Teams learn faster when they know how to go about their working day, what to expect, and how to engage with educational and informative materials. However, sometimes there can be too much, which can bog a team down, and this usually results in disaster. So what can you do? There are a few steps businesses can take to enhance how employees adapt and learn at work. From show and tell sessions to communication etiquette, here are some suggestions.
Implement Micro-Learning at Work
Learning at work has become something that teams dread rather than look forward to because of the sometimes overwhelming training sessions that take time away from work. However, some companies are adopting the new concept of micro-learning. Instead of reams of boring and tedious documentation, trainers are using next-generation AI video tools to create supplemental but exciting and engaging short-form videos that deliver key concepts in minutes.
Helping Teams Learn Faster with Show and Tell
It isn’t uncommon for employees to go home with stacks of documents that just go unread. It’s easy to think these help, but they just add more tedium to the workday and take away workers’ personal time. However, teams are far more engaged with physical demonstrations at work:
- Modern offices are building the habit of active sharing in short bursts each week.
- This includes holding short sessions where team members present something.
- Doing so helps turn learning opportunities into visible and community-driven habits.
Encourage Asynchronous Collaboration
Time is different for everyone in terms of how much we have spare and how well we can use it. Given that most executives consider meetings to be a waste of time, it is about time we all consider changing how we communicate as a team. Today, there are many collaboration tools that offer features for asynchronous communication. As such, individual members can contribute to their teams at a time that is best for them without disrupting their schedules.
Helping Teams Learn Faster with Consolidation
Time and money at work are obviously essential, but 89% of office workers admit to wasting time every day! Streamlining tasks will save money in office operations, but it isn’t the most engaging way to go about it, and your teams can gain so much more from consolidation:
- Inform employees that there will no longer be scattered sources of information.
- Implement a central source of truth such as a wiki or cloud collaboration tool.
- Make sure to periodically check and update the central source of information.
Cultivate Focus Blocks for Deep Work
The office should be the best place for teams to get their heads down and work on a project. However, there are tons of distractions in a modern office, including voice chatter, visitors coming and going, and scheduled meetings. So what can teams do to ensure they get some deep work done? Certain office policies can help, including focus blocks. These are dedicated times of the day or week where anything that can disrupt team focus is removed from the space.
Helping Teams Learn Faster with Channel Etiquette
Office communication is necessary, and everyone is familiar with systems such as intraoffice email. But email isn’t the only way to communicate in the workplace, and depending on the content and situation, there are tools that are best suited as part of channel etiquette for clarity:
- Emails are best used for communicating with external clients and formal documents.
- Tasks that need an urgent answer and quick collaboration require tools like Slack.
- Actionable work needs to be tracked, and project boards help keep this focused.
Embrace Learning from Mistakes
Thomas Edison once said, “I haven’t ever failed, I have only learned another way something cannot be done”. It is never really talked about much, but embracing mistakes of team members is a vital part of achieving the results you need while becoming wiser in the process. Team members should feel comfortable and safe discussing shortcomings and failures without judgment, or they may begin to hide results and hoard data, hindering the progress of the team.
Summary
Enhancing traditional training with micro-learning videos that convey key concepts in short-form content is one way of helping teams learn in a more critical manner. Modern companies also take the time to develop central sources of information such as corporate wikis for employees to learn from. However, it is also vital that team members feel safe and comfortable sharing mistakes so everyone can learn from them, or it can result in the hiding of missteps and data.