Employee stress negatively affects employee wellbeing. Barriers that stop employees working to the best of their ability can lead to stress and will impact productivity and staff mental health. 

In line with this month's topic of workplace wellbeing, we've chosen to review the course 10 Minutes Managing Stress created by Learning Planet. 

When employees are happy and healthy, they’re engaged. Engaged employees are almost always more productive and profitable. Stressed employees, on the other hand, can become burnt-out and put their mental health at risk.  


The problems of not addressing employee stress: 

Creates a negative work culture where people aren’t encouraged or supported

Uncertainty around job role and responsibility

Stress can be due to heavy workload, unrealistic deadlines

People with mental health conditions aren’t supported

Stress and resilience skills in the workplace can give your employees the ability to cope with and rise to the inevitable challenges, problems and setbacks you meet in the course of your life and come back stronger from them. Pressures and stressors will continue to increase with greater time management demands and workloads. 

Learning Planet, via Go1, has information readily available in 1 minute and 10 minute videos to offer your employees effective stress management techniques. Why not act now and help your staff adapt to stress, while also improving your workplace culture of wellbeing?

Learning Planet has two courses that give a holistic view of stress in the workplace and how to manage it:

Taking just 10 minutes out of your day to do the courses will teach you strategies on how to manage stress with fun and interactive microlearning modules! Both courses look at various aspects of stress, including the body's stress response, good and bad stressors, ways to manage stress, and the flight or fight response. 

Each course starts with an engaging video and then finishes with a workbook to help employee's complete their learning experience.

Learning Planet is a microlearning video provider from New Zealand who has partnered with Go1 to offer a suite of their soft skills and personal development courses.

Learning Planet offer two types of videos for all of their training topics: 10 minute videos to teach new skills or concepts, and 1 minute ‘skill refresher’ videos that can be used to reinforce existing skills. They combine video, PDF, and workbooks to provide learners with clear, succinct training to help meet their learning needs.

We have 19 of Learning Planet’s microlearning interactives available in Premium

Want more details about employee wellbeing?

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Learning Planet's course can help employees learn how to be more mindful of stress - and manage it, when it strikes!

Course of the week: 10 Minutes Managing Stress

In 2019, the digital age is very much upon us, and the workplace is unrecognisable when compared with 20 years ago. From open plan co-working spaces, to being able to work from anywhere in the world, communication, expectations and the nature of work are rapidly changing. 

In this shifting landscape, the ability to hold your attention on a task is becoming ever more challenging. Being able to multitask was previously worn as a badge of honour, yet research tells us that the brain, unlike a computer, is incapable of running too many complex tasks at once. Mental overload at work can seriously affect productivity, wellbeing and safety (1). 

While social media connects us to friends and family across the world, instant messaging is making it increasingly difficult to complete everyday tasks and to remain focused (2). US author and blogger, Mark Manson, explains that we now live in an ‘attention economy’ (3). With endless knowledge now available at the click of a button, our attention is of high value to advertisers, companies and organisations. 

In this environment, it isn’t surprising that we struggle to hold our attention on certain activities. Becoming completely immersed in the task at hand, or finding your ‘flow’ is proven to increase contentment at work and improve the quality of work produced (4). This state becomes ever more difficult to attain with so many distractions competing for our attention. 

So, what can you do to improve your focus on tasks? 

Setting up routines you can stick to is a good way to begin. 26th president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, is said to have worked at the same time, in the same place every day, and would work ignoring all other distractions that came his way. It was impossible to distract him. Although he would only spend a quarter of the average day working, he completed all of the tasks he needed to by using his time effectively.

In his 2016 book, Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World, Georgetown professor and author, Cal Newport, explores Roosevelt’s ‘deep work’ ethic.  He defines deep work as:

“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” (5)

Granted, Roosevelt lived in a world where fewer distractions were competing for his attention, but with discipline it is possible to be more attentive. The key is to identify your main distractors and to be aware of them.  These might be thoughts, notifications or particular people! If you sit back and think, you will know straight away what distracts you. Finding a way to block out and manage these temptations is the is the more difficult step, but the rewards will speak for themselves. 

