My face-to-faceless experience of 2021
In 2020 I integrated an advanced master program alongside an apprenticeship. It has been six months and I have seen neither my classmates nor my colleagues.
I was almost prepared as I had already worked and studied remotely when the COVID pandemic spread in 2020. The school was easy to adapt to since I do know the field I am learning. As far as work is concerned, it was an exclusive experience. Generally, when you arrive in a new company, you try to find your way around the city and then in the building. Once you arrive, you check in with the receptionist or someone else if this is the right place, and you can start to contact your manager and let him know you are here.
I cannot complain as my experience was far easier. I was given a laptop a week before my first day. I found my way to my desk 1 meter away from my bed. I connected to it. I set up my profile and there I was: in my new company! Still no information about anything so I tried to reach one of my managers in order to get more information. I got more than I bargained for… I heard more letters in acronyms than in the alphabet. Since I had never worked in this industry, all this language was Greek to me. So, I had to follow a training plan, but instead of going in a room with all my new colleagues, I had to face a screen and a virtual owl that was teaching me the principle of the industry.
I learnt through pdf and videos a lot. From how the industry regulates the business field of my company to how the security of our headquarters works. To this day, I still have not moved to my office.
There is a different kind of training in a company. Among the most well-known we can find orientation and on-boarding training that aims to introduce new hires to the business, the soft or technical skills training, or even a sort of tuition from the company to let the employee learn more personal skills their own.
Training has always been a main concern in the HR organization. The rights of the personnel increase and their well-being becomes vital for the health of the business. Training represents a token in the good development of the company. Moreover, when for a couple of decades of innovation, the workers were more volatile, the employees’ turnover was bigger. The more qualified the employee is, the more likely they can change business or even industry. This is the reason why companies had to invest in their colleagues. As a win-win exchange, this investment helps the company to grow alongside their workers.
Learning is a luxury in a lot of regions around the world. Education is expensive and so it is for company training. Traditionally speaking, training is organized face-to-face. We find here different values, such as better engagement or direct feedback. But when your company is growing fast and the number of workers is increasing, it might be complicated to organize such sessions of training in real life. All the more when a pandemic forces your colleagues to stay at home.
Virtual instructor-led training (VILT) and self-paced training are developing in lots of businesses and many reasons explain this phenomenon. It enables large companies to reach more employees at the same time and to let them have more flexibility to arrange their learning plan. While, at the same time, it might be difficult to organize oneself at home with a new lifestyle to adopt. This option is more manageable for some people.
However, it brings new issues to the company. The responsibility for this deployment is split between the organization and the workers. On the one hand, employees must have a minimum of digital skills to incorporate this new way of learning. When you have a full week at work dedicated to training, you know you will go there and learn. Whereas now, you must self-manage your time to find a slot for learning. On the other hand, the company has to ensure this digital learning environment is easy to use and understandable to everyone. Moreover, the structure must be well developed to ensure a backlog of the data, to know who and when someone needs to complete the training.
We talked previously about the important role of the HR core which developed this training. Now we need to include the IT teams to guarantee a smoothly operating learning system. This team can be well prepared if the company is already engaged in its digital transition. If not, it is important to support the whole business structure with intensive use of digital technology. In other words, to standardize the use of digital technology in work processes, which will make a virtuous cycle allowing easier adaptability of the teams towards digital training.
One other advantage of digital training is that it can drive different motivations among the workers through flexibility. While some enjoy learning new competencies to stay up-to-date, others can see personal opportunities to improve and elevates themselves (personal achievement feeling).
In April 2020, a Gartner study reported that 48% of workers that worked remotely were inclined to pursue this way of working, at least on a part-time basis after the pandemic (versus 30% before COVID-19). In January 2021, in the United States, around 16% of companies hired only full-time remote workers (like me). Digital training will continue to expand, as more and more companies are developing their intensive use of digital technologies.
As crazy as it may sound, it is a reality. I have never seen my colleagues since I started my job, and I learnt most things online. As I said in a previous team gathering call, I cannot imagine the actual size of my colleagues! At least, we are all equal by looking the same height in front of a webcam… And now I have to do my homework a.k.a. training for tomorrow or I will be late…
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
