Beau River, talent strategist at Vantage Leadership, and Derek Lusk, business psychologist and head of executive assessment at AIIR Consulting, explore how organizations – especially human resources departments – use technology to deliver high impact learning, create exemplary collaboration, and promote employee engagement by utilizing technology.
How will organizations create more continuity in developing and deploying a virtual workforce when similar challenges arise in the future?
By using a suite of tech tools that are quickly deployable to a remote workforce. These tools will create an enhanced digital learning and team experience that capitalizes on AI, gamification, and experimentation to enhance human empathy and leadership.
Virtual and augmented reality, 3D conferencing, and digital engagement devices will give leaders more dexterity to deploy learning to a remote workforce, enhance the collective empathy of the workforce, enhance remote team collaboration, and provide real-time engagement metrics.
In just two months our lives have changed and the outlook for the global economy looks grim on the best of days. The marketplace, how we work, and the nature of our relationships have all been fundamentally altered by COVID-19. Organizations are in the midst of disaster control, workforce transitions, and trying to understand whether their business model is still viable.
In the words of one executive I recently spoke with, “We still don’t know what the bottom looks like, how can we plan when we don’t know how much further we will sink?â€
We are walking into a new age of uncertainty and change, and one in which machines will become increasingly ubiquitous. The implementation of AI will undoubtedly automate segments of the workforceOpens a new window . The rise of machines may make us better versions of ourselves by increasing our ability to shift perspectives and strategically develop empathy to connect with and guide collective action.
Finding and empowering adaptable people to learn and perform in nimble ways will be a differentiating advantage for those companies that can achieve it. If history is any predictor, organizations will have to get this right to survive the current climate. Based on data from the Great RecessionOpens a new window , companies that had great selection, learning, and development processes in place made it through the Great Recession more successfully than those that did not.
The ways humans rise to the occasion of meeting these unprecedented challenges will be determined by how organizations utilize technology to reduce the stress associated with learning and prepare people to operate in a whitewater environment. Emotional intelligence, collaboration, and our collective leadership will become increasing determinants of success.
Learn More: Remote Learning During COVID-19: How HR Can Manage Remote Employees’ L&DOpens a new window
How Will Machines Help Us to Learn and Perform in a Post-COVID-19 World?
Before the current dire circumstances, a question on many HR, learning, and talent leaders’ minds was how to build the workforce of the future and differentiate their competitive advantage by developing stellar leaders.
In conversation with an executive recently, she asked me a provocative question, “What will be different next time that we have to completely switch our workforce to a remote setup?†The rise of the virtual workforce in the last month is likely an element of our new normal, or at least the need to quickly transition to a fully virtual workforce is a critical aspect of risk planning going forward. The need to have and/or quickly deploy a virtual workforce is an indispensable part of the modern workforce.
With this level of uncertainty, one constant will be the need to adapt quickly, internalize, and apply learning while also executing, and the need for leaders to guide and engage an entirely remote workforce for long periods.
Learning and development (L&D) will have to become more ubiquitous, more tailored to emergent needs, and also less intrusive because of these changes. Learner control – or the ability of a leader to change the pace of learning and apply lessons gleaned from errors – will be an increasingly important element of all development programs.
Elements of modern research on learning will need to be incorporated more consistently and systematically in L&D programs. Specifically, creating more guided mistakes, active exploration, and user control will need to be applied to enhance motivation and absorption. The question remains, how do we continue to develop people, deploy learning curriculum with an eye to effective pedagogy for a potentially remote workforce, and manage unprecedented challenges? And, how do we make our working lives more connected?
Organizations Need New Technology and Tools at an Accelerated Pace
This new landscape and related needs have made technology tools even more relevant than they were. For example, can we imagine e-commerce becoming less dominant in the marketplace as a result of the current crisis? Not likely.
An additional truism emerging from our current situation is that we live in a global world. For the first time, we have relatively irrefutable proof that our social, economic, and information systems are one ecosystem. Globalization has likely spread this virus faster than it would have in the twentieth century. Global markets have reacted quickly and in unison. No region of the travel industry has been left untouched by this crisis.
Managing the L&D of a workforce in this environment will require similar amounts of focus on the impacts of actions on a broader scale and the need to align virtual stakeholders when there are reduced capabilities to build relationships.
Crisis pushes the limits of human creativity. Identifying the right technology to support human collaboration, and learning is vital. In our view of the landscape of tools, we see four main areas that will emerge as the most powerful in the current landscape. Each of these technologies is further accelerated by the advent of 5G cellular technology and will be deployable in rapid response situations.
Learning and development
Real-time virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) training can be used in flexible ways to address training needs in real-time and future-focused learning. It is easily deployed in remote areas with the advent of 5G technology (for example, solar and wind farm construction and maintenance).
VR training over 5G cellular networks will become a reality, allowing for more customized and realistic scenarios in real-time to create immersive and comprehensive training modules. VR training will be further enhanced with gamification and progressively realistic simulations and will create more accurate predictions.
Collaboration
Creating enhanced collaboration amongst teams will be even more relevant to address and advance organizations’ most pressing opportunities. Setting the stage for teams of subject matter experts to come together quickly through ubiquitous mobility platforms and holographic HD conferencing will create digital intimacy. The “shared consciousness†of exemplary teams will now be more easily fostered remotely and set the stage for faster execution on emerging opportunities. Further, over the past 10 years, the leadership coaching industry has exploded with increased investment in both external and internal coaches. The use of remote holographic video that is powered by 5G will add a new element to leaders’ development by creating interactive exchanges between coach and coachee.
Employee engagement
There is a new need to understand the engagement of a potentially entirely remote workforce. Given this, how organizations capture and make meaning of engagement data analytics will become more and more important. The interconnectivity of objects in our world, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), will change how businesses can capture engagement data.
Further, new tools like sociometric badgesOpens a new window give organizations the ability to understand the social and emotional health of their workforce. These tools and resources are not just about capturing nebulous data, the technology can roll into key insights that optimize decision-making and allows for a more adaptable application of strategic workforce planning.
We already know that non-intrusive measurement techniques lead to richer data. Thus, the application of these tools will measure real-time engagement more powerful for executives in understanding their people.
Employee wellness
The big data revolution for people and the implications for organizational performance are just emerging. This could seem Orwellian or raise privacy concerns – however, these technologies are already being deployed in socially responsible and privacy-compliant ways to enhance insights. Over the next couple of years, organizations are expected to climb to a sizable portion of the wearable technology market, after starting from less than one percent in 2015. A new trove of engagement and wellness information will change the way HR executives create alignment and build high-performance cultures in their originations.
Learn More: Key Ways New Leadership Can Turn a Company AroundOpens a new window
How Will Organizational Success Be Defined in a Post-COVID-19 World?
In a post-COVID-19 world, we see success being determined by leaders’ ability to distill the lessons of the current crisis to position their organizations with greater mobility and agility in deploying a remote workforce. Further, the use of the tools outlined above gives executives a clearer sense of their people’s needs and promotes uninterrupted collaboration and learning in balance with execution. The total impact is an organization more directly influencing their leader’s thinking, where executives’ thoughts are readily channeled into the organization. Ultimately, the organization adapts more fluidly with their employees’ best ideas and the challenges at hand.
Which best practices are you following for the development and collaboration in the new world of work that is emerging because of COVID-19? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window .