How do you prepare people for a near-term future when the shape is still unclear?

For many organisations dealing with a changed or transformed business environment is the predominant business agenda of the moment. Business change and transformation are the lifeblood for learning and development initiatives. In normal times such programmes are formed around a fully developed business strategy that has been months in the making and determined by leadership vision and direction.

However, for many organisations, COVID-19 has changed this measured approach to business change. We are increasingly recognising that the short- and medium-term business environment will remain transformed from whatever went before, but knowing exactly what that will look like in any specific business sector is proving very difficult to predict.

So, an important question for L&D today is to better understand what part can they can sensibly play in the short-term to prepare people for an uncertain future with a high degree of rapid change and transformation to working practices and business direction?

Perhaps the answer centres on equipping people with the confidence, competencies, and tools that allow them to deal with high levels of uncertainty, making the best decisions with imperfect information, and with an agile mindset to ensure they can work through these at pace and within a fast-changing business landscape?

We recently reviewed predictions for the top workplace skills for the future. When we consolidated research findings from five different research reports we found that the skills listed below all featured in the combined top ten listings:

  • Creativity (1)
  • Critical Thinking (2)
  • Adaptability (3)
  • Negotiation (9)
  • Problem Solving (10)

All of the five research reports, which included reports from Forbes and World Economic Forum, pre-dated the dominance of COVID-19 and yet their predictions could not have been more prescient of what was to unfold in 2020. All the above skills are pivotal to help people with the uncertain and changing world in which we now find ourselves. They offer an excellent ‘starter for 10’ priority list for us to work on as part of our people development agendas going forward.

If you are persuaded by the above case, then why not research our extensive content library to find the right courses for your organisation’s eLearning needs covering these areas? We have a good range of options covering all these skills. Just search for these subjects in our course catalogue on our Course-Source eLearning for business portal.

Also do remember, that we can deliver any of the courses through your internal LMS, or we can provide you with a dedicated and branded version of our Course-Source LMS, if preferred.

Search the full Catalogue here