress or exit the 1-Player

An expandable side navigation which allows users to easier read long descriptions

General enhancements such as unifying button text, better fitting text on to buttons and providing clearer icons for some features to reduce confusion

Improved link embedding, with many links now embeddable, instead of being taken to a separate tab

Enrol directly via 1-Player, allowing external LMS users and users sharing 1-Player links to be able to enrol through 1-Player without having to go back to Explore or the content’s Overview, simplifying the process to access learning content, better meeting external LMS needs, and making sharing easier

Parameter-based configuration options for external LMSs, allowing external LMS customers to customise 1-Player's behaviour to meet their needs and LMS user interface (e.g. hiding the X close button, title, overview and close behaviours)

Look forward to seeing the following improvements in the near future:

Clearer communication to learners when they have submitted all items in a course and are waiting on their assessor to mark an assessable item. This messaging will show when submitting or finishing the last unfinished item in a course

The mobile course overview will display the item description by default

Locked learning items will display a modal on-hover

🚀 Early access: Start learning faster through our improved user flow

We have been working to simplify the journey for learners to access course content. Until now, learners could only access our improved 1-Player via the My Progress page of a course. 

Streamlining the path to accessing learning content

Now that the 1-Player contains all of the useful information previously only found on a course's My Progress page, when a learner enrols in a course they will now jump straight from the course’s Overview page to the 1-Player. Learners will also be directed straight to the 1-Player from all other areas of the platform if they are already enrolled in the course.

Note: The My Progress page will stay available during EAP to ensure no functionality is taken away from learners without warning, and to gather valuable feedback on whether the new flow is meaningful and valuable for all learners.

To register your interest, sign up here and if you have any questions, please email us at product@go1.com.

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.

1-Player updates, including a new feature to trial! - Go1

Our new content player just keeps getting better and better.

1-Player enhancements for the new year - including a new feature to trial!

Human beings have been making New Year’s resolutions for some 4,000 years. The ancient Babylonians held celebrations in honor of the new year and made promises to the gods to return any objects they had borrowed. 

The start of a new year and a new decade is an opportune time to reaffirm broken promises to ourselves and create new goals for the year ahead. Most of us are coming back refreshed from a break, with a renewed energy to make changes.

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and other books on personal development, explains that we need to set up goals to suit our nature. For example, if you find you work best in the morning, your resolution might be to complete more challenging projects at the start of the day.

In a recent Go1 article, we talked about reflection as a way to move forward professionally. Looking inwards can also serve as an excellent basis for goal setting, as you spend time carefully identifying the areas in which you need to improve. 

Realistic goals are all about setting yourself up for success. Once you gain momentum and start to see tangible progress, you can continue with a new cycle of goal setting.  

Research and thinking behind goal setting 

To get started, let’s look at some of the research behind setting successful goals. Interestingly, evidence shows that looking to your underlying values, rather than trying to hit superficial targets, is more likely to lead to success.     

Kelly McGonigal, psychologist at Stanford University, explains that understanding what is meaningful to you is the key to setting achievable goals. “Give yourself permission and time to think about what it is you want to experience in your life or what’s getting in the way,” says McGonigal. She suggests to think about what you want, and then ask yourself why you want it three times in a row. 

New York Times best-selling author and life enthusiast, Mark Manson, warns that we need to be realistic in our expectations when we set goals. As an example, he explains that, “people want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.” We need to be prepared to make sacrifices to push towards a target. For example, if you want to improve your communication skills at work, you need to devote time and energy to it. You will also need to be prepared to take risks and make mistakes to learn. 

Once you have set your goals, James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, explains that we need oars and rudders to meander in the right direction. Setting the goal is like the rudder. You point it in one direction and move more or less directly towards it. If you turn the rudder too much, you end up going in circles. The oars are your processes or systems for achieving that goal. He explains further using the following example: “If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.”

Using these ideas and evidence-based suggestions, here is our guide to getting started with goal setting this year:

1. Identify your strengths and weaknesses

You may already have a good understanding of what your strengths are, or need to do a little more work to uncover them. When you reflect, think of three ways you have made the most of your talents in the past year. What conditions were present to enable you to do this? Did you behave any differently? Is there any way you could make more of your strengths in the coming year?  

