Safer & Stronger – 5 Ways Health & Safety Training of Employees Can Improve Your Workplace

 

5 Ways – Health & Safety Training of Employees Can Improve Your Workplace

 

In 2018, Teresa Webster suffered a terrible workplace accident. Slipping on leaked coolant that had been spilled over the floor, Webster fell and badly injured her head. She was further injured by a tray of industrial screws that fell on top of her as she tried to catch herself from falling in her cluttered, dangerous workplace. Webster suffered a terrible head injury, including internal bleeding.

The company assigned Ms. Webster a chiropractor to help with the pain without considering that there might be other medical concerns. With no medical diagnosis provided, Ms. Webster continued to suffer from terrible headaches even after the chiropractic consultation until she became temporarily bedridden and finally received medical attention without the company’s direction. In 2021, Webster sued for worker’s compensation and negligence, leaving court with her medical expenses, legal fees, lost pay, and a hefty additional amount for the distress she suffered.

According to the US Bureau of Labour, about one in thirty full-time workers has suffered from a workplace accident in the United States. With the massive resurgence of employees returning to work and companies looking to swell up their ranks with new hires after the pandemic, this number will likely go up soon. To stop this, employers need to invest in health and safety training to re-educate old employees and quickly train new ones on the procedures to stay safe.

Workplace accidents can lead to expensive bills and lawsuits, and a hazardous workplace drops morale tremendously. The knowledge that workplace accidents are common can lead to increased stress and decreased productivity, as well as higher rates of attrition. A study in the international journal of environmental research and public health found that construction workers who felt safe with their training and equipment had massively higher job satisfaction and worked faster and more efficiently.

Of all safety training, the following are the ones will usually have the largest impact on your workforce.

 

1. Hazard Prevention Training

Hazard prevention is everything from keeping the office clear of tripping hazards like loose wires to administrative issues like electrical hazards. Effective hazard prevention requires employees to take responsibility for their office environment and point out likely causes for concern, small and big. These can prevent many costly and embarrassing mess-ups before they happen. Knowing the workplace is safe can also be a huge morale boost for employees, allowing them to focus on the job instead of stressing over possible workplace injuries.

 

2. Equipment Safety

While not relevant to every industry, many companies work with dangerous equipment. Vehicles, power tools, medical lasers, and toxic chemicals are just some examples of workplace items that can be extremely dangerous if not handled with care. Companies that take equipment safety seriously enjoy similar improvements in employee loyalty and efficiency. With good equipment safety, your company can get around the awful situation of a workplace accident that can seriously hurt valuable employees and send production back several days or longer.

 

3. Hazard Response Training

When prevention is unsuccessful, a good business needs a backup plan. While some large offices can have a doctor on standby, first aid should be readily available in every workplace. Many offices have first aid kits in prominent locations, but it’s also necessary to have people trained to use them at a moment’s notice. For serious emergencies, companies should also have clearly outlined ambulance protocol. Ensuring these protocols are clearly outlined and universally understood can save time and create order in an otherwise chaotic situation, leading to faster results, saving costs, and potentially even lives.

 

4. Safety Training for Confined Space Work

A confined workspace can make every other safety hazard massively more dangerous. Equipment hazards, fire and electrical hazards, and even day-to-day hazards like a cluttered workplace or spill are far more dangerous in confined conditions, so it’s doubly important that employees working in such conditions, such as construction workers, maritime workers in ships, docks, and rigs, and other jobs that necessitate cramped working conditions be trained in all the ways they should respond to safety hazards, both general and specific to the industry, since they’re at far more risk of severe consequences if something were to go wrong.

 

5. Hygiene and Environment Training

With the recent pandemic, the concern of office hygiene is on people’s minds far more often than before. Taking measures to prevent even minor illnesses can have a massive impact on productivity. Offices that don’t get sick don’t have as many sick leaves. Healthy employees are more energized and productive. Even something as simple as a clean desk can have an impact on the office. Getting employees to take these things seriously isn’t always easy, but good training programs that spread awareness of the value of a clean working environment can boost office productivity substantially.

