Effective Learning Strategies for the Hybrid Workplace

The hybrid workplace with a blend of office-based and remote employees is an increasingly common reality as trends apparent before the pandemic cement themselves into a once-in-a-generation shift in how work is organised.

While routines and scheduling shift easily, the challenges of culture, talent attraction and retention, and professional development are continuing to evolve.

For many organisations this presents an exceptional opportunity to increase productivity, engage the best talent and improve client experiences. When considering how to get your people adapting rapidly to this changed reality, the hybrid workplace adds a new variable when planning learning activities.

Our experience working with a wider variety of organisations highlights five principal themes that underpin effective hybrid working:

  • Coaching and mentoring needs to be more focussed to develop trust, skills, and productivity.
  • Agility and flexibility are the meta-skills that underpin everything else.
  • Effective onboarding new employees is critical for colleagues with reduced physical interaction with their colleagues and the company culture.
  • Workplace learning needs to be focussed on three principles of ‘just enough’, ‘just in time’ and ‘just for me’
  • Organisations need to develop a culture of learning and experimentation that supports improvement and excellence over time.

For designing effective hybrid learning activities, these macro issues can be distilled into a series of key ways of working to maximise results.

  1. Provide employees with solo time for learning without day job distractions from mail or messaging apps.
  2. Create micro-learning opportunities that better fit with employee’s daily workflow.
  3. Create experiential learning opportunities that are focussed on practical work activities rather than passive absorption of video content, and which blend media and delivery formats to suit each person’s learning style.
  4. Leverage opportunities for social and experiential learning that support mastery.
  5. Maximise accessibility by providing access to tools that allow employees to complete learning activities when and where suits their schedules.

Intelligently blending technology and instructor-led content and maximising the value from human interactions underpins the effectiveness of hybrid learning.

The technologies change but our team at Pitman Training have been evolving our ability to support the modern workforce for approaching two centuries. 

For a conversation about how we can help your organisation evolve its hybrid workplace please get in touch with our learning specialists.