Never have good employee management and training been more important than now. How successfully is your company making the transition to long-term sustainable learning? Read now, based on examples, how you can make your training crisis-proof with the S-A-L principle!
This is the S-A-L Principle
S-A-L stands for: Structure, Activity, and Learning culture. All three aspects are important in order to create crisis-proof training in the long term. It all revolves around the employees of a company. Because they are the SALt in the soup!
You will now learn how the S-A-L principle works through specific examples:
Provide Structure
Active All employees
Learning Lculture
1. Pillar for crisis-proof training: Provide structure
What sounds banal and simple is often not so easy: Especially in times of crisis, many employees need the feeling of having a structure that gives them stability. The following elements can help your company or department:
Clear roadmaps in training – Example SNIPES
Everyone wants to know what comes next. Always design training according to a logical principle and communicate this internally as well! The company SNIPES, for example, has a “Campus” where every new employee automatically starts with a welcome course upon hiring. From there, the path is clearly outlined, but completely without pressure:
The E-learning concept of SNIPES begins with a mandatory entry phase and is then continued on a voluntary basis.
In times of crisis, a glance to the left and right often helps: Not for envious copying but for a fresh perspective. Download our E-book on successful practical examples with blended learning now!
Action guide – Exercise with the blink.it rocket pack
Crisis-proof training through structure starts small: Incorporate exercises into your training that help employees find their own structure in their daily lives. A helpful example is the exercise “Create your guide” from the blink.it rocket pack.
The illustrated card shows how you can apply the exercise. Also outside of training, the exercise helps to have a reference point in difficult situations, where you can orient yourself.
2. Pillar for crisis-proof training: Active employees
Clearly: Training can only succeed if employees participate. Or more broadly speaking: A company can only be crisis-proof with active employees. The following elements create more activity among your employees:
User Generated Content – Study on employee content production
Kill two birds with one stone: You achieve this with more UGC, i.e., user-generated content. On the one hand, you get employees in training to actively participate. Because the saying “You learn for life and not for school” can be seamlessly transferred to adults: Employees learn for their own success and not to please their trainer. On the other hand, UGC also helps save time in creating learning content!
More on this in this article: User Generated Content: Let employees create their own learning content!
Playfully testing boundaries – Exercise with the blink.it rocket pack
Especially in times of crisis, employees often hesitate to try new things actively. Possible private worries or the absence of support from their close environment can affect daily work.
With the method “Playfully Practice” from the blink.it rocket pack, you give employees the chance to try the unfamiliar without risk. This lowers the inhibitions, and employees are more willing to become active.
3. Pillar for crisis-proof training: Positive learning culture
The third pillar for a crisis-proof future of the company is a positive learning culture: This encompasses the entire company and continuously influences the other two pillars. So that everyone feels “I can develop here, I am promoted and appreciated here!”.
The following elements help generate a positive learning culture in the company:
Regular conversations with supervisors – Example blink.it
Employees want to feel heard and understood. Regardless of the company's size, regular meetings between supervisors and employees are therefore extremely important. At blink.it, so-called “one-on-ones” take place approximately every three months. These are one-hour meetings between exactly one supervisor and one employee – where for the most part, the employee sets the agenda!
Employees | Team Manager |
Preparation and agenda setting | Listening, asking follow-up questions, and possibly answering questions |
Conversation management: Telling and asking questions | Possibly ask follow-up questions to the employee |
Agile training methods – Blended learning and microlearning
A dusty seminar or a monotonous online course are poison for the learning culture in the company. Because if the employee does not even want to start learning at all, training has failed. Instead, apply agile learning methods that the employee enjoys! Combine in-person training with online phases for more variety, for example, as classic blended learning. And create short learning impulses with microlearning that are easy to digest.
More on Blended Learning and Microlearning can be found in our learning materials.
Conclusion: Get active and make training crisis-proof
The S-A-L principle in brief
Provide structures for employees so that they give stability and orientation, especially in times of crisis.
Encourage them to actively participate in training.
And ensure a positive learning culture throughout the entire company!
One last tip: Start best with yourself. Where can you provide more structure, where can you become more active yourself, and how can you contribute to a positive learning culture? Integrate the S-A-L principle into your own work life: First, you learn more yourself. Second, you better empathize with your employees and colleagues. And third, you show yourself as a positive role model that others can orient themselves to.