 

G-Cube believes that these trainings should not be just one-time events, but a full-fledged learning program to not only educate your employees but to build the behavior which keeps health and safety at the top of the mind. Employees should feel that health and safety trainings are not just a formality but a life-saver, not only for them but also their families and friends.

3 Top Tips to Make Hybrid & Remote Learning Easy with an Enterprise LMS

88% of the organizations, worldwide, made it mandatory or encouraged their employees to work from home after COVID-19 (Gartner) and two years down the line, remote working, or at best hybrid working is the reality organizations need to accept. They must focus on building end-to-end digital capability to bring operational excellence and online learning is a huge part of this change.

 

While shifting to remote learning, it is critical to understand the employee’s psyche, provide motivation and ease of access to promote adoption of learning in the online mode. 75% of organizations have shifted their corporate training to cloud-based learning management platforms (LinkedIn Learning 2021), but it is not enough to have an online platform that delivers learning. The crucial part is to provide a seamless experience to your employees where your enterprise LMS or learning management system gives your employees a path, a purpose, and peers. Bringing all these three components together will surely drive higher adoption of learning for your remote workers resulting in greater business success.

 

Zoom fatigue, digital overdose, burnout are not just trendy terms that dominated the conversation on the human capital domain since 2020. These are issues that the employees are actually facing, leading to serious loss of productivity. Multiple research organizations have identified a lack of socialization as a major hindrance to learning. Therefore, remote learning is much more than a virtual classroom and online material. According to experts at McKinsey, remote learning will require “fundamental rethinking of the learning experience to enable collaborative, interactive social-learning experiences for groups of learners.”

 

 

3 Tips to create a successful remote learning environment with an Enterprise LMS?

 

 

Tip 1: Provide a Collaborative Learning Experience 

 

It is one of the most popular theories of corporate learning and rightly so. 70% of all learning for an employee happens through social interactions at the workplace. It can be through peers, through mentors, or managers but these unstructured interactions have the most impact on a learner, teaching them about the organization’s culture, products, processes, values, and more. Work-from-home has taken away these water-cooler-talks where colleagues would humanly bond and uplift each other by sharing knowledge and experiences. A social interaction platform in the learning management system will be instrumental in bringing back the same experience for your dispersed workforce. With social media-like features of sharing, commenting, liking each other’s posts employees will feel connected with their colleagues and simultaneously learn from each other.

 

Removed from the continuity of time and space of the office environment, the virtual team meets can feel incongruous to the employees with no actual purpose. In an LMS these meetings can be set as a chain of activity with proper agenda setting, speaker identification, participation scoring, etc. making the employees feel like a part of a greater process than individuals and isolated contributors with no actual purpose.

 

 

Tip 2: Link Individual Performance with Learning 

 

One of the principles of the adult learning theory of Andragogy says that ‘adults learn best when the training solves an immediate problem.’ Linking the employees’ training to their performance can drive high adoption as it will help them understand the direct implication of the learning efforts. In a remote set up it is all the more important because the employees are removed from the office environment, and it can be very challenging to find the motivation to do better. The online learning platform should be able to show the employee the direct effect of the learning on their performance.

 

For example, if the learning management system can be linked with the customer relationship management system which captures data related to customer calls, then the LMS can gather performance data of each individual customer service agent and trigger learning based on their performance. The organization gets finer customer service agents, and the agents receive precise training along with intrinsic motivation to learn more to perform better.

