To gain some insight into how our LinkedIn community is dealing with changes and new challenges faced post COVID-19, we decided to run some polls on our page to gauge how our followers were feeling about returning the office, reconnecting with their teams and how they decided to learn during downtime and when working from home.
The results were definitely interesting, and you can see an overview of the data collected and some conclusions observed below:
POLL 1: Which learning modality did you try when working from home?
It’s no surprise that these results show the majority of our community tried out free online learning during their downtime and when working from home. But why? Not only is free learning much more cost-effective for employees and their employers, but the options for free learning have definitely opened up, with websites such as the Open University, and GettingSmart.com giving learners access to an amass of free content.
At Biz Group we have also been providing free learning to our client-base, by offering weekly hour-long VILT sessions around some hot topics, including Leadership, Change and Resilience. We also launched an initiative to ‘give back’ and donated 100 free sessions to our long-standing clients in order to help them during their time of need.
I’m also pleasantly surprised to see a 20% response rate to ‘Virtual Instructor-Led Training’, which is something that we at Biz Group have really strived to up-skill our consultants and team on how to deliver virtual training. VILT is different to these other learning modalities as it’s live, engaging and facilitated by an experienced consultant who can answer your questions and open up discussion points.
POLL 2: How prepared are you to return to your workplace?
The second poll we ran was around people’s preparedness to return to their workplaces. At the time of asking, around 48% of respondents said they were already back in the office. This was interesting as it was still very split down the middle, and of those who weren’t back YET, a staggering 27% felt anxious about returning or didn’t want to yet. This poll shows that opinions around COVID-19 were still very mixed and highlights that companies must ensure they prepare an effective return to the workplace plan that can help alleviate worries and help prepare a smooth return for everyone.
POLL 3: How will you be reconnecting with your teams when returning to the workplace?
As many of you will know, face-to-face events were essentially banned from March, and as most offices were now working from home, we wanted to know how our community was planning to reconnect with their teams when returning to the workplace. The clear leader in this poll is ‘Both virtual and in-person’ activities, which shows that although people are feeling more prepared to re-engage with each other at work, there is still a desire to participate in activities virtually. Interestingly enough, 5% of respondents said they had no plans to reconnect yet.
POLL 4: Are teambuilding activities (virtual, in-person or a mixture of both) something that you would consider to help reconnect your team?
Following on from our last poll, we wanted to find out whether teambuilding activities were something that people would consider to reconnect with their teams. The majority of respondents said YES, with 39% saying they were looking now and 45% saying they would be looking later in the year. This is a fantastic sign for teambuilding companies that have seen a recent decline in their outputs, and a reassuring statistic for what’s to come later in 2020.
Out of the 16% who said NO – around 11% said this is because they simply don’t have the budget.
In conclusion, we can see that opinions around COVID-19 are definitely shifting and there are great signs that business activities are starting to return to some form of normality – whether it’s employees returning to their offices, or their managers considering taking part in face-to-face events again. However, we feel that there is still a way to go before businesses are back to normal and employees feel completely comfortable again.
If you want to speak to us about how you can improve resilience, an effective return to the workplace, or how you can facilitate an engaging activity to reconnect your teams, get in touch with us directly.