In today’s ever-changing business environment, there is a lot of pressure on employees’ time. Focus constantly weighs in favour of work priorities, challenging the time available for self-development of employees. A big challenge that affects some organisations is the ability to determine what employees should learn, given the limited time available at work.
However, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of businesses have transitioned to remote working, leaving employees with a bit more time for personal development. Online learning is the future, and if firms don’t embrace it at this point, it might become difficult for them to compete in the marketplace.
What sort of courses should employees be taking this lockdown period?
To help organisations in identifying the courses, pcl. and its partner Skillsoft has identified the top 10 courses that will help employees turbocharge their productivity while working from home.
Here is the list along with reasons why each course made the essential top ten.
1. Developing a Growth Mind-Set
Employees need to take responsibility for their professional growth. Central to this is the belief that new knowledge, behaviors, and skills can be acquired and developed through continuous learning. This course provides insight and actions that encourage the development of a growth mindset that sees failure and challenge as opportunities to learn and improve.
2. Building Innovative Cultures and Leaders
It is through innovation that the modern organisation develops new products and services and refines processes for business advantage. Every employee and their leaders need to understand how Innovation can be deployed across the organisation. An organisations culture is its behaviour at scale – basically, what it says and does. A firm’s culture will be put to the test by crisis, as is occurring right now with COVID-19. However, organisations with a strong culture can stand the test and become business performance leaders.
This course helps both leaders and those led to improve their competitive advantage through building a culture of creativity and original thinking.
3. Encouraging Team Communication and Collaboration
The ability to collaborate effectively with other team members is a core element of the success of everyone in the workplace. Teamwork is essential in an organisation because it provides employees with an opportunity to bond. Workers who work on projects together often feel valued upon the successful completion of the assignment.
This course covers instilling trust and respect for others on the team, involving others in key decisions, carefully considering the perspectives and approaches of team members, and giving the team credit for successes.
4. Managing Motivation During Organisational Change
Organisational change is a constant in today’s business world, and employees need to respond effectively to a changing context. This course addresses how to adjust employees’ perceptions following changing circumstances. The course will open employees up to new possibilities and complexities that exist in the workplace.
5. Developing a Personal Accountability Framework
Accountable employees meet expectations. They ensure that they deliver on work responsibilities and maintain a personal performance standard that gets the job done and executed well. This course provides a framework for productive working to achieve the business objective despite challenges. The course will also teach employees how to communicate when circumstances interfere with obligations – for instance, when faced with the challenge of working from home.
6. Defining Alternative Solutions to a Problem
Employees must understand how to use objective business criteria to develop and evaluate alternative courses of action and then make useful and timely decisions based on the possible solutions available. This course helps employees to use their thinking skills to solve problems, make decisions, ask questions and organise information promptly.
7. Role in Workplace Diversity
Improved performance and greater innovation are linked to organisational diversity. Employees with a diversity mindset respect and value the differences across the workforce and recognise their perspectives in the organisation. This course will teach employees the skills and roles that exist in the work environment.
8. Developing Your Business Acumen
Business acumen enables an employee to develop approaches and objectives that align with the organisation’s broader strategy while having a grasp of the business fundamentals necessary to make informed decisions. Individuals with business acumen can look at organisational issues from a broad perspective. This course lays out the basic principles of developing and growing this critical skillset.
9. Influence Others with Political Savvy
Every employee will benefit from an understanding of their company’s organisational and political realities. This course helps employees understand the organisation’s structure, power coalitions, culture, etc. and how they can use this knowledge to make sure their decisions and behaviours are in alignment.
10. Ahead with Perseverance and Resilience
The corporate environment is filled with barriers and obstacles that pose a challenge for employees in the workplace. This course assists workers at all levels to learn to handle changes, uncertainties, and disappointment to enable them to contribute effectively to the organisation.
pcl. is leading the digital learning revolution by offering a variety of solutions to enable organisations quickly and efficiently develop their assets and people. While we offer hundreds of business skills courses, ranging from general topics to specialised skills, we recommend these ten courses for every organisation, especially during these tough times.
Take advantage of a 30 — day free trial of our modern and innovative learning experience platform and practice some of these courses.
Click here to register for our online courses!
Written by:
Modupe Thomas-Owoseni
Managing Consultant
