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We’re always looking for opportunities to reset in the New Year. Using our learnings from the past 12 months, this can be the perfect time to take a positive step forward by creating new thinking habits to tackle the challenges ahead. 

With this in mind, we at Go1 are excited to share our sponsorship of the upcoming ‘Emerging Stronger’ masterclass, facilitated by L&D industry powerhouses Laura Overton, Michelle Ockers, and Shannon Tipton. 

Our decision to partner with Laura, Michelle, and Shannon was an easy one. We champion their drive to share years of research, evidence, and effective practices to enable anyone in learning and development to drive business value, while also creating opportunities to connect practitioners to solve real problems. 

At Go1, we are committed to an inclusive community, bringing people together through learning. Given this, we also recognise that learning and growth are personal experiences, a value that is reflected in the Emerging Stronger masterclass. 

With a constant need for L&D to adapt to a changing landscape, there has never been a more important time to apply new lenses to get ahead of the curve and emerge stronger. 

The Emerging Stronger masterclass will take place over six weeks, supported by a private, global community, which brings together the best minds in L&D to work on real problems. Participants will practice with a set of evidence-informed modern L&D lenses including data, community, technology, and experiments.

What's more, as a Go1 customer you can receive the Early Bird discount, right up until commencement!

Register here to secure your place at the Emerging Stronger Masterclass with Laura, Michelle, and Shannon.

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We’re always looking for opportunities to reset in the New Year. Using our learnings from the past 12 months, this can be the perfect time to take a positive step forward by creating new thinking habits to tackle the challenges ahead. Secure your place at the 'Emerging Stronger' Masterclass to get ahead of the curve.

Get ahead of the curve and emerge stronger in 2021

As the new year begins, we have had time to reflect and set goals for the year ahead. The next step is to focus on how to stay disciplined and turn vision into reality.

In her famous Ted talk and book Grit, psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth explains that IQ isn’t the only thing separating the successful from those who struggle. Her research is concerned with concepts such as self-control and grit, and how they can predict both academic and professional success. 

While this is useful to know, it doesn’t make it any easier to develop a disciplined mindset. Being disciplined doesn’t come naturally to us: it is far easier to give in to distraction than it is to dig deep and focus on the task at hand. We need to work on our thought processes constantly and strengthen them like muscle to keep growing.

One of the best ways to improve your resolve is through online learning. If you only have five minutes to spare at the end of the day, a course can give you the quick insight you need. We’ve hand-picked five of the best to help you build the right mindset for your professional development this year. 

When looking to improve your chances of success with the goals you set, it is helpful to understand the skills that set you apart. Where does the potential in your personality lie? 

The course Harnessing Your Strengths and Understanding Your Weaknesses can help you identify traits, characteristics, knowledge, and skills that positively impact your work. It will also help you to mitigate your bad habits, personality traits, and less developed skills that hold you back professionally. 

Deciding that you need to make a new, positive habit is the first step towards behavioral change. Sticking to the commitment is not as easy, but understanding the psychology can help. 

With The Complete Daily Positive Habits Building Course, you can build steady, healthy habits quickly and get rid of old, bad habits just as fast. The key is to find a simple way to reinforce these habits daily for them to take permanent root. 

Building positive habits will help you to develop the grit and discipline you need to see your goals through to completion. 

While setting goals for yourself is crucial to your professional development, you also need to factor in the vision of your organization and the needs of your colleagues. Focusing solely on yourself and your personal goals will have limited success. 

The aim is to consider your needs and the needs of those around you. This balancing act can lead to tension, but the course How To Manage Team Conflict can help you to navigate any disagreements. 

Each lecture will help you to implement relevant and meaningful strategies to support you as a leader and culture driver now and in the future.

Resilience is a necessary characteristic for bouncing back from adversity, managing stress, and reaching your full potential in life. 

Power Up Your Resilience is a practical online course which offers a great introduction to the topic, to help you change your mental health and thinking. 

The course is broken down into seven videos, based on content from Dr. Sven Hansen, founder of The Resilience Institute. Dr. Hansen is a medical practitioner with a background in special forces and sports medicine, and since gaining an MBA in 1993 has focused on applying the science of resilience to business.

Resilience can help you with all aspects of life, including your physical health, emotions, sleep patterns, stress levels, and relationships with others. 

Our brains are wired for learning and growth, no matter where we are or what we are doing. From an evolutionary perspective, our ability to learn has shaped us as a species and continues to do so.

