Wellbeing is rightly a hot topic right now. Organisations large and small are looking for ways to help their teams deal with the stresses and uncertainty of a global pandemic. Hopefully, that includes addressing the issue of time poverty.

With the pressure to be ‘always on’, many employees are working much longer hours since they started working remotely. That’s backed up by a wealth of recent research:

• NordVPN Teams found that on average, remote employees in the UK, Austria, Canada and the USA are logged into their computers two hours more per day since the pandemic started
• Harvard found that the average workday across 16 global cities has increased by 8.2 percent - or 48.5 minutes more per day
• And as per Hilary Osborne: ‘Wildgoose found 44% of UK employees reported being expected to do more work over the last year.'

No wonder there’s fears of an employee burnout crisis. The increased demands on employee’s time are leading to a rise in time poverty; which is linked to lower well-being, physical health and productivity (Why time poverty matters for individuals, organisations, and nations is worth a read).

Organisations should be looking for ways to deliver time savings to employees. That could involve running fewer and shorter meetings, and simplifying processes so they take up less time. It should also include making sure teams spend less time trying to read and understand important messages at work.

Too often we ask employees to wade through lengthy PowerPoints and webinars when there’s quicker and simpler ways to share important information. This doesn’t just take up unnecessary time, it hinders the chances of the message getting through to the audience.

The need to simplify and shorten is especially relevant in learning and development. Pre-pandemic, getting employees to make time for learning was noted as a major challenge. However, people are hungry to learn if lessons are short and sweet (and work on mobiles), as shown in the explosion in MOOC registrations last year.

There’s no reason organisations can’t offer the same learning experience to their employees. The tools are now readily available to make training mobile-friendly and to deliver it as microlearning. The trick is to shorten content as much as possible without losing any information that’s need-to-know.

In our eBook, Creating engaging eLearning, we’ve compiled a suite of tips to create training that engages your audience and respects their time. It includes tips on how to convert courses into microlearning modules, write and design for digital, and launch new learning into your business.

Our hope is that L&D teams will be inspired to shave as many minutes off their eLearning offerings as possible. We’re pretty confident your employees (and your business) will thank you for it.