Go1 top tips for maintaining focus at work

Prioritise: Write a to-do list, but only for the day ahead.  An endless to-do list without any consideration for the time you have will not be effective.  If you can write out what you need to do that day, along with your top three priorities, you will have a greater sense of accomplishment when you reach the end of your list. Using a traditional to-do list can easily lead to procrastination and make you feel as though there is a huge, unmanageable mountain of work to do. 

Stick to daily routines: doing tasks and activities at the same time each day can help you to stay focused and make your day flow more smoothly.  When your brain knows what to expect, and when to expect it, it can focus on other processes, such as creativity and deep thinking. 

Manage expectations: Other people, no matter how well-intentioned, are a huge source of distraction, particularly in the workplace. If you are working to a deadline or really need to get started on a task, you need to be sure that your team members are aware of this.  Let them know when you are available for meetings and schedule them in, or arrange a time to catch up with them over coffee. You need to be responsible for communicating your needs to others and making yourself available to them only partially. This might also mean booking yourself into a private room if it is available, or taking yourself off to a quieter area, depending on your office layout.

Manage notifications: research shows that every time your phone goes off, you are distracted by it and taken away from the task you are focusing on. 6 Set aside specific times during the day to respond to emails and messages if possible. 

Meditate: the brain is plastic, meaning that at any point in life we can teach it new things or learn healthier habits.  Focus is a skill that we all have the capacity to develop, and meditation is a fantastic way to practice it. Meditation involves training the mind to focus on the breath, and this focus can translate to your daily life long after you stop practising (7). You will also be able to catch yourself when you are thinking about how cute your dog is or what you ate for breakfast, instead of writing up the report due at the end of the day. 

Rubinstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E. & Evans, J. E. (2001). Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 763-797.

Vitak, J., Crouse, J., & LaRose, R. (2011). Personal Internet use at work: Understanding cyberslacking. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(5), 1751–1759. 

Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Harvard Business Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). Flow: The psychology of happiness. Random House.

Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Hachette UK.

Iqbal, S. T., & Horvitz, E. (2010, February). Notifications and awareness: a field study of alert usage and preferences. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 27-30). ACM.

Wax, R. (2013). Sane new world: taming the mind. Hodder & Stoughton.

How to maintain your focus in the ‘attention economy’ 

Share your ideas and opinions with Go1's Research Group. 

Go1 is building a Research Group, where we can connect with you and learn from your experiences with the product. 

If you want to talk about all things Go1 then join the Go1 Research Group today!

As Go1 grows and our product matures, we want to continue to keep creating great experiences for Go1 users globally. This Group is a place for Go1 users (Admins and Learners) and non-Go1 users alike, to tell us what they think of Go1 and more generally of the Learning and Development industry today. 

To become part of the Go1 Research Group, start by filling out this short questionnaire. We are using the questionnaire to collect information from you that will help us match you to the right research studies!

If you are a match to one of our research studies, you will receive an email invitation to participate. Research studies include interviews, usability tests, surveys and more. 

Every study is different! We’ll give you all the details you need, so you can decide if you want to join. We might ask you to be part of discussions during planning the stages of new features, trialling beta interactions or taking a usability test run by our research team.

By being part of the Research Group, you will have the chance to connect one-on-one with the Go1 Research Team and watch our product grow. You'll also get the inside scoop on what we are working on and some research studies will offer incentives! You'll find out more via the study invitations. 

Have any questions? Send a message to research@go1.com 

We'd love it if you could join us on this journey! Start by taking the questionnaire!

We want every bit of your feedback so we can keep creating great experiences for Go1 users globally!

In this month's webinar, our Go1 Product Managers will unveil to you recently released platform features, and our Guest Content expert Craig Jensen, will join us to give his insights on Information Technology (IT) training. 

