Project LiVE

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  Project LiVE - Learning in Virtual Environment

Inspiration

As we watched the world go into a lockdown due to the COVID-19 situation, and our homes becoming our offices, we were faced with challenges never seen before. With how quickly the situation developed, only a quarter of our team could be Work From Home enabled meaning that we had to come up with solutions to keep the majority of our teams engaged and motivated.

We looked at different solutions and came up with a framework that we could use to promote, provide and track eLearning. We used this time, and used a variety of tools (LinkedIn Learning, YouTube, etc.), to provide our team with a myriad of eLearning modules and to ensure that our team is engaged and their time is effectively used to build up skills. The framework was a huge success with our team completing over 3000+ hours of learning within a short span of 20 days. This also provided a platform for individuals to learn additional skills that would help them with their future growth.

As with Yin and Yang, there is something good in something bad, Project LiVE - Learning in Virtul Environment is the result of these unprecedented times that inspired us to think of how to keep our workforce engaged, motivated and ensure their time is utilized to enhance their skills.

What it does

Project 'LiVE' kick started by concentrating on engaging and upskilling people during this pandemic stage.

It is said, 'communication is the vitamins of staying connected' and we decided to adapt the same mantra. The challenge our project needed to address was not a simple one, to keep our people engaged and connected through the distance created by this pandemic.

The idea of virtual learning enabled us to create a frame work that delivered results. We concentrated on upskilling, to create a positive impact on the individuals participating in this learning journey and help them with skills to aid in their career growth. Another learning initiative was the program concentrating on enhancing language and voice capabilities of individuals in non-call taking teams where session were conducted using different tools like WebEx, team link, YouTube and even through WhatsApp.

How we built it

“ Work from home” “ training to be attended from home “ .... how do we do this? These are question everyone has on their minds. We not only wanted to give answers but also make them believe that it will work.

We started of by putting some structure around this program. As we had to cater to a large crowd, the first step was identifying the right people to take this idea forward. We created groups with representation from every team. What we then saw was wonders happening, amazing drive and enthusiasm by the organisers and the participants.

We leveraged on the technologies available - LinkedIn learning, YouTube, Lynda, Webex etc.We chose the right set of courses for the people to enhance their skills and to keep them emotionally fit during this lockdown. We ran sessions to make the participants aware how these trainings were chosen and how we think it will benefit them, and maybe also help in making them a better person to face the world after COVID.

We had Face to Face connects and quizzes. Webex became a habit and we had virtual training’s and catch up. All this helped us 'Stay Connected'. Through this program, we promise that at the end of lockdown our teams are coming back strong physically and mentally.

Challenges we ran into

Creating a plan and getting it up and running in a matter of days is no easy feat. And we made it happen, with its set of challenges and learnings.

To name a few challenges:

1. Finding the right courses and making sure they were freely available and accessible to all
2. Getting the team representatives together and coordinating with them to ensure maximum course completion
3. Capturing data the right format for better data handling and report generation
4. Rollout of courses in appropriate time intervals
5. Tailor making course plans based on individual interests
6. Ensuring work life balance
7. Accessibility to learning platform taking into consideration network issues

Accomplishments that we are proud of

The framework that we developed were focused on a few different areas:

1. Engage and motivate our workforce who were not work from home enabled - Starting as a simple exercise within individual teams and then expanding the framework to include the entire division within our organization was one of our proudest accomplishments. As part of a team of 300+ people, and the team completing a total of 3870 hours of eLearning in just 20 days was truly an accomplishment for us.

2. Skill up people to help the business As only 25% of the crowd was Work From Home enabled, we also could expand our framework to include programs to help our team skill up by providing cross skilling sessions over virtual environments. Processes that could not work from home were skilled to help processes that could. Another feather in our cap was, our team of Voice and Accent trainers being able to initiate a Language enhancement training session (again, using Virtual Environments), to upskill our back-end staff to be role ready if there were requirements for more people in our direct customer facing processes.

3. Develop niche skills for people growth We were also able to focus on individuals to help them develop niche skills such as Excel, PowerPoint, Data Analytics, People management and Content development which would enable them to further their career based on their individual intrests and requirements.

The framework helped us to

• Moderate the number of training that we could deploy
• Track the training hours in a timely manner
• Understand and provide training that are focused on individuals and teams
• to scale up our workforce to be future and role ready

What we learned

Project LiVE presents an excellent method to keep our workforce engaged and motivated as it combines different kinds of virtual learning experiences

The key however is to engage people in different activities that will benefit them and to gauge the learning they have completed. To show them how they can utilise the skill that they acquired and how to put their learning into practice increases the effectiveness of the programme.

What's next for Project LiVE

How to make Project LiVE available for a larger audience and to provide a frame work that other teams and organizations can tailor make based on their requirements.