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Why learning as a Support Team has been invaluable

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The beginning of March 2020 was an exciting time as we were busy running face to face client programmes and looking to expand the support team.  Over the next few weeks, with the growing concerns about Covid 19 and pending lockdown, this situation changed rapidly.

As a Team, we were all familiar with working from home but one of the main challenges now was to adapt our training to be delivered virtually. We arranged small practice groups to include the Directors, associate trainers and the support team to enable us to share our knowledge and learning of Zoom.

Although this was daunting at first and a very steep learning curve for everyone, it proved to be one of the most rewarding challenges of last year!

As a support team, some of our highlights were:

  • Practising hosting a session and using the breakout rooms to understand the technology and the support needed
  • Having regular contact with the wider team.
  • Recognising how much people’s confidence began to grow
  • Being able to bring in a new team member, Kirsty Cozens, to support our virtual workshops
  • Being able to contribute towards a Guide on how to use Zoom for the whole team.

I personally benefitted hugely from working with the team virtually and drawing on their experiences.  At a time of such uncertainty, it felt like a real positive to be seeing people regularly and sharing the learning journey together.

The change to virtual delivery lead the Support Team to look at what we needed to do differently:

  • Setting up virtual meetings to discuss projects and determine the level of support required
  • Organising practice sessions to gain confidence in resolving technical issues
  • Working with our clients to ensure they were comfortable with using Zoom
  • Reviewing our admin processes to ensure they were suitable for virtual sessions

We learnt as a Team what worked well and were able to embed some of these changes to use going forward including:-

  • Greater interaction with our clients, their support function and delegates which we have all enjoyed
  • Internal briefing meeting to discuss a project and agree actions
  • More contact with the trainer to understand the flow of the session and support needed
  • Continual learning as Zoom and MS Team evolve.

On the back of this learning, we ran our “Support Team – Resetting for 2021” virtual session in January to look at how the Support Team can best work together and reviewed our expectations of ourselves and each other.

As we slowly come out of the pandemic, we are again looking at a period of change with many clients opting for a blended learning approach.  As a team, we now have a far better understanding of what can be achieved via virtual sessions and what works well in a face to face environment.

For more examples of how we work with our client to harness opportunities to learn, please see our other blogs:

  1. Talent Development Programmes – A Multipronged Approach
  2. What neuroscience tells us about shaping behaviour and learning in the workplace

For further information on how we can help your whole team use learning from the last year to do things differently have a look at our Reset model call us on 01903 732782, email or contact us.