Webinar date and time: Friday May 31st, at 9am AEST

The New feature spotlight hosted by Go1 Product Managers:

Be introduced to the Learner recommendations feature 

Deep dive on new capabilities for editing user emails

Get insights from the expert on Information Technology (IT) training: 

With thousands of courses in your Go1 subscription and many providers to choose from, we want to make it easy for you to train your team with the right courses on the right topics. The May webinar will feature the first insights session, where we are joined by one of Go1's Content Experts to talk about a content topic that we think should be part of your workplace training.   

Craig Jensen from LearnNowOnline (a Go1 Global Premium partner) will join us as an expert on the topic of IT training. He will briefly chat about the importance of IT certification to help your employees remain certified and develop them for the future. You can read more about LearnNowOnline here. 

* Our webinars are recorded - by registering you will get sent the video recording if you can't attend on the day!

Join Go1's monthly webinar to learn how to unlock the most out of your Go1 platform and content subscription!

Check out Go1's latest updates. We have one new content provider launched and some new content added from some of our existing providers! 

Security Innovation have launched with 12 interactive courses in Premium and many more coming soon! Security Innovation courses solve software security from every angle: whether fix-driven assessments or novel training, to learn and never forget, they make risk reduction a reality.

Information Privacy - Protecting Data and Classifying Data

These courses equip employees to understand what constitutes private data and recognize the importance of behaving in a proactive manner to protect this information in their everyday work.

This security awareness course is intended to teach learners how to recognize malicious email before it can become a threat. Through participating in this course, learners will be able to understand the various ways in which attackers try to trick and entice users to trigger malicious events through email, as well as best practices to properly handle and avoid phishing attacks.

Travel Security, Password Security, Physical Security 

Information Privacy and Security Awareness for Executives

GRC, back by popular demand, has added 5 new courses! 

GRC Solutions are a leader in online compliance training. They work closely with high-profile industry experts to make sure their content is legally accurate and mirrors the latest developments in each area. Available in Global Premium. 

Corporate Governance Listed and Corporate Governance Unlisted

Based on GRC Solution's general Corporate Governance course, these training courses look at the specific duties that subsidiaries and listed companies or unlisted companies have under the current laws. The courses include comprehensive analysis of the source of corporate governance requirements, the duties owed by directors and officers of organisations, and to whom those duties are owed.

Approximately 1 hour 30 minutes of learning per course

The financial services industry has undergone major reform over the past decade. This course explains the requirements in plain, engaging English. Financial services covers a wide range of activities, including banking, superannuation, insurance, managed investments, options, derivatives, securities, broking, futures and other financial investments. 

Environmental law is notoriously complex. It runs across various jurisdictions and imposes a large number of obligations on companies. Offences carry great penalties and, with managers and directors being personally liable, the exposed risk in this area is huge. This course creates awareness of the potential risks, exploring the basics of environmental law and its imposed obligations, and explains how they should be referred to.

Approximately 1 hour 50 minutes of learning

In 2010, state and territory-based credit laws were moulded into a national approach known as the National Consumer Credit Code. With it, a large range of requirements and obligations were added, leaving many to wonder how their organisation would be affected. This course explains in plain English what the main requirements are and how to comply with them.

Approximately 1 hour 30 minutes of learning

LearnNowOnline is a provider of IT Skills and Developer courses which range from beginner (eg non-technical employees learning to code) to advanced (IT professionals perfecting existing or learning new skills). Their content is created by respected industry experts and is great for developers, system admins, and anyone learning to code or improve their basic IT skills. Available in Global Premium. 

New series: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

This is a 7-part series, which givers learners a general overview of the AWS Cloud. This path is intended for individuals in technical, managerial, sales, purchasing, or financial roles. Prerequisites for this series: an Amazon Web Services Account and an understanding of web technologies will be helpful.

Part 1) Introduces you to the AWS cloud as well as how to setup your environment and create your first user. It finishes with using Multi-Factor authentication for AWS. 

Part 2) Covers setting up your first EC2, as well as configuring Network ACL, and Elastic Block Storage. 

Part 3) Covers Load Balancing, Tagging and Autoscaling for your site to respond intelligently to use. it also explores all the ins and outs of S3 storage.