To reach our potential, we have to be in the right place psychologically, and this is why developing a growth mindset can be useful.  

This course on leadership innovation provides you with a clear roadmap for creating an environment that inspires trust, cohesiveness, agility, and innovation.

Author Shawn Hunter will show you skills to help you grow into an impactful leader, including listening intently, acting with kindness, showing gratitude, and embracing challenges.

Go1 is your employee's gateway to professional development growth. With courses that cover numerous business functions, we help your staff grow into their role by unlocking their potential. Content is at all levels of difficulty and is suitable for any employee, in any department, in any region

Encourage your learners to own their personal development training, by giving them the flexibility to search and select courses that reflect their professional interests. This helps your employees take the learning outside of the workplace, so they can access it whenever and wherever they want.

Five courses to change your career trajectory in 2021 

Written by guest blogger Maureen Frank, Chief Disruption Officer at Emberin and Diversity & Inclusion thought leader. Maureen challenges leaders and organisations to get real about inclusion and diversity. She has mentored over 35,000 people worldwide and has a passion for women in leadership and inclusive career development. Her approach to diversity and inclusion is challenging and unique, yet simplifies a complex discussion. 

I committed to having 100 virtual coffees with leaders and diversity and inclusion experts from around the world. As a result, I have been having some very interesting conversations. My main question is:

What will the pivot in diversity and inclusion look like post-COVID?

This is the first article in a series of five, drawing from these conversations, my own research, and my hands-on experience supporting leaders to be more inclusive during the lockdown.

It may be tempting for businesses to see diversity and inclusion as non-essential in their struggle to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. But that would be a big mistake.

The change in emphasis might be unintentional as businesses focus on immediate, existential threats or move to adopt measures around new ways of working, workforce capacity, productivity, and the physical and mental health of their employees.

However, companies that reverse course on diversity and inclusion will put themselves at a severe disadvantage, risking a backlash from customers and employees now, while also limiting their potential for growth and renewal down the line.

As societies and economies prepare for the unknowable post-COVID world, it would be easy to tell ourselves that diversity and inclusion are non-essential add-ons, which we can put to one side until the crisis is over. Yet, recent months have reminded us that agile and flexible approaches to work are key components of surviving a crisis. A diverse and inclusive workforce will be critical to organisational endurance. This means D&I will arguably be more important than ever as we move from shock to emergence from the pandemic’s effects.

Some may argue that a global pandemic is not the time to discuss workplace diversity and inclusion as an imperative for organisations; that there are more pressing issues facing our world. But if you step back and look at what organisations need most right now, perhaps you would shift your view and contend that this moment is precisely the right time to recognise the importance of diversity.

What are the diversity and inclusion lessons we have learned from COVID that will impact our new normal?

Privilege is invisible to those that have it

If you’re in a position to stockpile, you’re privileged. If you’re ‘not worried about catching the virus because you’re young/fit/healthy’, you’re privileged. Having financial security, the ability to drive, access to a vehicle, good health, and even a reliable internet connection are all signs of privilege that many of us take for granted. 

With millions living in poverty around the world and millions more living with at least one long-term health condition, there are a lot of people (particularly the elderly, those experiencing homelessness, and folks from low-income backgrounds) who have simply not been afforded the same opportunities.

The pandemic has done much to help each of us understand our privilege. Of course, recognising our own privilege is one thing, but it’s what you choose to do with your privilege that really matters!

The need for rigorous inclusion protocols becomes patently obvious on long video-conferencing calls. It is no longer acceptable for a few people to dominate, interrupt, or appropriate ideas. Managers running calls have a duty to ensure a level playing field when they mediate conversations. 

Feedback, performance and pay evaluations – processes that have often been driven by bias – should become more analytical and metric-based. When the person who casually steps into the manager’s office to brag about their accomplishments can no longer swing by, managers will have the opportunity to be more impartial when handling important career decisions. 

Leaders of today must also exhibit more nuanced skills. The old-fashioned, hard-power style of command and control still plays an important role in crisis management. But other abilities such as showing empathy and appreciation, listening, and offering support take on equal importance.

These have typically been seen as soft skills and were less valued traits practised by women as members of the non-dominant group. Today’s most effective leaders will have to embrace both hard and soft skills to address the needs of their employees, customers, communities, and investors.

