How to Avoid Online Learning Fatigue

Online learning and remote training have helped the industry to train essential skills and knowledge to their employees. This even has helped to attain a very big improvement in productivity and growth of companies. But sometimes things are going in a different direction. Employees are started feeling online learning fatigue because of improper management between working hours or shift time and the training timings. The need of avoiding online learning fatigue is as important as training your employees.

What is Online Learning Fatigue

Online learning fatigue is nothing but an overwhelming or burnout sensation of employees due to continuous online meetings, calls, or presentations. Online learning fatigue can develop anxiety, stress, and exhaustion among employees. This can eventually reduce productivity and interest in work leads to less efficiency of employees.

Online learning fatigue is commonly visible to those who moved to work from home from regular office work. Research says that employees who are at work from home spend 50% more time in video conferencing and other online stuff than in previous conditions. This can be a huge reason to start feeling online learning fatigue.

How to avoid this

Online learning fatigue or zoom fatigue can be overcome with the following practices.

1- Gamification

Always make the learning process exciting and interesting with some gaming elements. You can announce top players or rewards to those who achieve certain milestones. Conduct quizzes and announce the winners. Conduct various fun tasks and announce monthly top performers.

It is all up to you to plan your gamification to reduce online learning fatigue. Employees will be more excited and enthusiastic to do work with some winning elements with it.

2- Do not stretch the training above the work time

Always try to include the training sessions or knowledge training inside everyone’s work timing. Let each employee feel that training comes under their working schedule and its as part of it. This will help employees feel extra special because the company is taking actual working hours to train them.

Training can be added as a task for the employees between their regular work hours. This will help avoid online learning fatigue as well as they are going to get a break from their work thoughts for a while.

3- Make the learning simple and engaging

It is very important that you can’t provide hours-long training content between the work hours. Both the time and focus ability of employees won’t be there to follow up the content.

The best practice is to convert the training content into smaller capsules of a maximum of 15 minutes time length. This enables the learner to finish it faster without making them think that they need to focus a lot of time. Also make sure that your content is proper, understandable, engaging to get a better response.

4- Provide Flexibility

Do not just rely on live sessions to train your employees. Try to build a knowledge management system and upload self-paced content. This enables them to learn it anytime and anywhere.

A Blended learning way of training is best where learning can be a mix of self-paced videos and live sessions. Employees will feel more freedom and relief when they can choose their learning timings. Progress of your employees can be understood from the LMS portal also.

5- Build a Community for them

Your employees can be fresher or experienced, they might not get enough time to know each other. Creating a community of your employees and engaging them can help them know and help each other.

There will be freshers who need help or people who are feeling left out or lonely because of the pandemic. This community can help engage and increase their productivity. Your community can be a Facebook group, WhatsApp group, or even a hangout group.

Once you create a community, maintaining it is another responsibility. Creating group rules, selecting admins, checking the conversation should be done to build a healthy community.

6- Support your employees

As a higher authority or team leader of a company, it is your responsibility to check and support your colleagues. Always enquire about their work satisfaction and other things. Employees need encouragement and support from their company when there is a sudden change in working style.

Asking for feedback will help you understand their concerns and adjust the learning process accordingly to get maximum output. Building a great relationship with your employees is the key factor to guide them towards your organizational goals.