Part 4) Starts with how CloudWatch monitors your site and what it's capable of. Then it covers DNS monitoring and Analysis with Route 53 and finally touches on serverless computing with AWS Lambda. 

Part 5) This course explores content delivery with Amazon CloudFront as well as how to administer your infrastructure as code with Cloud Formation. It finishes with video and image analysis in AWS Rekognition.

Part 6) This course starts off with how to build a well-architected framework as well as the total cost of ownership. It concludes with AWS documentation, and billing. 

Part 7) This course wraps up the series by first talking about the shared responsibility model: what you as a customer and what Amazon as a provider are responsible for.

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.

In line with this month's topic of Workplace Wellbeing, we've chosen to review the course Self Leadership: Developing Yourself. This online course, created by popular content provider Manager Foundation, highlights the importance of having your employees focusing on developing themselves first, as it's one of the best investments to make for an individual's health, wealth and happiness. Manager Foundation are a longstanding Premium partner of Go1 who have had continuous popularity with their training courses. 

How does personal development and wellbeing work together?

Although the title of this short courses refers to leadership, self-development is at the core of this course's messaging, as developing yourself is the first step to self-leadership and resilience.

Creating a happier, healthier and more productive workplace relies on the resilience of your employees. This course effectively helps individuals develop strategies to overcome the usual obstacles that get in the way of developing yourself, which translates into many benefits in their professional careers.  

Personal development is a term that can mean various things for different people, such as:

having skills to choose the work you want to do

knowing how to manage stress and deal with conflict

growing yourself and have confidence in your abilities.

Encourage your staff to enrol in this course to learn how to develop themselves, leading to higher resilience, changed behaviours, improved skills, better productivity, and reduced anxiety. 

Broken down into eight modules, including a variety of engaging learning resources (reading, videos, quiz), this two-hour course covers a number of aspects related to self-growth:

How to choose what skills to develop (choosing the right skills for the best results)

Developing a better relationship with your boss

Mentoring (employee growth and development)

Essential steps to get the most from your development 

Keith Tatley founded Manager Foundation to show people the real world skills they need to manage employees. Manager Foundation is passionate about making organisations better places to work. Better places to work results in happier employees with higher profits through people. Helping managers to make work, work. Available in Go1 are some of Manager Foundation's best-selling programs on leadership and positive thinking in the workplace.

You can't change the world; you can only change yourself!

Course of the week: Self Leadership: Developing Yourself

Totara partner, Ingegno and Go1 have signed a partnership to bring Go1 extensive e-learning library, available via Totara Learn or Go1 training solution, to help corporations in India and neighbouring countries with their workplace training needs. Ingegno is the first partner for Go1 in India and will look to enhance and transform the workplace learning market in India positioning Go1’s comprehensive offerings to existing and new clients.

To launch our partnership, we’re pleased to offer corporations across India 3-months access to ViaUp training - Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination. If your corporation is interested, please register HERE for the platform only and we will get in touch.

Ingegno is a new age learning solutions company based in India and Singapore catering to clients across the globe. Ingegno works with a clientele base spreading across public organizations, Fortune 500 corporation and institutions of higher education. Ingegno offers end to end learning solutions that include business consulting, learning technology services, learning infrastructure services, instructional design services and learning content development services.

Please get in touch with us at go1@ingegno.in for any queries or clarifications related to the offering.

Get the learning content that you need, combined with the platform to manage your learners and track their progress - Go1 has got you covered! With Go1 Premium you can get instant access to thousands of courses instantly covering compliance, professional development, leadership, management and more. Go1 integrates with all of your favourite products to save you time and allow you to easily manage your data and was created with the end user in mind. You shouldn't need to learn how to learn, and the easy to use functionality of the Go1 platform allows anyone to start using the platform without intensive training. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, Go1 is there to help your business succeed by giving you access to the training you need. 

Go1 and Ingegno bring workplace training to India - Go1

Ingegno and Go1 partner to bring the workplace training marketplace to India

Bloom is an award-winning learning technology company, passionate about user experience, design and learning outcomes. 