 

 

Tip 3: Equip Employees with Self Directed Learning 

 

There has been much discussion around how autonomy in learning gives exceptional results. An L&D strategy that takes the learner’s choice into account is bound to drive higher learning adoption as the learner is made to feel like an insider who has a choice. The concept of Push Vs. Pull in learning comes true here, as the learning content is not pushed to the learner, but they are pulling the content they would like to consume. Online learning is the perfect space and remote learning is the right reason to provide your employees with the ability to choose their learning path and journey. We say this because according to LinkedIn Learning Report 2020, with the onset of the pandemic professionals invested 53% more time in upskilling themselves.

 

An enterprise LMS with AI-enabled programmable channels can curate content based on a learner’s choice. It enables the employee to find content that is relevant to their job role, designation, experience, interest, etc., and helps them to choose a path that will equip them to achieve their career goals.

 

Finally, as learning solution providers we have realized, human beings thrive on the idea of having a purpose, choosing their own path, and being surrounded by like-minded peers. At G-Cube, our aim is to provide the same simulations and environment through technology. With 21 years of domain experience, we have developed award-winning learning technology solutions designed to enable dispersed workforces to deliver the best business results and collaborate without hiccups. Reach out to us to know more about our Enterprise LMS and other products. 

Telecom sector: How to make learning more systematic & engaged using Corporate Learning Platform

With the development of 5G & next generation smart phone technology, the telecommunication industry is evolving at a rapid pace. The global telecom services market size was valued at USD 1,657.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4% from 2021 to 2028 (Grandviewresearch.com, 2021).

 

The soaring popularity of mobile phones among different generations and large number of app-based services delivered through the mobile platform has been the greatest game-changer in the industry.

 

In the post COVID 19 situation, the demand for high-speed internet has increased with offices, schools and others operating their daily routine online. In 2020, the mobile data services segment held the largest share of nearly 33.0% and is expected to exhibit a significant CAGR from 2021 to 2028 (Grandviewresearch.com, 2021).

 

For Telecom sector, strength is in numbers – there is a huge customer base to handle, which needs a matching ratio of workforce to provide support. The training of this huge number of workforces can be quite challenging to manage but unavoidable because telecom is also a very competitive market. From onboarding to continuous employee training on changing product offerings, service parameters, and technological advances is crucial in this industry. With constantly growing workforce you would need a corporate learning platform to manage the process seamlessly and help in achieving the learning targets faster which in turn shall provide the competitive edge to your employees.

 

How a Corporate Learning Platform can make learning more engaging?

 

Online or offline learning infrastructure basically serves two purposes. On one hand it creates a robust system for the learners to seamlessly participate in their regular learning process. On the other hand, it must be an engaging system which will ensure continued learner participation. Huge manpower in the Telecom industry also signifies high rate of attrition, third-party enrolled employees, and lower engagement. An extended enterprise learning management system is known to automate the user management of this extended workforce which includes sales representatives, external distribution partners, franchises, service technicians, customer support executives etc. Let us discuss how the system can also keep your employees interested in their learning solving the challenges of attrition and lack of engagement.

 

Gamified Learning Experience

A gamified LMS with interactive features can be beneficial for your extended workforce to encourage them learn newer concepts quickly. This can be achieved by implementation at an individual level or in a group. The LMS allows you to create a healthy competitive environment with individual scores displayed on a leaderboard to boost learner engagement through scores & badges.

 

AI powered Content Library

The use of OTT platforms has increased post COVID19 and some of these apps are extremely innovative in terms of the content categorization and recommendation that they present to their viewers. On similar lines, LMS can provide recommendation of video-based learning nuggets for quick consumption & greater retention for the learners. These nuggets are very beneficial to the sales & customer support team as it serves as point-of-sale support.

 

Mobile App support for extended workforce

Collectively, the human population spends more than 60% of their time on their mobile devices. This makes the mobile phone a perfect device for learning and the mobile app variant of the LMS provides the learning on-the-go. This helps learners utilize their off hours to as it provides both online & offline learning accessibility.

