Editor’s note: As we ended a difficult and unique year and entered a new one, the Training Industry editorial team asked learning leaders to write in with their reflections on 2020 and predictions for 2021. This series, “What’s Changed and What Hasn’t?: Taking Stock of 2020 and Planning for 2021,” is the result. Plus, don’t miss our infographic, “5 Tips for Turning 2020 Disarray Into 2021 Direction: Insights From Learning Leaders,” which shares insights from the series.

COVID-19 threw a haymaker into the business world. Travel bans, lockdowns and spending freezes forced training departments and training companies to adapt in real time to a new reality, while many business leaders wondered if they would survive the year.

While it might be tempting to rehash the pandemic storyline that forcibly reshaped our lives, let’s instead take stock of 2020 and look at the possibilities of training in 2021 and beyond. One thing is for certain: COVID-19 has created a “new normal” that will require training departments to adapt both their subject matter and the manner in which they deliver it.

Welcome to the New Workplace

The biggest change that COVID-19 has brought to the workplace is a shift away from physical presence and face-to-face meetings. Without visibility of their team members, managers have been forced to learn how to supervise their employees without the convenience of being in person. Employees, meanwhile, have had to figure out how to work in a new environment, complete with all sorts of new distractions to manage.

Sales teams, the engine for the business, suddenly lost much of their ability to prospect and be face to face with customers. And training departments and agencies that planned to deliver content in person either had to cancel their sessions or adapt to remote learning.

Shattered Myths

Allowing people to work remotely used to be incomprehensible to most companies. They regarded employees as too undisciplined to work without the accountability of being in an office. Those managers have been surprised to learn that not only are their employees acting responsibly, but in many cases, productivity has increased. Of 800 employers surveyed by Mercer, 94% said that productivity was the same as or higher than it was before the pandemic. As early as 2013, research Chinese company CTrip found that people who worked from home saw a 13% performance increase over employees who did not.

Workforces have adapted by making video meetings more effective. For instance, sales professionals have found that meeting online, while different, can be just as effective as being in person. Employees from all departments have come to realize that their state of mind is more of a problem than learning how to adapt to the new and different. Importantly, time efficiencies that videoconferencing introduced enable people to meet with multiple teams, in multiple cities, even in multiple countries, all in one day and from the comfort of a kitchen table.

Meanwhile, training departments that delivered most of their content in person have learned to adapt to online sessions. In many cases, they have carved day-long trainings into shorter modules spread over several days or weeks, which has the added benefit of helping employees retain and apply what they’ve learned.

Downsides

In a Society for Human Resource Management survey, 65% of employers reported challenges in maintaining employee morale. In addition, people are working longer hours and are in danger of burning out. Meanwhile, a server traffic analysis from NordVPN, a provider of virtual private network services for businesses, found that the average American working day has been extended by three hours.

Workers have had to deal with compounded stresses at home, including balancing work and family, not to mention the worries brought on by the pandemic itself. Managers have had to bolster their soft skills to support stressed workers while maintaining a productive team. Sales teams, in particular, have struggled to prospect for new customers and carry on sales conversations because “it’s just not the same.”

The myth of the undisciplined, unproductive remote employee has been debunked, but employee stress, overwork and fatigue must be taken seriously. While many companies may be reimagining how they can capitalize on remote work and reduced overhead, they must fully consider the welfare of their employees.

Looking Ahead to New Opportunities in 2021

Moving into 2021, how can training departments and suppliers empower companies to be productive in a remote setting, while ensuring the well-being of employees? Training must take a holistic approach by setting agendas that take into account three key performance factors: attitude, competence and execution.

Attitude

Attitude plays a significant role in performance and job satisfaction. The unprecedented challenges workers have faced during the pandemic have exposed the previously mostly overlooked issues of burnout, overwork, stress and pressure. Now, companies have an opportunity to respond differently by creating training that infuses attitude management with competence and execution.

Mindfulness, self-awareness and attitude management all contribute to making employees more committed and productive. Successful companies will train their teams how to integrate these ultra-soft skills into the rhythm of the workday to become more confident, self-reliant and productive.

Competence

COVID-19 required employees to be scrappy and figure out how to adapt to the present challenges and act. These activities have included remote selling, video meetings, virtual collaboration, effective communication, remote management, team support and effective training under difficult circumstances. Employees have taken this opportunity to develop new practices and hone them into well-crafted competencies that will strengthen their team. Now it is time for training departments to take this frontline learning and package it so that other employees can benefit from it.

Execution

Teams have adapted strategies, tactics and approaches to working around the multitude of inconveniences they have experienced to execute in new ways. These adaptations have created new practices that companies will benefit from in the long term. Organizations are seeing improvements in remote working, remote management, leading sessions on video platforms for customers, learning how to collaborate with new tools, finding and selling to new customers, and managing existing accounts from a distance. Training professionals must take the best practices from all of these improvements to help companies standardize the learning that they achieved into the new year and beyond.

The big question in 2020 was, “How can we adapt to survive?” Now that 2021 is here, the question should be, “How do we support our people to continue to bring their best to work each day?”