In March this year, we were thrilled to announce our involvement in Bloom’s Happiness Learning Project eLearning module competition, which was created for Learning Designers to co-create eLearning modules that will improve wellness at work, and support those who are affected by anxiety at work. 

By entering Bloom’s ‘5 ways to wellbeing at work’ eLearning module competition, entrants went in the running to win $1000USD, with possible ongoing passive income. The winner will provide their module at no cost to any organisation or individual who wants it.

Find out who took first, second and third place in the announcement video below: 

Happinesss Winners

Rustica Lamb from Bloom makes the announcement

We are very impressed by the level of skill and effort displayed by all the entrants, and would like to congratulate all the participants for their level of commitment towards this project. 

Our Social Impact Manager, Cam Cliff, talks about what it has meant for Go1 to be involved in this project: 

GO1 Social Impact Manager Cam Cliff.mp4

If you are responsible for wellbeing training at work, you will know most eLearning suppliers will charge between $15,000 – $30,000 per module. Simply head over to the Bloom website and register the details of your organisation to receive the winning eLearning module SCORM file – for free!

The winning module will also be made available on the Go1 learning platform, free to enrol in as part of the Go1 Social Impact suite - so go check it out for yourself!

Go1 is delighted to have been involved in the Bloom Happiness Learning Project and look forward to seeing the impact we can have together in the future.

Bloom Happiness Learning Project winner announced!

It is Monday morning. After struggling for a few hours to get started with your day, you eventually get going with the first item on your to do list. Although it doesn’t always happen, you find yourself diving into the task, and, before you know it, a few hours have passed by. Was it pure luck or is there a reason you felt so immersed in your work? 

Although it may seem to occur at random intervals, being entirely focused on the job you are doing is in fact a state you can aim towards. In modern science, the experience is referred to as ‘flow state’, a term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihályi in the 1970s.

Despite being a relatively new area of research, historically there are references to this sensation across the Eastern philosophies. Athletes also talk about ‘being in the zone’ when they are completely focused on their movement and immediate goals.

In Japanese culture, the first step towards reaching ‘flow state’ requires an individual to discover their ikigai, or reason for being. An ikigai could be something as simple as gardening or cooking, but it will be a task that the person is both good at, and one in which they can become purposefully engaged (1).

The first step towards finding your flow in any task is to first ensure that the assignment is within your range of capabilities. Ideally, what you are doing will allow you to confidently use skills you already possess, while challenging you to learn something new. At this point, you will be able to meet your edge, and will be far more likely to become fully immersed.

If you are able to reach this sweet spot, what you produce will also be of a higher quality, meaning you can go home at the end of the day with a greater sense of satisfaction and of having achieved something meaningful. 

As human beings, we are driven by the need to learn, grow and discover more, both about the world and ourselves. When we experience growth and learning, it can be difficult but, ultimately, the satisfaction of having completed a new challenge will outweigh the scary part of taking the first few steps towards it! We are happiest when we are both open to new opportunities and given the chance to explore. 

For managers and employees alike, this has real implications for productivity and could be used as a starting point for communication on which tasks are allocated to who.  Managers, are you setting your employees manageable tasks which enable them to find their flow?  Employees, are you communicating with your manager? Is the task too easy, or too difficult? 

Of course, in an ideal world, we would be completing tasks that engage us at all times, and it is important to be realistic. However, if you could reach ‘flow state’ even a few times per week, you are far more likely to be happy in your job.  Sometimes we need to get down to the nitty gritty and complete the mundane yet necessary tasks that every organisation requires for daily operations, but this could improve morale and make the workplace better for everybody. 

Whether you see flow as an exciting area of scientific research or a snippet of ancient wisdom, here are our top tips for working towards it, or supporting others in your team to do the same: 

Think about where your strengths and weaknesses lie.  What are you really good at?  Which areas might require a little more attention? 

Are the tasks you are being set playing to your strengths?  If not, think about ways you could communicate this to your manager and see if there is any room for change.

