Optimizing Remote Learning in a COVID Environment

As businesses worldwide postpone and cancel in-person training and meetings in response to COVID19, workplace learning is emerging as one of the earliest and hardest-hit casualties of business operations. Based on OVP Management Consulting’s engagement with a cross-section of clients in the months leading up to and during the pandemic, we are seeing for-profits and non-profits alike increasingly pushing the pause button on talent development and capability building.

Organizations, however, cannot afford to put critical workplace learning on hold indefinitely. Whether an entity’s focus is to re-tool business unit skills or engage in organization-wide transformation, businesses need the ability to develop employees while also prioritizing workforce safety.  Remote and digital learning platforms, already a channel for employee learning prior to COVID19, are even more vital now.  

Three areas, in particular, stand out as strategic opportunities for digitally engaging employees during the rapid pivot towards social-distancing: talent development, virtual-adaptive training and employee learning.

Talent Development :Performance management and talent development can be a powerful way to engage your workforce during the COVID19 crisis, signaling that you are investing in your people during this challenging period while also moving your operations forward. When moving to a virtual platform, however, it is vital that you work by design rather than default.  Team and one-on-one coaching over the phone or online, for instance, do not offer the same breadth of body language cues and intimacy that in-person meetings deliver.  As such, during OVP’s coaching sessions with clients, we leverage the constraints of physical distancing to listen even more closely to clients and use customized online materials both during and after sessions to increase engagement. 

Targeted virtual offerings: To create a comprehensive arrays of virtual learning offerings, build a cross-functional response team comprising members from relevant stakeholder groups. These include business partners, IT and training personnel, and customer and community counterparts.  Evaluate existing virtual offerings against critical business operations to prioritize scarce vendor and design resources.  For instance, must-have activities like employee onboarding will require a combination of live and on-demand programs to ensure both legacy requirements like performance expectations and new requirements like remote working skills, are communicated consistently.

Employee learning: A substantial increase in the use of digital delivery to enhance employee learning is under way across all segments of the workforce, from frontline employees to senior leaders. While digitally-enabled environments have been implemented by many organizations out of necessity rather than choice, virtual platforms also provide a strengthened collective focus and sense of community for employee, customer and community stakeholders.  Organizations that previously had very little interaction, due to functional or regional boundaries for instance, are increasing collaboration through videoconferencing, instant messaging and other forms of digital engagement. 

While it is far too soon to determine the ultimate impact that COVID19 will have on employee learning, it is clear that the adoption of digital venues has clearly accelerated, providing with it the opportunity to promote a culture of ongoing engagement both within and outside of organizational walls. 

Pam Hill is a a Senior Consultant with OVP Management Consulting Group, Inc. and can be contacted at pam.hill@ovpmanagementconsulting.com.

Picking Good Managers

Those of you familiar with business management literature are surely familiar with the works of Peter Drucker. His contributions to the advancement of the modern corporation are numerous. In fact, Drucker is often cited as the most influential thought leader in modern business management movement.

Drucker is credited with inventing the concept of management by objectives, coining the term “knowledge worker” and founding one of the first-ever Executive MBA programs for working professionals at Claremont Graduate University. He was also widely known as the grandfather of marketing and modern business consulting.

Drucker was keen on understanding the success (or failure) of businesses through the management process, which consists of planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Understanding the process and its concepts is key to preparing your managers to be successful. 

The role of a manager is to engage his or her team members to perform at their best by  providing direction, offering feedback and setting goals. According to a study by Gallup, managers are often the most important hires in any organization. They account for at least 70% of employee engagement in the workplace. Yet more than 80% of the time people are hired to become managers/supervisors it is because they were good at their previous job.

However, “being good” at a task doesn’t guarantee that a person will be able to effectively lead others through that same task. The best managers are most often proficient in four skills that speak to effective leadership:

• Identifying Talent: Taking note of the skills, knowledge, education and experience necessary for the roles you have on your team.
• Setting Expectations: Effectively communicating the contributions, responsibilities and needs of an employee to ensure clear understanding of the parameters of the job. 
• Motivating Employees: Finding the most appropriate and effective ways to recognize the unique factors that motivate your employee to perform at optimal levels. 
• Developing People: Recognizing a persons abilities, strengths and tendencies in the workplace and developing a plan to leverage those qualities to improve your team's performance. 