It isn’t easy to accept what our weaknesses are or to know where our blind spots lie. It can make us defensive and irritable to think that we are imperfect, but we all are, and there is comfort in that. Understanding our weaknesses is key to making real progress, both in our personal and professional lives. 

Once you have identified areas you might like to improve in, think about one thing you would like to get better at within this framework. Consider why you want to get better. This way, you can connect with the process, and you’ll feel more motivated to keep going. 

3. Be authentic, consider your personality

There are certain traits in our personalities that remain fixed throughout life. If you are introverted and work best in quiet environments, set yourself a goal that is conducive to this. A goal that involves a lot of communication with others could be overwhelming, and you could quickly lose momentum. However, it is advisable to keep a balance. Sometimes, we need to step out of our comfort zone to grow. 

What sacrifices will you have to make to reach this goal? Are you willing to make them? If not, you might need to look elsewhere to set a realistic target.  

As James Clear explains, you need to think about what your oars are. What daily, weekly or monthly systems do you need to put in place to achieve the goal you have set? Identify a system that works for you, and then find the discipline to stick with it. 

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

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.

An introspective approach to goal setting for 2021

As the holiday season is upon us, we find ourselves reflecting on the past year and those who have helped to shape our business. It’s been quite a year for the Go1 team! 

We thought we’d look back at some of the highlights of the past year.

Early this year we officially opened the doors to our new HQ in Logan, Australia. We are incredibly happy to be a part of such a diverse and growing community! 

Our co-founder Vu Tran thanks the Council for the opportunity to help boost Logan’s entrepreneurial credentials. “We’re thrilled to be able to give back to the community and boost the number of successful start-ups and scale-ups with support and mentoring capabilities."

Investment Attraction Incentive Fund lures four businesses to Logan

We've had some amazing articles come out in the press over the course of this year that you might find interesting, so we’ve put together this round up of links for you to read over. We encourage you to catch them now if you missed them earlier, or re-read them to see if there’s more you can learn!

Microsoft's M12 global VC arm backs Australian start-up Go1

The 25 best start-ups to work for in Australia, according to LinkedIn

Go1.com launches scholarship program for brokers

UK targets Aussie tech firms for post-Brexit economy

Top 30 best-funded Australian startups 2019

News Xtend partners exclusively with world’s largest workplace training marketplace Go1

Docebo Makes E-Learning Content Access Easy with All-New Docebo Content

Go1.com increases reach and speed using Salesforce

At Go1 we believe in bringing the learning community together so that we can all share our knowledge and help everyone to improve the way that they learn and train their team.

Our meetups are for learning and development professionals who want to discuss best practices, strategies, and innovation in learning design, delivery and instructional technology. This year we appeared in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for our Learning & Technology Meetups. We discussed why HR & L&D managers should learn leadership skills in order to influence, impact and engage staff learning. 

We also explored learning and development on a budget - how to build learning momentum in your organisation and develop your people on a tight budget. 

This year we held our very first Client Forums across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Attendees had the opportunity to hear directly from the Go1 team about product innovations and what's in store for the future. It was amazing to see so many people from a range of different industries come together to share their strengths and challenges in the L&D space!

GO1 Client Forum May 2019

We'll be hosting even more meetups and client forums in the new year and invite you to get involved in the conversation. You’ll be sure to walk away with some fresh solutions that you can start applying in your workplace straight away! Keep an eye out in the new year for more information.

Helping organisations improve their learning culture

Throughout the year, we’ve partnered with many businesses to help them improve the way they deliver and manage their employee training.

We teamed up with Amicus to redefine and re-energise their employee training program, with the aim of improving the way learning and development was being delivered across the organisation.

We also helped Bohme address their training needs and continue to drive success in the company.

We provided Bentleys with the perfect solution for the company’s learning needs, allowing them the freedom to promote a culture of knowledge sharing within the firm.

Working with Surrey County Council, we were able to tackle the challenging task of providing every staff member with regular opportunities for learning and development. 