 

Social Learning Tool

The social learning platform seeks to engage learners and provide a human context to their learning experience. These tools help to create an environment of collaboration between employees and provide an active platform for the remote workforce to engage with. The connection between learners and instructors can also benefit from a social learning platform. Experts believe that social learning tools promote peer-to-peer learning, which constitutes of 70% of all corporate learning, in the virtual environment.

 

To summarize, the customer base for Telecom sector has been growing daily and this shall remain the trend in the upcoming years. Thus, Telecom companies need to strategize their plans in having a workforce ready to manage this huge customer base with equal focus on the training of new hires and upskilling of existing employees. With some of the biggest names in the domain as our client, G-Cube has expertise in handling the learning, training, and development needs of Telecom sector. Our learning experts will be happy to answer any queries you may have.

How To Reduce Change Anxiety Among Your Sales Workforces?

Sales is a dynamic field, always keeping a workforce on its toes!

Even the most stalwart workers need to be constantly developing. Competing in a market and flourishing in it are two very different things.

An effective sales training program should aim to develop confidence in a team, so that problems gradually disappear with practice. For your organization to flourish, you need to pay careful attention to staff development, especially in virtual sales training.

Previously, performance was evaluated purely on sales numbers, but there is much more to it nowadays. Employees must be equipped to build customer satisfaction, trust, and positive experience throughout the sales cycle.

 

Enabling sales workforces

 

Adopting a two-way approach while developing training plans, assessing both current capabilities and assessing future demand, can give you an edge.

Change is the only constant in this era of virtual selling. The past years have caused much anxiety about how the world and its industries will change. Thankfully, most emerging trends are already becoming clear, for rest of them we should accelerate our team.

Your clients, who have been through challenging times with your business, can provide invaluable insights and predictions about transitions, desired behaviors, and expectations.

 

Characteristics of profitable sales training methodologies

 

The sales training bar is set much higher than 20 years ago. Training options can be accessed online through Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, etc. Forbes identifies four shifts that could drive sales in 2020 and beyond: Most importantly, most of the action will be happening virtually. Introducing changes overnight will not only make a team anxious but also undermine the success of the training. So, how do you plan to prepare your people?

The science of learning and an agile learning solution focusing on audience behavior, organizational requirements, and desired impact can greatly benefit the modern sales set up during the time of uncertainty. To encourage your employees to be open to new concepts, experiments, risk-taking, ideas, quickly act, and continuously learn you may introduce a learning framework that works for your culture.

 

Tool-based intervention

 

Our daily interactions have swiftly moved from 75% physical to 75% virtual. These changes mean that speech recognition, facial recognition, real-time language translation, 3D virtual experiences, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and other technologies are becoming ever common in people’s daily experience. Is your team equipped to handle these changes and quickly adapt?

You need targeted training for these new tools and technologies if you want to take your team swiftly from beginner to advanced level. Microlearning pertains to building a highly efficient agile learning culture, so to avoid overwhelming them, you might consider introducing the knowledge in short bursts.

 

Targeted skills training

 

How employees interact with customers, deliver on their ambiguous expectations, and can have empathy to handle customer behavior can be integrated into the learning methodology.

The high performing teams will require the new age skills. Taking them from rudimentary selling approach to holistic ‘buyer first’ approach will give the competitive edge.

Every organization is unique: Try to optimize your training for your own purposes to really make the team passionate about it.

 

Building confidence/awareness

 

Among virtual interactions through Zoom meetings, virtual training, online negotiations, and other forms of virtual communication, team members are often craving deeper human interaction. Training them in affective behaviors around themes of social justice, shared well-being, purpose-oriented buying, etc., will make it easier for them to absorb changes more smoothly.

The priorities of both organizations and customers are shifting: Increasingly important are speed to value, flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to market needs. Making these evolving expectations clear to your sales team will help them to understand the need for more demanding, focused, strategic, and mindful approaches.

 

As the world continues to redefine itself, sales professionals with greater experience and knowledge, and more agile capabilities, will have an edge.