OK, so this isn’t breaking news, but the reality is many employees have repeatedly been told that their jobs couldn’t be done remotely, only to find out that they actually could. Imagine having a disability or caretaker responsibilities and asking for accommodations at work that would enable you to effectively balance your circumstances while still fulfilling your role. 

Often these accommodations are considered too expensive, impractical, or simply not feasible. Fast forward to the middle of a global pandemic and it's remarkable to see what the majority of businesses are capable of. Not only have many transformed almost overnight to support remote working and the needs of virtual teams, but they have managed to do so quickly and en masse.

The truth is, if more organisations had embraced remote working sooner, the situation with COVID-19 would have been much easier to navigate with less commercial disruption, financial impact, and emotional stress.

COVID-19 hasn’t only affected our physical interactions, but it has also forced a rapid rise in online conferences, training sessions, and community events. While many see this as less engaging than traditional physical events, it could increase participation for working carers who can’t attend evening events in person, folks with autism who need to avoid noisy spaces due to sensitivity to sound, or for those who might find networking overwhelming like introverts and people with depression. 

Digital engagement could be key to broadening participation, reaching a larger geographical spread, and breaking down barriers to access for many.

As we live through this extraordinary moment in history, with unexpected levels of uncertainty and risks not seen for generations, companies that can draw on a wealth of perspectives in their teams — across genders, generations, cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds — will ultimately be prepared for our new collective, global reality.

Globally, we see a lot of dissatisfaction with an approach to diversity & inclusion that doesn’t seem to work. Fortunately, the approach is changing, and we would love to know what you think. Take our Global Diversity and Inclusion Survey to have your say. 

I committed to having 100 virtual coffees with leaders and diversity and inclusion experts from around the world. As a result, I have been having some very interesting conversations. My main question is: what will the pivot in diversity and inclusion look like post-COVID?

Diversity and inclusion post-COVID: taking the lessons of COVID forward to our ‘new normal’

Written by guest blogger Shannon Tipton, workplace Learning Strategist and owner of Learning Rebels. Shannon is excited to work with organizations to develop learning solutions to achieve applicable business results. Recently named in the top 100 eLearning‘ Movers and Shakers’ by eLearning Industry, Shannon’s blog ‘Learning Rebels’ is in the top 100 eLearning blogs.

The “workplace digital divide” is the gap between those organizations who are at the forefront of technical investment and use, and those who have failed to invest or have invested poorly in the wrong areas. This ultimately impacts employee productivity and employee motivation[1] creating a glaring divide between those companies who are technology leaders, being flexible and adaptable, and those who are falling behind. 

The divide between those companies who are technology risk-takers and those who are comfortable in their analog world, may not have been as apparent pre-pandemic but now with the sudden switch to remote working, the divide is now a chasm and have put their IT departments and their ecosystems into the fast lane. Now is the time to determine what specific aspects of your current organizational digital strategy is holding people back. 

It goes without saying that the challenge of bringing technology innovation into the workplace is going to be cost and culture. It may feel like waiting to implement a digital strategy may be wiser, because something new and shiny may be just around the corner. 

However, preventing the workplace digital divide is the difference between a proactive upgrade and an urgent, necessary upgrade. A proactive upgrade means the organization would feel and function at a higher level and keeps it a step ahead of the organizations that wait and find they have been left behind. 

It is important to point out the workplace digital divide is not about upgrading laptops and phones. The divide is about the failure of organizations to provide clear digital pathways for ease of communication and collaboration. 

Those organizations who exhibit technology leadership are those that create a culture of technology leadership in all areas of the business by addressing three missing links: technology education through data, communication and collaboration, and North Star connection to people and business results. The question then becomes, does your digital strategy connect people to each other and to business results? Let’s discuss why L&D should be paying attention. 

People who work in organizations that are technology challenged are more than 500 percent more likely to be frustrated with their employer and 600 percent more likely to want to leave and work elsewhere[2]. The ask from people to employers is simple:

Understand how we work, and how we want to work

Help us do our jobs better and faster, know our daily journey

Give us up-to-date devices and reliable access to collaborate and communicate beyond email

However, organizations create frustration across the board by wanting people to be creative and innovative[3] yet do not allow or take away access to tools that would support such initiatives. This creates gaps with employee engagement, productivity, and attrition – which is referred to as “Access Agony[4]” which is defined as employees being burdened with the following:

Limited devices, lack of BYOD (bring your own device) programs

When employees were asked about how the lack of a connected digital and technology strategy makes them feel, the responses were enlightening:

85% of employees feel frustrated in their jobs

14% feel the lack of appropriate tech support makes them want to work elsewhere[5]

These are telling figures. A 2017 Gallup report stated attrition costs US businesses a trillion dollars every year due to voluntary turnover. What's most intriguing is that for the most part, some of this damage is self-inflicted through not listening to what employees are clearly asking for. 

