More and more organisations are grasping the importance of supporting their employees with mental health issues.
More and more organisations are showcasing the various innovative ways they are prioritising adequate support for their employees. While all this is a step in the right direction, I can’t help feeling that there also needs to be much greater emphasis on what employers are actually doing to reduce the pressure they put on employees in the first place.
At Me Learning, we create online learning for lots of organisations when they are deploying software and new systems. Many of them have harrowing tales of previous roll outs which didn’t end well and put huge stress on employees, sometimes highly resilient people working in critical roles.
Often this is because employees are faced with a go-live before they are ready – they are simply not competent to use the new system because they haven’t had adequate training or the opportunity to practice what they have learnt.
Earlier this year Me Learning ran a seminar at the Police Digital Summit. We were thrilled that some of our clients agreed to make up a panel and talk about the importance of training during systems roll outs and transformation programmes. One of our guests was Andy Rhodes who was the Chief Constable of Lancashire Police at that time. He explained so eloquently the real cost of not getting right the learning to support the deployment of a force-wide software solution. He painted such a vivid picture of very capable and resilient people, used to attending crime scenes and road traffic incidents, who simply couldn’t cope with the challenges of being ill-prepared for a new case management system.
He and other colleagues also went on to explain the mental health benefits of using online learning properly, so people are competent and confident in a new software solution – something we worked closely on with Lancashire Constabulary. This was of course a huge compliment to Me Learning, and great to hear that isn’t the point I am trying to make.
What I simply want to do is ask you understand the pressure you may be inadvertently putting your employees under if you are cutting corners with training, especially when it comes to software learning.
With technology-led learning it is possible to train hundreds of people at the same time. They can follow different learning pathways and they can train at a time and pace which suits them because it is online. And you can build in virtual classrooms, virtual floor walking and compared to traditional training it is usually much cheaper. But more than that, get it right and you will also potentially reduce the knock-on effect of mental health issues later.
To find out more about how we trained 5,000 police officers and staff in 8 weeks at Lancashire Constabulary, click here- www.melearning.co.uk/5k
Also, you can listen here to Andy and other colleagues at the Police ICT Summit session.
For more information on how Me Learning ensures IT, tech and transformation are adopted and embedded while supporting employee wellbeing and resilience, contact Shirley Berry at 07947996095 or shirley.berry@melearning.co.uk.