The end of a year is a great time for reflection – looking back at what worked, what didn’t, what went well and what was difficult – and planning. As we come to the end of 2021, a year that provided us all with lots of challenges and opportunities, we’re spending some time looking back on the past year here at Evolution and looking forward to some exciting plans for the new year.
In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, we lost a year’s worth of booked in-person coaching and training, and made an instant pivot with the business: we moved everything online, and started building our first online academy, populated with videos and courses designed to help people deal with the challenges of the pandemic, working from home, and developing personal and professional skills. We ran our first webinar on resilience, which saw 100 attendees sign up – so we started a series of free webinars designed to support anyone who wanted help with building resilience, staying productive while working from home and managing remote teams,
We carried out a survey in the summer of 2020 with the aim of gauging the response to and experience of flexible working: were people happier, more productive, with a better life balance? Overwhelmingly, despite the obvious challenges, the answer was yes. Responses showed that most people enjoyed the chance to reduce their commute, spend more time with their family or on their hobbies, and get daily chores done during work breaks so they had more time in the evening. Although working online came with some obstacles, overall respondents had adapted well to the new normal, and even noticed some benefits to video communication replacing face-to-face (like shorter and more efficient meetings).
In the spring of 2021 we carried out a follow-up to that survey, to find out whether attitudes were the same a year in – and again, we found that they were. The trend for flexible working, for working and learning online, was here to stay, and we were geared up to support our clients, both businesses and individuals, in this new way of working.
We continued to add content to our online academy, and made plans for a new platform that would allow us to provide even more useful content, courses and support to anyone looking to get better at what they do, professionally or personally, in the new year (more on that in January).
We also rolled out our online academy to corporate clients, tailored to their individual business needs and goals as part of a package including coaching, face-to-face online courses and training days. Organisations can hand-pick the training their teams would benefit from, and make it available for staff to complete online at their own pace. The response to this has been overwhelmingly positive: we’ve heard from our clients that being able to tailor a programme of online training has been really useful, and it’s been great to add value to the coaching and training we offer our clients with online training that’s available for as many employees who need it.
“From the onset of the pandemic, Martin was quick to adapt to our new way of training delivery and shifted his services to us online, enabling our employees to participate in coaching, mental health support and training whilst working remotely from home. Martin has also delivered resilience training to our staff to support them professionally throughout this period of unprecedented change. The support from Evolution has significantly contributed towards our success in service delivery and staff engagement.” Karen Johnson, Head of People and Technology; Teign Housing
We’ve spent the last two years rigorously testing, researching and planning and we’re really excited to bring you something that will help you achieve your goals, and really become the best you you can be in 2022. If you’d like to receive updates about our plans for the new year, and get early access to the new platform, make sure you’re signed up to the Evolution newsletter. You can sign up here if you’re not already subscribed.