If being allocated different tasks isn’t an option, which areas of learning or personal development would you like to focus on? How could you apply these to your current tasks?  For example, if your goal is to communicate more clearly, you could challenge yourself to complete a course on communication skills and apply what you learn to the emails you send. 

If you really can’t connect with an activity you have been set, the chances are it is either too challenging, too easy or not interesting to you personally. If the task is too easy or uninteresting, think about how you could make it more challenging, either by checking with your manager if there is anything additional you could be doing, or setting yourself a personal goal within the task.  If the task is too difficult, you could break it down into more manageable steps or ask for further clarification. 

Sometimes, an activity will be pitched correctly but we are fearful of getting started and procrastinate.  If you think this might be a problem for you, say to yourself that you will spend 25 minutes on the task and then take a break.  More often that not, you will find that the 25 minutes flies by once you get started. 

So, next time you find your mind wandering and you can’t connect with a task you are doing, think about how you could find your flow and make everyone’s day a little bit better!

Looking for more training materials? You’ll find thousands of online courses in the Go1 marketplace. Or use our 24/7 Go1 Training Assist - the easier way to source, book and deliver training for your team. 

(1) Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, 2016, Penguin Books, New York.

Finding your flow: why focus is a skill that can be learned

Check out Go1's updates on all new content provider launches and new content added from some of our existing providers! 

New providers available for our global customers 

Blockchain Collective are a leading blockchain education body, providing courses through Go1 to support the growing demand for qualified and skilled people in the application of blockchain. Blockchain Collective was the producer of the first ever Diploma on Blockchain course! 

Blockchain is a hot topic in a number of industries, and one of the most talked about technologies of the past 2-3 years, and training for it is available in Go1 Premium. Go1 offers a non-accredited version of their courses in Go1 Premium, so learners will learn all about the fundamental and foundational skills required to implement blockchain within an organisation. 

You can choose from 13 Blockchain courses:

Blockchain Fundamentals Accounting Stream - BLKEBF-A01

This course teaches a fundamental understanding of Blockchain technologies, and is designed to help you develop the ability to explain blockchain terminology, how blockchains work in practice, and the technical and non-technical limitations of blockchain. 

The course has been contextualized for individuals who are interested in the impacts of Blockchain Technologies in the Accounting and Auditing sectors.

Course: Develop operating frameworks for a blockchain network

Course: Blockchain Foundations, Innovative frameworks and Peer-to-Peer Consensis

ENI Digital Learning have launched with two courses in Premium. Their courses act as a support tool to help your employees through your company's digital transformation. 

The ENI Digital Test™ supports you in your company's digital transformation. It truly is a digital diagnostic tool and enables companies to have a clear view of each employee's strengths and the points they can improve.

The ENI Digital Test™ adapts to all types of professions and employees: the difficulty level is determined by the accuracy of the answers to the previous questions.

The EUREKA Digital Library offers a wealth of reliable information for on-demand use. With this online library your employees have at their disposal a set of resources such as videos, books and recorded lessons on the different Microsoft® Office applications: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Teams, and Windows. They can view them according to their needs and when necessary.

This online library is aimed at any user searching informal training in Microsoft® Office applications.

Interaction Training, back by popular demand, has added 8 new courses! 

New Course: Injury prevention and management for managers and supervisors

This course provides managers and supervisors with an insight into prevention and management, including how to support workers at risk of injury, the identification of early warning signs, and the approved processes in relation to injury management. Approximately 30 minutes of learning.

New Course: Bullying and harassment for managers

This module investigates the vital role of  managers and supervisors to ensure that all our people experience a workplace environment that is positive, productive, harmonious and safe. It focuses on bullying and harassment, outlining associated fundamental and legal rights that apply to our employees and contractors, as well as those who visit our workplaces and who engage or partner in our services. 

Interaction Training is an Australian-based provider at the forefront of the self-paced learning industry. Since helping pioneer computer-based training more than 30 years ago, Interaction Training has been committed to adopting the latest technologies that have the capability of accelerating the effectiveness of corporate learning.

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

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