It is extremely important to ensure that your workplace is a positive and uplifting environment for all. One way to do so is to acknowledge common Learning & Development topics and themes that you can implement for your own team. Keeping these topics and themes in mind will ensure your workplace has a supportive environment and let your employees know they are the priority. Following these learning programs also has many benefits, like helping employees build stronger relationships in the workplace and allowing them to improve their personal skills.
To get started on creating the ideal environment for your employees, here is a list of themes and topics that you can implement:
Ergonomics 💼
When we talk about Ergonomics, we are looking at how safe and comfortable employees' workspace should be to provide them with an environment that they can be successful in. As a company, you want to put your team members first and recognize what kind of environment they would enjoy working in to maximize their productivity. Here are a few practices that you can look into to help you and your team become familiar with the importance of Ergonomics!
Ergonomic Break 🙆♂️
- Take a break from work and get up and move around. Join your team members and be active!
- Working from your computer can cause body tension and discomfort, therefore, looking after your employees is crucial. An idea to help this is, as a team, practice various targeted stretches that correspond with your occupation (Eg. lower back, neck, shoulder and wrist stretches).
- Implementing various ergonomic solutions are extremely important and beneficial for your employees. They make employees feel more comfortable and increase productivity, overall.
Office Ergonomics 🗣
- Show your coworkers that you are there for one another! Come together and go over Ergonomics tips that could be useful for your workplace.
- Discuss personal tips and strategies and share them with your peers as they could drastically assist them in avoiding fatigue.
- You could even have an expert come in to lead the discussion and offer helpful advice.
Improving Home Office Space 🏠
- With many individuals continuing to work from home, it's also important to ensure everyone's home office is set up in a way that allows them to be productive and minimizes distractions.
- Set up a virtual workshop with an ergonomics expert where employees who work from home can join the call, share their at home office set up and ask questions.
If you don't have access to gathering information from an expert, here are some helpful tips:
- Upgrade your lighting: purchase some lighting such as a desk lamp or some string lights to ensure your workspace doesn’t get too dark to work during the evening times.
- Noise Control: Some workers may find it too noisy at home, or may need a better sound system to listen to calls. A great way to tackle these issues is to invest in high quality headphones.
- Protect your eyes: Staring at a screen for too long may strain your eyes. Look into purchasing a pair of blue light blocking glasses!
- Maximize comfort space: It is important to acknowledge how you are treating your physical body when sitting in front of a screen during your work hours. Look into different office chairs and office appliances that are suitable for your body’s comfort.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) 🤝
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) focusses on the efforts within the workplace towards equality and inclusivity to all employees. It is important to make everyone in your team feel a sense of belonging and welcomed! Doing so will ensure there are no barriers held against each other and that you and your team will come out stronger than ever. Here are a few DEI workshops that we think you’ll enjoy.
DEI Discussions 🗣
- To promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace, organize Employee Resource Group sessions with your team to take some time to discuss what cultural occasions can be celebrated together!
- ERGs are a great way to discuss and bring to light specific DEI topics that are suited for your team. This provides your workplace with a cultural understanding of your teammates.
- By having these meetings, you are acknowledging your team members' essential holidays and showcasing effort and inclusion.
Here are a few recent holiday and celebration event idea examples:
DEI Workshops 👥
- DEI workshops are a great way to help employees understand what DEI represents and what strategies and best practices they can build into their day-to-day habits that contribute to a strong and healthy team.
- Workshops are especially useful when it comes to needing to remind your team how important it is to treat everyone around you in an equal manner.
Here are a few examples of organizations that focuses on DEI related events
Work-Life Balance ⚖️
Managing your work-life balance may be difficult to conquer, especially with remote work happening in the same place as your home space. It is important to ensure that your employees are not too burnt out with their work duties, so let’s dive into a few tips that we have come up with for you and your team to have a healthy work-life balance!
Workload Review 📑
- One way to ensure that your employees are happy with their work-life balance is to collaboratively review their workload. It is extremely important to check in with your employees to get a sense of how they are feeling.
- Regularly meet with your team or each employee individually and discuss their workload. Ask them to state how they are feeling, if they are overwhelmed or happy with their workload.
- To turn this into a learning experience for all, host a workshop on effectively prioritizing tasks and how to handle a heavy workload. By properly learning how to handle a heavy workload, you can prevent employees from reaching the point of being overwhelmed and burnout.
Meditation Break 🧘♀️
- Stress management is crucial for a workplace. As employees may be feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated, providing your team with the opportunity to relax and take a break can be very beneficial.
- Taking a 10-30 minute break to meditate can help employees deal with stress and refocus their energy.
- A brief meditation session will improve employee well-being and performance, which will also help their mental health.
Reskilling and Upskilling (Hybrid) 📈
With the state of workplaces and workflows constantly changing due to the pandemic, it is important to recognize which current skills are needed in order to adapt to this new environment. One major change that we all can recognize is the transition into a digital workplace. This opportunity allows us to focus more on the development in virtual training, communicating through online platforms, and using online tools.
e-Learning Companies 🖥
Here are a few online eLearning platforms and workshops that you can look into to adapt into the virtual workplace:
Reskilling vs Upskilling 💭
- Both reskilling and upskilling are about learning and developing new skills, however, each concept is a bit different. Reskilling is about encouraging employees to branch out and move onto different roles within their organization. While upskilling is generally focused on assisting employees in developing new skills and becoming more knowledgeable in their current role.
- Team specific learning programs, for both reskilling and upskilling employees, can be more effective as it becomes more tailored to those who are attending. It could even be something like upskilling employees on how to better communicate virtually on a remote team.
- The importance: Creating a pathway that provides yourself with the opportunity to take on new skills is extremely important as it will boost your development and career growth. There are many benefits to upskilling and reskilling, employees improve their confidence and morale while also refining their work performance. Employers build a developed culture of learning and increase their employee’s engagement, which creates an equipped workforce.
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