In his book The Practice of Management, Drucker stated that “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. .... Therefore, any business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation.” So, if he were to be believed, it stands to reason why Drucker would point out the two primary activities that bridge the gap between the customer and business. And that's where managers come in.

The best managers are an organization's glue. They create and hold together the scores of people who power high-performing organizations.

Think about the best managers you've ever worked for. What were the qualities that made them so good as a leader? 

Share you thoughts about the best managers you've worked with in the Comments Section below!

Leader Moments: Getting Employees Engaged

"You can't build a winning culture without changing the behaviors of the individuals that make up that culture." ~ Larry Senn, founder of Senn-Delaney

Leadership is a never-ending endeavor that has to be part of your every day life. Whether with large companies or a team of one, those charged with driving results and impacting culture must understand that leadership is a full-time job.

So how does one become a transformational leader?

There is no one right answer. But, there are several tried and true ways in which people can get better at leading teams and organizations, including the act of defining what leadership means.

Leadership is often defined as "the art of motivating a group of people to act towards commons goals and objectives". This seems fairly straightforward, but somewhat general.

Taking this definition to a personal level, one might suggest that their goal as leader of the sales department of a medium-size software company is to marry the organization’s behavioral goals with the appropriate reward system, so as to avoid confusion or “mixed signals” for employees.

OVP Management Consulting Group Inc. works with business owners and leaders that want their employees to internalize the company's vision & values and in turn reflect them in how they treat their customers. For example, one of our partner clients is ALPAC Inc., a software/IT firm based in Ann Arbor, MI that offers customized software development packages to companies seeking to streamline their operations. The company manages most of its software developers and programmers that work remotely. It is important for the company's president Al Pacha that these highly skilled technicians act with integrity, effectively collaborate with fellow developers to maximize the value of the company's offerings and provide prompt & comprehensive back-end, post-sale service.

"I am always looking for ways to improve my company's performance," Pacha said. "To do this, I think you have to understand how employees and contractors are interpreting our goals and mission."

For many firms, having operational actions mirror company values is an intentional way to frame how behavioral shifts in individuals can be tied to performance improvements. But, getting to the point where intention meets action can be daunting for firms. Here are several things leaders of teams can do to achieve this balance:

• Develop a strategic employee engagement plan: The manner and rate at which your people grow within your organization is often the make-or-break element that determines how successful your operation will be. The creation of a strategic people plan that actively puts employees in a position to learn, improve and share must be a measurable document tied to time milestones. There also has to be active participation in the creation of said plan by members of the team, so as to encourage greater "buy in" from those are responsible for completing the activities that make your operations go.
• Train to your company's vision: Offering team members training that reinforces your organization's values and problem-solving approaches. And it doesn't have to be directly related to their primary activity performed for the company. Training your employees to the standards and values that you set for success will help uncover hidden talents that can significant value to your operations.
• Encourage open communication: Open communication requires trust and understanding. Employees and leaders need to trust that sharing their thoughts and perspectives about work activities connected to the overall mission of an organization, is encouraged. They also need to have a clarity regarding the goals and objectives of the organization. Employees need to know the "why" for the goals, mission and objectives of your organization. To do that, there has to be more than posted signs in a common area. Leaders must intentionally talk with teams about how operational activities directly connect to the achievement of larger company goals.

These just three examples of approaches influenced by the work of Steven Kerr, author of the scholarly work on business management entitled On the follow of rewarding A, while hoping for B and Duff McDonald, author of the book The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business.

These have been proven to work for large organizations and small teams. The key is to apply these concepts of thought leadership in a systematic way that helps clarify business owner intent. From there, leaders can start the process of constructing workplace environments that reflect the most important values of the company. In turn, the documenting of these concepts moves companies - particularly smaller operations - from the realm of being intuitive organizations to becoming more structured and purposeful teams that drive towards shared goals with a strategic plan undergirding their work.

Adopting employee-centered leader behavior provides companies the ability to associate their employees' behaviors with the goals and objectives of the organization. Often, this helps focus how leaders design their reward and compensation systems used to motivate his or her employees.

Focusing on “higher quality” goals and ensuring employees know their roles in achieving those goals are just two things transformational leaders do to try to distinguish their teams from competitors.