“Losing your best people means losing your reliable winners, your constant innovators, and your most effective problem solvers." - Gallup, 2017

Is the workplace divide breaking down your organization?

Employees today realize that a positive social structure within the workplace enhances overall mental health, but also improves engagement. However, those organizations who are technology laggards are removing the potential benefits of key collaboration, communication and relationship building tools. 

Not only does this affect employees in the workplace, but it also affects potential employees. Those who are of the most creative, flexible, and innovative mindsets will take their talents to organizations that have a digital strategy that reaches across the organization. In fact, according to a recent McKinsey report, 74% of people are influenced by the apps, tools, and devices a potential employer offers when making an employment decision. 

Devices and the lack of access to workplace social structures has been identified as one of the biggest pain points within organizations today with 45% of employees feeling that outdated devices and access limitations prevents workplace collaboration. We know that positive social interactions at work directly bolster resourcefulness i.e. enhanced productivity. 

So, what would happen to the workplace if we planned social connection into bridging the workplace digital divide?

Employees who are satisfied with their workplace relationships are more likely attached to the organization. Organizations and leaders who encourage connection and collaboration significantly improve employee satisfaction and organizations that invest in connecting employees see 4.2 times the average profit than those who do not.[6]

Organizations that support social interactions see a positive impact on employee engagement, which then equates to lower business costs, improved performance outcomes, lower staff turnover and absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents (Gallup, 2017).

Collaborative spaces and team settings can lead to knowledge and productivity spillover from trained to untrained workers. We know productivity is improved when employees can collaborate and communicate with more knowledgeable co-workers.[7]

Moments of “access agony” create additional hardships to employees which create pain-points in productivity achievement. When 71% of your employees must create work-around solutions for antiquated technology, there will be a productivity issue. When 35% download additional software to their PCs in hopes it will help them do their jobs quicker and smarter there may be a security issue. When 45% of your workforce feels as though their devices are outdated and use their personal devices instead, there is an engagement issue. 

The following data from a 2017 Gallup report is noticeably clear in the overall KPI results of organizations that are technology laggards: 

27% state the lack of up-to-date technology slows them down at work

28% state the lack of access to programs that are important to their work prevents them from doing their job

20% of employees report using 3 or more devices at work to get the job done. 

30% state the lack of interconnectivity prevents them from doing their work in less time

There is clearly a pattern of employees being so frustrated with organizational technology that they are creating their own bespoke solutions to get the job done – with or without approval. This likely creates actively disengaged employees which cost the US $583 - $605 billion in lost productivity. What is it costing your organization? 

What can L&D do to support the business and decrease the workplace digital divide?

Raise the “Tech IQ"[8] of your organization to create a culture of technology acceptance 

As with most things culture driven, education brings knowledge and acceptance. This means starting from the top, educating leadership through data and using cross-department partnerships and gaining an understanding of an organization's capabilities to shift the mindset.

Do this by helping business leaders understand what they should be exploring. Start with workshops and use-cases to build a foundation of technology curiosity. 

Take inventory of the employee’s journey. How do they use current legacy apps and tools? How do they want to use these tools? Identify all frustration points.

Your digital strategy must first begin with the end in mind, how we can help people to help the business? To do this, there are a few areas to address.

People will be afraid of technology. Some fear technology may take over their jobs or job roles. Help them to understand that technology may subvert some of the tasks we do, but not necessarily erase the actual jobs we have.

Create quick wins to display the critical advantage that bridging the divide will have. Create your hypothesis about the creative methods technology can support that help people work smarter, better, faster to create business results. 

Sharing data around the technology growth and success to show proof of concept.

Create a mindset of community and collaboration

Strong community ties with frequent social interactions (even remotely) with co-workers provide opportunities to experiment, collaborate and share experiences. Additional benefits reach deep and wide across organizations. 

Employees with broad cross-department access can help solve the problems of tomorrow because they see the problems coming. 

Create access to tools, apps, and up-to-date devices to take the handcuffs off people and allow for freer, more productive thinking. 