There are multiple paths you can take to train your sales team. Reach out to G-Cube for help in combatting the challenges. We can help you to deliver a distinct learning experience leveraging advanced technologies.

Seamless Onboarding Solutions: From Surviving to Thriving

You just got done with the onboarding process of a great new employee after doing multiple rounds of screening and interviews. You are hopeful that this new addition will be an asset to the organization, and you might even get a thank you email from your manager.

 

You are happy that this employee has joined the organization. But after a few days you see the employee standing near the coffee machine, alone, and she doesn’t look happy!

 

You approach her, you smiled, she smirked!

 

You already know that all new hires face multiple unknowns and are probably anxious about what lies ahead, who will be on their team, and what kind of culture they will they be working in.

 

Did you know that 93% of employers agree that the quality of the onboarding process influences candidates’ decisions to stay in an organization? An effective introduction is key to avoiding early communication barriers and enabling long-lasting relationships.

 

 

What do your new hires want?

 

Generally, new hires want to feel a part of the company as soon as possible. They start out with the intention of supporting your company’s vision, but unless they connect with the rest of the organization, they won’t.

 

In the age of digital onboarding some remote operations can prevent a new employee from developing a proper feel for the company.

 

The things that make a difference are:

1. Culture clarity
2. Clarity of expectations
3. Sense of belonging
4. Policies and other mandates

 

How To Help New Team Members Fit In

 

Immerse them into the culture and communicate their purpose in your company!

 

When this strategic initiative is crafted for a customized experience capable of addressing new hire hesitations, it becomes an excellent onboarding program. The efficient pre-onboarding, induction, and post-onboarding phases not only encourage new hires to explore the company further but also assist them to actively engage with the corporate vision and culture.

 

Before we dig in, a note—every organization will onboard differently. The key is to make sure that your unique onboarding process complements the company and provides opportunities to develop culture awareness. We recommend cognitive-friendly content for new hires.

 

 

Culture

 

A robust onboarding process starts even before an employee is hired. An engrossing organizational history that shows the growth phase in which new hires are joining, the organizational structure, and key team member involvement will help new hires settle into their positions.

 

An initiative such as multiple avatar options that introduce your organization virtually promotes diversity.

 

A virtual treasure hunt designed to explore hidden facts on culture, compliance, and policies involves the new hires and they learn sub-consciously.

 

Discussing key competencies and sharing other employee’s success stories encourages them to replicate crucial behaviors. It is always a good idea to highlight the most positive parts of your culture, such as, for example, your open-door policy.

 

 

Expectations

 

Providing new employees with clear expectations for their roles and responsibilities, key result areas (KRAs), required behaviors, and standard operating procedures will help them greatly.

 

Onboarding should have meaningful, engaging, and customized content linked to the employee’s KRAs. The content should suit all learning styles.

 

Impress your new hires with the best experience that utilizes custom content regarding location, department, profile, and desired workflow. This swiftly introduces them to your brand in a unique way.

 

Utilize microlearning as a best friend at work, which can help them access required information, so your new hires never feel lost. There can be tips on how to use technology, your platform, and any other information required to do their jobs.

 

It is also important to share emergency contact numbers, single point of contact details, and contact information for the key members of their team.

 

 

Sense of Belonging

 

Since a lot of information about the company is presented to new hires, regular two-way communication will help them feel they belong. Engaging interactions that communicate welcoming happen in great places to work.

 

Providing new hires with opportunities to interact with their teams, express themselves, and ask questions as well as making them feel valued will encourage them to want to contribute to the overall success of your organization. Things like chatbots, fun quizzes, flipped classes, and micro mobile content can be used for this purpose.

 

Introducing a multi-player activity in induction programs enables social learning and acts as a great relationship building platform for anyone joining your organization.

 

 

Policies and Other Mandates

 

Create an impactful introduction to company policies and guidelines for your new employees. It will not only make them want to adhere but also revisit the policies to stay compliant.

