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Focus on courses

In our regular customer conversations, we occasionally come across a specific problem which we can help with, and this happened back in July. A long-term customer, a large European bank, were looking at ways to increase Psychological Safety in their teams, so people could deal with disagreements and conflict in a safe and constructive way.

We worked closely with the bank’s Head of Regulatory Compliance Conduct and the Learning, Development & Talent Manager to produce a fast paced, interactive 90-minute course called ‘Psychological Safety in the Workplace.’ This was developed in a tight 6-week window, including specific context and work-based scenarios, and then rolled out to 111 delegates over 6 sessions – 5 sessions within a month followed by a final session a month later. The feedback was exceptional, with 99% of delegates saying the course would help them in their role and that they would recommend the course to colleagues Click here to find out more about psychological safety.

 INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Emailogic Insights, our new quarterly newsletter which will give you regular updates about what we’ve been up to, and to highlight workplace trends and insights we are seeing across our work in all sectors which may help inform your L&D planning.

2022 was a very busy year for Emailogic as we continued to develop our portfolio of ‘off the shelf’ soft-skills courses (we now have 24 to choose from), while also fulfilling customer requests for bespoke sessions. For example, among hundreds of courses delivered in 2022 we ran a tailored Management Development Programme for the Reform Club, which was very well received; as Abi Hardcastle, Reform Club Head of HR said, “We are already seeing benefits as managers see the big picture more clearly and are able to deal with staff issues much more effectively.”   

In this edition of Insights you can read more about how Marc Powell got on in Poland, running a Presentation and Facilitation Skills course for a global insurance firm, and how Steve Morley co-designed and rolled out a bespoke course for a European bank.

We prize our customer relationships and our main aim is to help you strive towards becoming the best learning and developing organisation you can be. We hope you enjoy this issue, and if you would like to know more about how we can support your learning and development needs, or if you just want to discuss a tricky problem, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  

The problem of managing remote teams

There has been a seismic change in work patterns following the pandemic, with many staff now working at least 2-3 days a week at home. What does that mean for the culture of the organisation, when there is little physical connection between employees, and instead there is an atomisation of the previously all pervasive ‘way of working round here’?

On a day-to-day level, the issue we have discussed most this year with our customers and wider networks is the problem of managing workers who are remote. A key issue is Managers not trusting that their staff are being productive, as they can no longer literally see them working. In a recent Microsoft survey (of 20,000 staff over 11 countries, and scarily including analysis of “trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals”) 85% of leaders say the move to hybrid working has made it difficult to have confidence that their employees are productive.

However, in the same survey 87% of employees report that they are productive – and this is backed up by an increase in productivity signals. So there is a worrying gap between reality and the perception of Managers – and this stems in part from Managers’ traditional focus on presenteeism and outputs.

Managers need to evolve their skill set to set clear agreed longer-term goals, and then evaluate and reward performance against outcomes. In addition, they need to be able to flex their management style, honing their goal setting and coaching skills while improving team cohesion through more democratic decision making. Then the drawbacks of less in-person time will be minimised, and the benefits of remote working realised.

Presentation and Facilitation Skills Programme – teambuilding in Poland

Early in 2023 we added a 90-minute course on Presentation Skills to our portfolio of short courses. This course was piloted with one of our regular customers in the Finance Sector and received excellent feedback.

In early Autumn the same customer asked us whether we could run a longer programme as part of an awayday for a newly formed international team that had been created during a re-organisation. The nature of their work meant they are all hosting more meetings, delivering interactive presentations with complex information, and conducting more facilitative group work. They needed to be able to design and deliver these sessions with confidence, motivate delegates, and be able to deal with difficult scenarios and questions put forward by challenging senior colleagues. 90% of these various events are delivered virtually.

Prior to the session we spent time with the customer learning about the team, and their existing skills, together with the awareness and new skills they needed to develop. The programme was two intensive sessions of four hours each, delivered to 20 delegates in a single group over 2 days in Poland. It was part of a larger team building event and was the first time the team had all come together and met in person.

Contact us to discuss your training plans:

Effective email training update with tips

You may be wondering what has happened to our renowned award -winning Effective Email course. We are still delivering Effective Email sessions all over the world, almost solely through live virtual sessions.

Email volume grew over the pandemic with so many people working from home. Since then, Hybrid Working has become very popular for most organisations and email volume has not reduced. In fact, research by The Radacati Group, says that email volume will continue to grow by 4% every year until at least 2025.

Our 90-minute course is available as a live virtual session or as e-learning. As a refresher here are some top tips to help you deal with your inbox challenges:

-        Remember to use the phone when appropriate; you can often get a lot more done in a short amount of time, rather than spending time with emails going endlessly backwards and forwards. Try this – if an issue goes backwards and forwards more than twice use the phone instead.

-        Always question whether you need to copy people in on your email messages. Every time you are copying someone in you are asking for time, and that time adds up incredibly quickly. An email sent to 60 people with a few reply-to-all’s can waste days and days of staff time.

-        Turn off your audible and visual email alerts. Every time you are disturbed you become less focused and less effective on the tasks in-hand. Also at least 40% of the emails you receive will probably be irrelevant anyway – so you are being disturbed by something that is completely unnecessary.

Click here to find out more about the award-winning Effective Email course.

In depth

As it was a new team a key element in the programme design was to also ensure there would be plenty of activities with opportunities for team building and bonding. Presentation skills were required as well as facilitation skills. This was straightforward for us as we believe that a successful presentation will always be highly engaging and interactive. To achieve this a facilitative dynamic needs to be built into both the presentation design and delivery. The feedback from the session was excellent with all delegates feeling far more equipped and confident in meeting/event preparation techniques, dealing with nerves, handling difficult questions in live virtual sessions, giving feedback within the team, and designing presentations that can be easily assimilated.