By creating broader and wider communities and connections, we create an organizational ecosystem. Where if one part falters the others are there to keep the momentum going. 

L&D has an opportunity to have a role in empowering the workplace to bridge this divide. Here are some questions to unlock this opportunity:

Do you know what employees have access to or not have access to?

Is L&D consciously or unconsciously limiting access to important connections and tools?

What decisions or actions can you influence? What bridges can you build across the organization?

Do you know business KPIs? Do you know how your organization makes money? Do you understand the delicate business ecosystem? 

Forward-thinking organizations consider the gains in efficiency for building a strong digital strategy as a reason to build better connections, promote innovation, and strengthen bottom-line results. But also, to design workplaces and processes to encourage working smarter and better. Because as we know, people can only be as good as who they’re working with and the tools they use to get the job done. 

Is your organization creating access agony or being a technology leader with an eye to the future? 

[1] Unisys, Global Report: The New Digital Divide 2018 

[2] Unisys, The New Digital Workplace divide, Infographic 

[3] World Economic Forum Report, The Future of Jobs, 2020

[5] https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/employee-retention-the-real-cost-of-losing-an-employee

[6] https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-the-millions-we-spend-on-employee-engagement-buy-us-so-little

[7] Albert Bandura, 1971 Social Learning Theory

Do you have a workplace digital divide? Does your digital strategy connect people to each other and to business results? Here's why L&D should be paying attention to bridging the digital divide, to keep your organization feeling and functioning at a higher level. 

As the holiday season is upon us, we find ourselves reflecting on the past year and those who have helped to shape our business through a pandemic.  

Before we look back at some of the highlights of the past year, we’d like to acknowledge the turbulence of 2020 and thank our team, our stakeholders and our community for their continued support through one of the toughest years the world has seen.  

To commemorate five years of Go1, we decided to work with the award winning organisation Design Studio to take a look at our brand and ensure it reflected our rapid growth and culture.  

Design Studio has worked with Air BnB, Oberlo, Hello Fresh and many more reputable brands, so we knew we would be in great hands. With two awards for the design of the rebrand (Bronze at the Transform awards for best education brand, and Distinction (gold) at AGDA for illustration), we are excited to see where it can take us! Our teams collaborated for the below result:

‘”The new brand identity feels like home. It provides us with a new ability to reflect our personality and capability in everything that we do, not constrained by the past. Our rapid growth into new customer areas, markets and products means that we can now reflect that diversity of offering simply and effectively.” 

Go1 Reveals New Brand Identity With New Features in Conjunction With Five-Year Anniversary 

Go1 has featured regularly in the press over the course of this year. Here’s a round up of some of the top stories! 

Go1 raises US$40m after remote learning activity triples 

AirTree writes one of its biggest cheques for one that got away 

Australia’s top 10 startups of 2020, revealed 

Microsoft partners with Brisbane startup Go1 for Teams integration 

Queensland Government teams up with global provider to deliver “Netflix for training” 

Go1 named one of LPI’s Top 15 Highest Performing Learning Technology Providers for 2020-21 
 


Throughout the year, we’ve partnered with many businesses to help them improve the way they deliver and manage their employee training. 

The Westpac Group partnered with Go1 to help address the issues that brokers are facing in the finance broking space, and to provide a consistent method of training to the industry. 

We teamed up Metro Trains to help provide more professional development opportunities for their staff and create a culture of learning.  

We also helped SeaLink keep their team members engaged and learning throughout the COVID-19 period. 

We provided the National Trades Union Congress (NUTC) in Singapore a learning hub to expand their knowledge and horizons throughout the year as well as help Singapore stay competitive ensuring their workers stay employable for life. 

Working with Oliver Agency, we were able to provide a solution that provided a broad range of learning content, covering compliance and soft skills.  

We look forward to sharing more customer stories with you in the new year, so you can see first-hand how Go1 is helping companies to deliver improved learning to their teams. 

At Go1 we believe in bringing the learning community together so that we can all share our knowledge and help everyone to improve the way that they learn and train their team.  

This year has proved a little more difficult to bring people together, so we combatted this through ensuring that the community still had a place to band together!  

Our webinars included a plethora of industry leaders, guest speakers, and thought leaders - catch up on our past webinars here. 

We'll be bringing you more exciting webinars in the new year and invite you to get involved in the conversation. 

At Go1, we partner with the world’s top training providers, to bring you up-to-date specialist training for your industry. This year was no exception!  