We look forward to sharing more case studies with you in the new year, so you can see first-hand how Go1 is helping companies to deliver improved learning to their teams.

At Go1, we partner with the world’s top training providers, to bring you up-to-date specialist training for your industry. This year was no exception! 

Packt - the very latest AI, machine learning, data science and web development online courses.

Charles Bloe Training - online and face-to-face training courses, suitable for healthcare professionals including nurses, paramedics, doctors, clinicians and pharmacists.

UNSW Edge - innovative range of legal and CPD training resources. 

This year, we’re proud to say that Go1 Premium has grown to include more than 62,000 courses! 

Thank you for reading and sharing our highlights from the year – it's been a big one and we're looking forward to an even bigger 2020.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers, partners, readers and followers for your ongoing support throughout the year. We hope that 2019 has been just as memorable for you, your colleagues and your loved ones. 

Here at GOo1, we work to partner with high-quality content providers across various topics so that we can cover all our customers’ training needs. That is why we’re excited to introduce some of our new content partners who are helping us provide training across a wide range of areas. Click on the links below to learn more about them: 

Delivering award winning compliance and induction programs. 

A provider of very high quality Health and Safety and HR Compliance courses.

Sentinel 9 have partnered with Go1 to offer 25 modules from their industry-leading Master of Applied Business course. 

Left Bank deliver comprehensive introductory courses to Digital Marketing, including Email Marketing and Social Media.  

On-demand resources covering Career, Wellness, Leadership, Diversity & Inclusion and Change Management. 

A performance improvement company developing people in Leadership, Sales, Customer Service and Team Performance, with internationally award-winning courses. 

Excellent, practical professional development resources for individual trainers and educators. 

The Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) has been a provider of high quality, evidence-based education to health professionals. 

Providing award-winning Aged Care compliance and induction module. 

Safe sleep and settling strategies designed specifically for the Early Years Education & Care sector and delivered by health professionals. 

Delivering online early childhood professional development courses, designed with early childhood educators and parents in mind. 

At Go1, we aim to bring you the best specialist training content for your industry. And the legal industry is no exception. 

Today, we want to introduce you to UNSW Edge - Australia’s first CPD provider located within a law faculty, delivering engaging and innovative legal education.

Launching in September 2019, UNSW Edge provides practical, contemporary and focused life-long education to legal professionals and other professionals who require legal knowledge and know-how.

Through our partnership with UNSW Edge, Go1 Premium customers will now have access to an innovative range of legal and CPD training resources. 

Introducing UNSW Edge - providing practical, contemporary and focused legal education

Learn more about the Go1 x UNSW Edge partnership

UNSW Edge knows that legal practitioners, executives and consultants need to keep evolving to stay ahead. Being equipped with skills for the future will enable practitioners to continue to provide quality services to their clients and broader community.

UNSW Edge have a wide range of online training courses in Go1 Premium, available to Australian customers. 

UNSW, Go1.com team up for legal fraternity engagement via Lawyers Weekly

UNSW Edge - Practical and focused legal education - Go1

Giving feedback on a piece of work or observing a colleague's performance seems like a simple enough task. Skilled employees review the quality of an employee’s contributions against a set of principles they have formulated through experience or a framework that their organization uses. 

While the process isn’t complicated, effectively delivering feedback involves an understanding of human psychology. Naturally, we find it challenging to know that we’ve fallen short in some way. We also have an inherent negativity bias, which means we ‘feel the sting of a rebuke more powerfully than we feel the joy of praise.” Indeed, sometimes what needs to be said can be difficult to hear.

With this in mind, it is important for senior employees to be mindful of their body language, tone, and words they use when giving feedback. Delivery can mean the difference between a colleague walking out feeling ready to take their learning forward or having their confidence knocked.

Science also reveals ways in which organizations can make hearing feedback a less emotionally-charged experience. Structured responses will ensure employees understand how to apply what they hear to their work. Leaders can also strive to make the feedback experience a positive and reciprocal process. Let’s look at this research in more detail. 

Practitioners in the medical profession are consistently in a cycle of observation, reflection, and improvement. This research from the field looks at the use of effective feedback to facilitate adult learning. The findings include useful insights that are applicable across many industries. 