 

If new hires get inducted correctly, it will boost their morale. The principles and science of learning understand the knowledge, skill, and behavior requirements of your employees. Utilizing this science in the best way to deliver a cognition-friendly onboarding experience is the need of the hour. Blend it to connect people with love and empathy.

 

Your new hires want to fit into your organization. Contact G-Cube today to make your new hire process the very best it can be.

5 Trends Driving Learning in 2022 & the Role of a Learning Management Software

Learning trends are defined by over all change in society and human lives have changed beyond doubt and deliberation. According to a Pew Research paper, the current trends have far-reaching effects on businesses, as the pandemic has reshaped supply-chains, consumer behavior, currency systems, not to forget the shift to gig economy. Organizations have had to take a hard look at their way forward, as they try to accommodate recession and the ‘Great Resignation’ simultaneously. Covid19 has made the importance of an agile learning environment clear to the  companies and upskilling and reskilling has been the top priority for 59% organizations this year (LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2021). In this blog, we are going to talk about the trends that will drive learning in 2022 and the role of Learning Management Software as the driving force behind it all.

 

Learning Trends of 2022 & Learning Management Software

 

Employee Engagement and Retention

The ‘Great Resignation’ is real, and people are quitting faster than companies can hire. According to Gallup, 48% of the US population is on the lookout for better opportunities. This is a trend that started in 2020, with 300% growth in upskilling effort from an individual learner (LinkedIn Learning Report 2020) and has continued in 2021. Employees are eager for companies that provide opportunities to grow within the organization with continuous learning support for skill development and enhancement. The modern learning experience platform engages the learner with AI-powered learning recommendations based on their skills, industries, and processes.

 

Skill Assessment and Evaluation

The World Economic Forum had announced the Second Industrial Revolution and need for upskilling due to heightened digital dependency in the very beginning of 2020. Covid19 only accelerated digitalization in all sectors. While the nature and technology of many jobs are changing across banking & finance, pharma, retail, and even government departments, employers do not have the time to waste on redundant efforts. Businesses need to assess the skills of their employees faster as they fight the lack of digital-savvy workforce. A learning management system with an in-built on-job-evaluation feature can help in flexible and objective job performance evaluation across roles and multiple hierarchies.

 

KPI Based Learning for Performance Support

The buck does not stop at evaluation of performance but providing real-time support for performance enhancement. According to JoshBersin.com, this year job postings which offer on-the-job training have gone up by 40%. C-Suites of companies engaged in successful businesses have realized that learning is not an exclusive activity that happens inside a classroom but a reinforcement of habits. An employee needs to be triggered learning content based on their own performance metrics or skill gap. A Learning Performance Platform integrates with the various business tools like CRM, QMS, and ERP to collect data on an employee’s key performance indicators. This data is then used to upskill employees and ensure they can meet performance goals.

 

Virtual Learning of Dispersed Workforce

Remote working has become such a norm that 33% of L&D leaders have virtual onboarding as their top concern (LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, 2021). However, they have also come to realize that providing effective virtual training for the globally dispersed workforce means a lot more than a video call or a conferencing tool. Remote training needs to engage with the employees right from the onboarding to help them adjust with the company culture. Effective learning will require identifying training needs and skill gaps, tracking certification and compliance, keeping employees updated with refresher content and more. An extended enterprise learning management system with multiple training format support for learners and seamless user management for administration, is the key.

 

All-in-one Technology and Easy Integration

Experts all over the world are warning against the excessive use of technology. The future will need all of these functions to come together for a singular human experience. Sophistication of technology lies not only in invention but also integration with the existing tools and technique. The ability of a learning provider to step up to this game will decide their journey in the new era.

 

At G-Cube we are continuously researching the various aspects of human learning and the role of the learning management software in this journey. We would love to collaborate, talk, and listen to anyone who is interested in the same domain. Do write to us and Happy New Year!