Education 2.0 & 3.0

Yesterday I walked into my home office and examined the space from a fresh perspective. It hasn't had a facelift in about ten years and I've hardly noticed its dingy appearance. Don't get me wrong, I love my office but it's simply out of date and no longer reflects my personality. It's time for a change.

 

Approaching the challenge like any diligent, problem-solving coach, I did my research. What does science say about an office space that boosts energy, creativity, and productivity, all while projecting a safe, calm feeling for clients? Yes, it's possible, and you can do it all on your own. Here's what I've learned.

1. Use color, but not just any color.

Color psychology studies (and there are many) reveal changes in the body and brain when people view certain colors. These changes influence productivity, creativity, health, stress levels, focus, communication, and emotions. That's some powerful influence!

 

Color psychologist Angela Wright explains the phenomenon this way: "Color travels to us on wavelengths of photons from the sun. Those are converted into electrical impulses that pass to the part of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which governs our endocrine system and hormones, and much of our activity."

 

First decide what's most important about how color affects you, your employees, and your visitors. In an interview with Chris Bailey, Wright offered this simple breakdown of the effects of color on the mind: "The four psychological primaries are: red, blue, yellow, and green. And they affect the body (red), the mind (blue), the emotions, the ego, and self-confidence (yellow), and the essential balance between the mind, the body, and the emotions (green)." But it's not that simple. Bailey nicely breaks down the process of choosing just the right color in this article.

Via The Learning Factor

More and more organisations are choosing to complement their face-to-face inductions online or move to an entirely online induction model.  Here are 3 reasons why…

 

“The Day 1” experience

Sometimes it’s the time it takes to set new starters up on your systems or finalise the paperwork, sometimes it’s not having enough people start around the same time to justify the cost and resource of running a face to face induction session.  Whatever the reason, it’s rare that new starters experience a consistent, formal induction on their first day.

 

Sure, there’s the office tour, the meet and greets, but how do they understand where your organisation is headed, the values that drive you, and what’s expected of them… from day one?  Or even before their start date?

 

An online induction means these all-important messages that set the scene and communicate who you are and what you do are delivered from the get-go. This can include video of your CEO or MD talking conversationally about what your organisation’s vision and values mean to them. From Day 1, your new starters can have the impression that senior leaders are approachable and accessible.

 

Streamlined content

Often the content that new starters need to be aware of is housed in multiple locations: your web page, your intranet, your shared drive, in old emails, in people’s heads.  A new starter needs a map.

 

An online induction corrals all that must-know, or must-know-where-to-find information in a cohesive way.  It signposts people to the places they can access the information now, and return to later as needed. And if they need to find it later… it’s the most up to date version, not a new starter manual that is out of date as it’s too hard to maintain.

 

Getting connected

There is so much opportunity to connect new starters to each other and encourage that sense of belonging to a ‘cohort’.  Consider allocating someone the responsibility of being your “Induction community manager” and taking advantage of the discussion groups on your LMS, or standalone social networks. 

 

This means you can dish out work-integrated challenges or activities for them to complete, and come back to post and share their insights amongst the group.  Moving your induction online means new starters can form connections with colleagues across geographical and departmental boundaries – at a fraction of the cost and potential time lags involved in achieving this face to face.

 

To read more about moving your induction process online click here. And see a vignette of one of our Inductions.

 

Learn more about how to move your induction online

 

Sarah Davie is the Global Design Lead for The Learning Factor. Sarah has a passion for Onboarding and Induction solutions. She is an experienced learning consultant with a demonstrated history of delivering for clients from large Corporate organisations, Government sectors, global Consulting Firms and boutique Learning Agencies. 

Via The Learning Factor

Here’s the dilemma: In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity.

 

It’s no wonder that so many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build higher performance cultures.  The irony, we’ve found, is that building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results. Instead, it may be more effective to focus on creating a culture of growth.

 

A culture is simply the collection of beliefs on which people build their behavior. Learning organizations – Peter Senge’s term — classically focus on intellectually oriented issues such as knowledge and expertise.  That’s plainly critical, but a true growth culture also focuses on deeper issues connected to how people feel, and how they behave as a result. In a growth culture, people build their capacity to see through blind spots; acknowledge insecurities and shortcomings rather than unconsciously acting them out; and spend less energy defending their personal value so they have more energy available to create external value. How people feel – and make other people feel — becomes as important as how much they know.

 

Building a growth culture, we’ve found, requires a blend of individual and organizational components:

 

An environment that feels safe, fueled first by top by leaders willing to role model vulnerability and take personal responsibility for their shortcomings and missteps.A focus on continuous learning through inquiry, curiosity and transparency, in place of judgment, certainty and self-protection.Time-limited, manageable experiments with new behaviors in order to test our unconscious assumption that changing the status quo is dangerous and likely to have negative consequences.Continuous feedback – up, down and across the organization – grounded in a shared commitment to helping each other grow and get better.
Via The Learning Factor

"Online training success relies heavily on memory retention, active recall, and positive reinforcement. In this article, I'll share 9 innovative ways to reinforce key concepts in online training."

Via EDTECH@UTRGV, Elizabeth E Charles