Did you know heights are Britain’s biggest fear?

25% of the population share this phobia, with a further 35% a “little afraid”. Other top terrors, according to a survey from YouGov, include public speaking, snakes and flying.

Fears are caused by our brain communicating with our bodies to indicate there is a risk involved. Our brains are naturally wired to fight or flight mode depending on the challenge we face. Because of this, we create barriers, so we don’t have to manage what worries us – we continue as is and reduce the level of risk accordingly.

Barriers

How many of us create barriers in our day to day lives that aren’t related to a phobia, but more worry of trying something new? How many of us order the same meal when at a restaurant for worry of not liking something different? Or purchase the same coloured clothes when we’d like to try something bolder?!

Barriers can often stop us progressing within the workplace – individually, as a team and as a business. You may need to modernise and save money on face-to-face training – but how else do you deliver L&D? You may want to transform a learning process – but it’s “the way you’ve always done it”.

Instead of embracing change we tend to do nothing. We continue day-to-day, blinkered by inertia and a lack of confidence to break down such a barrier. We continue to order the same Carbonara as before and buy another black polo-neck… We jest.

Change

Embracing change leads to empowerment, growth and improvement. One of the biggest barriers the LiveTime team overcomes, in collaboration with L&D teams, is an organisation’s reluctance to make such a change and move forward, particularly when technology is involved.

Digital solutions provide better enablement for your people, particularly when it comes to their learning, but there is often a natural hesitancy to move away from traditional face-to-face communication.

Virtual classrooms offer a modern equivalent to workplace learning and provide a unique approach to disseminating workplace messaging.

Here are two examples.

Modernising face-to-face training

Some organisations ignore the need to modernise their face-to-face training. Several barriers exist, the top two being:

• They don’t understand the benefits of modernising their offering.
• Tackling the wealth of face-to-face material and converting it into something more dynamic seems like a mountain to climb.

Virtual classrooms are great channels for delivering management training, skills improvement, new systems training and more, at a fraction of the cost of face-to-face learning.

It is cost effective and a quick to translate existing face-to-face courses into engaging and effective live online activity, delivered as part of a blended or stand-alone offering. Virtual classrooms bridge the gap between face-to-face training and e-learning, and retain the personal interaction gained from face-to-face contact. Such an interactive approach to workplace training changes behaviour and transforms the way people learn.

Transforming workplace communications

A virtual classroom provides you with:

• A dedicated meeting room to present the proposed change in an engaging way with employees fully immersed throughout.
• A safe environment for attendees to feedback and not feel overtly exposed in a face-to-face setting.

The online environment provides several options to create engagement, from screen sharing, showing videos and playing audio. Company-wide meetings are transformed into shorter, collaborative meetings hosted in an online environment – a modern alternative to communicating company-wide initiatives.

The truth is…

…technology isn’t terrifying! Whilst it appears to be a scary process, shifting from traditional training to a digital solution, or moving from town hall communications to an online environment, can be done swiftly and at low cost.

First steps first!

It takes confidence to accept something needs to change and then make the decision to do something differently; it feels safer to stick with what we know and not step out of that safety zone.

And it is often more challenging for those who must embrace and adopt such a change when they haven’t been included in making that decision.

Introducing virtual classrooms to a risk-averse organisation can be challenging, especially if the barrier to “going digital” is strong! With any change it is best practice to involve people in the decision-making process – early buy-in is the first step forward.

Run a trial session

Start with a select group and offer a trial session to create engagement and present the technology. Online features such as live chat, polls and quizzes replicate the experience of face-to-face training; interactive whiteboards simulate flipcharts with participants writing live on screen. Participants can also be segmented into separate virtual rooms, like breakouts, for focused collaboration in pairs or small groups.

Engage with key stakeholders

Involve in-house trainers in the design and delivery of the trial session to showcase how it can be done and what can be achieved. Often fear of the unknown is what creates the barrier!

Want to know more?

There are so many possible solutions to helping modernise and bridge the face-to-face/digital gap.

We recently ran a webinar to introduce virtual classrooms as a digital alternative for workplace training and a different approach to company communications. Forward-thinking organisations are using the technology to excel and invest in their people’s performance.

Contact us to talk through the barriers you want to break down – we can help.