It’s back-to-school time for employees too — LinkedIn Learning is offering their 20 most popular online courses of the year for free throughout the month of September.
LinkedIn executives say they’re offering the courses free of charge to help as many employees as possible cope with the pandemic — especially workers from underrepresented communities and those affected by layoffs. LinkedIn Learning saw a 130% uptick in course participation once shelter-in-place orders were issued in March.
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“With a lot of people out of work or working remotely at this time, we are seeing a lot of employees investing in themselves and their careers,” says Mordy Golding, director of content strategy for English-language at LinkedIn Learning. “Our hard skill classes, like Excel, are still popular, but there are soft skills we all need in order to succeed in the new normal.”
LinkedIn’s most popular course teaches people strategies for helping them work from home more efficiently. The shift to remote work has been a challenge for employees, who have struggled with increased stress and
“We have a lot of freedom when we’re working from home,” says Crenshaw, who has worked remotely for the past 20 years. “[Employers’] biggest concern is that the people working from home are going to slack off. But the bigger problem is that people never stop working, and that hurts productivity in the long run — performance degrades and work-life balance erodes.”
While employees and managers may be tempted to stick to hard skill courses, Golding recommends participating in classes that focus on soft skills like “being a good listener” because it “transfers well to the remote workforce,” he says. He also suggests that employers take advantage of LinkedIn Learning’s group feature to allow teams to take the courses collectively.
“A very large percentage of people who watch the courses can immediately apply the skills they’ll learn to their job,” Golding says. “If you’re thinking about the long-term health of your organization, it’s a good idea to leverage learning to have an immediate impact on productivity, and bring people together.”
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