Covid-19 has necessitated a change in training metrics to enhance the overall experience of an employee. This has improved organisational best practices and encouraged the workforce.

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The pandemic has affected every industry and forced upon it changes which no one thought would have to be brought about in the first place. The same is true for the HR industry. HR departments across all companies have had to alter the way they go about their operations on a daily basis. Apart from having had to make the practical shift from a physical to a virtual workplace, they have also had to cultivate innovation in their business practices.

The discussions focused on the theme ‘Creating a Customized L&D Dashboard for an Organization’. The panel included prominent speakers like Ashish Chattoraj, CHRO, PayU; Virender Jeet Singh, Director, L&D, Elara and Bharat Pawar Sr. VP-HR, National Bulk Handling Corporation (NBHC).

The panel deliberated on ways in which organisations can innovate their practices of dealing with their employees while being sensitive to their needs. This process has involved understanding how the pandemic has affected the employees on an individual level and how best these can be tackled.

The low level of attention spans of employees at the workplace has been a major concern for all businesses. Recognising this Bharat Panwar said that “decreasing the team size present at virtual meetings has helped in increasing the attentiveness of employees as it helps the speaker keep track.” He stressed that they had been preparing for this so that the faculty gives the due attention to all participants by making it participative and interactive.”

The past 9 months have been difficult for every enterprise. This has led to the conversation around the HR trying to reimagine L&Ds and therefore how to make training sessions interesting for the employees. On this, Ashish Chattoraj commented that “I believe in the philosophy that I can never teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. If your content and courses don’t force you to think, then those training really become futile. So, in the past 9 months, the real effort that has gone in, has been in curating those courses which have a business impact.”

The changes in the L&D courses and training could only have been brought about once it was learnt what helped these employees and improved it for them. Vijender Jeet Singh explained that “there was a tangible effort made to gain a feedback from all departments regarding the requirements of the employees and what do they want to learn in this scenario and to further their competencies within their team and those inputs really helped develop content repositories that they could use to self-learn and develop themselves.”

The session concluded with a collective view gained from the panelists that as time progresses and the pandemic unravels itself, the practices should see constant innovation and reformation so as to ensure a constant work output and cohesive working atmosphere at the digital workplace.