Below, we outline ten suggestions the author gives for improving the way your organization delivers feedback to employees. While a formal mentor/mentee relationship might not always be in place, we will use these words to clarify the position of each person in the discussion: 

While leaders need to deliver feedback in a formal context at regular intervals (usually through performance reviews), there are many opportunities to give employees guidance throughout the working day.  

If you spot somebody on your team struggling with a new concept, take five minutes to guide them through the learning process. This one-to-one time will make all the difference, and make the employee feel valued at the same time. 

2. For maximum impact, the source of feedback must be considered credible and trustworthy by the recipient

It is crucial that those receiving feedback feel that their mentor is both knowledgable and experienced in the subject. If this isn't the case, you run the risk of employees feeling patronized and unmotivated to improve. Ensure that those delivering feedback are respected and of a high enough caliber to do so.  

3. Provide clear information about performance standards and the performance of the employee to elucidate any differences

For feedback to be useful, learners need to have a clear understanding of the parameters within which they are trying to improve. For example, if an employee is focusing on developing a new technical skill, how to make progress should be clear to them from the outset. This step-by-step guide can form the basis of feedback comments.  

If employees are using online learning tools to progress, the learning objectives set out in lessons can be used as a foundation for comments. A high-quality course will outline how participants can make progress. Your organization or industry might also have prescribed standards that employees are expected to meet. 

4. Share the positive information before the negative 

This idea might seem like an unnecessary detail, but it is only human to focus on the negative information we hear about ourselves. As soon as an employee hears negative feedback, they will focus on this and probably struggle to concentrate on the other information you share with them. 

A great approach is a "positive feedback sandwich," where you begin and end a feedback session with positive points. This tactic helps the attention to be focused equally on the positive and those areas which need more attention. But be aware of making this too obvious, as it can seem rehearsed and insincere if you don’t adapt it to the person you are sitting with. 

5. Feedback should be specific, objective, consistent, and timely

Ensuring that feedback is specific and objective comes back to providing employees with a clear pathway to success. If learners understand where they have come from and what they need to do to progress, the feedback you deliver will be consistent and clear. 

A clear framework will also enable those delivering feedback to remain objective. Of course, this isn't entirely possible because forming opinions is natural for human beings. However, structuring discussion will help mentors to minimize any bias in their judgments. 

6. Provide a supportive environment for feedback and encourage an open dialogue 	

Creating a supportive environment for feedback is a crucial part of the process. At its best, feedback becomes a discussion between mentor and mentee, and a collaborative learning curve for both participants.  

However, this balance can be difficult to achieve when the mentor is in a position of experience and power within the organization. It requires a level of humility from the mentor and self-confidence in the mentee. 

8. Develop a plan for follow‐up and ongoing reinforcement 

Feedback will only be useful when mentors deliver it as part of a more comprehensive, ongoing process. The aim is for the mentor and mentee to set goals together at the end of a feedback session. After this, it is essential to support the mentee in reaching those goals and to hold them to account.

9. In addition to oral and written feedback, use other tools, such as computers, audio recordings, and videos

Formal discussions are not the only method for delivering feedback. It may be appropriate, and in some cases, more helpful to guide your mentee using video footage. In the case of an observation of practice, video can be particularly useful as the mentee can see exactly the action you are referring to in your comments. This clarity helps the mentee to know what the expectations are. 

10. Enhance the skills of senior employees through professional development programs and self-study modules

As part of a pathway to success, direct employees to any workplace learning material appropriate to their needs. With online learning modules, mentees can make progress independently, and at their own pace. They may also wish to conduct their own more extensive research on a topic. 

How to maximize opportunities for feedback using research

As the year draws to a close, and we embark upon a new decade, staying focused at work can be a real challenge. Most of us are too excited about having time off to concentrate. And those who don't have the luxury of resting over the Christmas break? They have the task of staying motivated while everyone else is enjoying themselves.

Regardless of how much work you have to do over the next month, December can be a great opportunity to look inwards. Self-reflection at this time of year can also form an excellent foundation for goal setting in the new year. 