As employees in the age of COVID-19, so many of us are struggling to navigate the challenges of remote work. And while we will return to our regular workplaces eventually, this abrupt transition to remote work will likely spark many organizations to consider the expansion or evolution of their work-from-home policies.

This “new normal” of remote team communication requires an entirely new way of functioning – especially when it comes to talking about sensitive, nuanced issues.

Think about asking for a promotion, needing to raise a performance issue, or talking to your manager about shifting your workday schedule to accommodate kids at home. How does all of this manifest in this remote workplace reality?

Here at Vyond, we recently teamed up with True Global Intelligence and asked 1,000 employees at large enterprises in the U.S. how comfortable they feel speaking up to managers, or “managing up”, the trait that helps us excel in our careers, but that no one ever explicitly teaches.

Our research identified a significant training gap: 42% of employees said they would be interested in receiving training on managing up, but only 28% of employees have received training on this topic. And as a generation, millennials are particularly craving guidance, with 50% expressing a desire for training on managing up.

Speaking with your manager about sensitive topics is hard enough – now, think about doing it over the phone or video chat. In our remote work environment, we’re now tasked with handling these conversations without being able to adequately gauge body language and facial cues to help guide the conversation. Plus, there’s an element of urgency to consider. These important conversations can’t and shouldn’t wait, especially when it comes to issues like performance and pay.

So what can you do now to help employees prepare? To start, consider offering remote training that specifically addresses how employees can navigate these tough talks in a virtual setting.

Managing Up – and Freeing Up Your Calendar

One situation where “managing up” training comes in handy is this: your schedule being overrun with meetings.

Have you ever asked yourself – why couldn’t this meeting have been an email? We may share memes on social media or complain to similarly beleaguered colleagues, but what if we could actually speak up about it to our managers – and ultimately make a difference?

When we asked our survey respondents whether they feel comfortable talking to their superiors about changing the number of meetings on their calendars, we found that two-thirds (65%) of those with no direct reports have not tried to bring this issue up with their boss. Some groups are more likely than others to bring up the topic – for example, we found men are more likely to have successfully tried to change the number of meetings they have (33% of men vs. 21% of women), while women are more likely to not have tried at all (46% of women vs. 36% of men).

What Can Organizations Do About It?

Conversations with superiors, whether about promotions or reducing the number of meetings, are tricky for even the most seasoned employees to tackle. One way for leadership teams and HR to help employees feel prepared is through training. And now that so many of us are working from home, how this training is implemented matters more than ever. Our survey found the most preferred type of training among employees is self-led online training (51%), compared to instructor-led training and one-on-one coaching. This is heartening, as self-led eLearning is a critical component of training and managing a remote team.

Videos are a valuable resource in conducting remote training and can be easily incorporated into your existing learning content. Creating your own videos with a tool like Vyond ensures they are branded for and tailored to your organization. Videos are extremely engaging, accessible, and adaptable and are a great way to arm your employees with the soft skills they need to confidently manage up.

We’ve made a video template in Vyond on how to have difficult conversations with your manager so you can quickly implement your own remote training, customized to your needs. Click here to access the template and for instructions on how to use it.

The transition from working in an office to spending your entire day at home is not an easy one. We encourage you to hang in there and do the best you can in this new remote work environment. Don’t forget to take care of yourself and not just your to-do list. Take time away from your work, incorporate healthy meals and movement if you can, and connect with your loved ones.

We’d love to continue this conversation on social media and hear how you’re adapting to your new remote life, or if you have other ideas for crucial training in this new world order, don’t hesitate to share. You can find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

While the industry likes to talk about the newest shiny thing in terms of future trends in the training space, I see two foundational concepts driving success for corporate trainings in 2020 and beyond. And they come down to things that are simple and seemingly obvious, but hard for companies to implement.

Message Before Medium

Employees want to be treated as people, not transactions, and corporate trainings need to be communicated in that fashion. This means that when an employee receives a meeting invite for an ethics training, that session better speak to them as humans as opposed to churning out a running list of “Don’t Do” scenarios.

All the new tech and tools in the world won’t help if you don’t have a solid foundation – an authentic message, personalized specifically for your audience.

Once you have that basis, you can think about the best medium to convey the message and oftentimes, that medium is video. Video trainings can help you focus on the key components of your message, since the goal is to keep things simple, engaging, and understandable. It’s also easy to personalize your message so that the training is relatable and connects to your audience.

Matt Moran, a professional public speaking coach for over 20 years, uses Vyond to help build his online courses. Vyond’s ease of use and storytelling capabilities are only part of his reasons for using Vyond, in addition to combining it with live-action to break up the monotony of speaking to his audience. Matt noticed that his students found animation to be more engaging and made it easier to understand his messages and lessons.

Traveling Trainings

Training methods must evolve with the changing nature of the modern workplace. Many of today’s professionals are frequently on the move or do not conform to a normal 9-to-5 workday. Trainings need to reflect that reality and become more engaging, accessible and adaptable.

Using video allows HR leaders to provide the freedom and flexibility employees need. Workers can learn at any time and in any place, the trainings can be easily updated and it’s quicker than ever to create them.

One example that impressed me was Providence St. Joseph Health’s extensive training revamp to prepare their employees for a complete digital transformation in their workplace. They utilized an app that allowed workers to scan a picture or prompt with their phones, which would start short augmented reality-enhanced scenarios. Employees could choose which trainings they wanted to take where they wanted to take them with these mobile, engaging and quick offerings.

It will be interesting to see how these two trends play out over the year, as companies start to pick up on their importance and take advantage of them. I truly believe that those who are able to successfully implement these trends will see long-term results.

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It’s not surprising that we spend a lot of time figuring out not only the ROI for our own programs, but for the GoAnimate platform itself.

There’s resounding agreement that video is an impressive catalyst for engagement in training, e-learning, marketing, HR and many other business functions. But video production is not something that can be taken lightly. Many aspects of making videos can be daunting. From concept to creation, there are a number of factors that can eat up both time and money, leaving that ROI number flat, or in some cases, negative.

That’s definitely not the case with GoAnimate. Using GoAnimate to create videos in house saves on production costs and allows you to be more productive with your time. Let’s take a look at a few of the areas you can save with GoAnimate and achieve positive ROI.

GoAnimate vs. Outsourcing

It can cost $5-10K to independently produce one video, and even more if you have late edits. With GoAnimate, you can make as many videos as you like and edit them whenever necessary at no additional cost. With GoTeam subscriptions starting at $1,000 per year—not even per video—that’s a lot of value.

Time-to-Value / Economies of Scale

Tackling your video projects in-house puts you in the driver’s seat, where you can work as quickly as you need to. With GoAnimate, you can complete your first video in just a few hours, and each video you make after that will take even less time. So instead of managing a single video project that takes weeks, or even months, you can be managing multiple video projects and whatever else you have on your plate.

Cost Management

Engagement with animated video is a lot less expensive than sending your subject-matter experts around the globe to communicate critical business information. GoAnimate videos are the perfect way to convey internal organization updates or change and transformation objectives. They’re efficient for employee onboarding or microlearning, or whatever information you may feel requires more of a “human” touch. All at a fraction of the cost of travel or live action video production.

In the end, whether you’re working on employee training, employee onboarding, or marketing campaigns, you can drive positive ROI from using GoAnimate to create your animated videos.