Training and Development During Covid-19: Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste
In This Period of Adversity, Will You Seize the Opportunity?
Coronavirus (or Covid-19) has certainly turned our world upside down. The pandemic has forced governments around the world to shut down economies and swing massive resources to healthcare. For millions of people, the result is working from home or being furloughed. For many, it has led to being laid off.
Your response to this unprecedented situation could determine your future. Yes, this may be our war, but perhaps you should take a leaf out of a previous Prime Minister’s book. Sir Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s leader during World War II, was a man of many wise quotes. Apt for current times are his words, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Benjamin Franklin put it another way, “Out of adversity comes opportunity.”
We are most certainly in a period of adversity, a crisis that we all hope we never see again. However, this period offers opportunity that the wise among us will not waste.
Covid-19: Look after Your Family and Physical and Mental Health
Of course, your first concern must be to care for yourself and your family. It’s essential to ensure that you eat and drink healthily and take regular exercise. It’s also essential to care for your mental health. Social isolation is a very real issue, so you should seek support and social connections (even if these may, for now, only be in cyberspace).
Filling Your Time
Whether furloughed, working from home, or laid off, your daily routine will have changed drastically. You’re going to have a lot more time on your hands. You’ll need to find ways to keep yourself (and partners and children) amused. Mental stimulus is incredibly important. The negative effects of social isolation and a lack of mental stimulus include boredom and depression. To combat this, what will you do?
Many people will fill their time by spending it with children, playing games, exercising, becoming engrossed in social media, or binge-watching movies and TV programmes you haven’t had time to catch up on. Others will declutter their homes, spring clean, take part in online quizzes, re-read favourite books, and so on. Maybe you’ll learn a language.
All the above activities will help to keep you going mentally, but are they the best use of your time?
Suddenly, You Have Time
Though COVID-19 has taken so much from us, it has given most of us something that so many of us complain we have too little of – time:
- Time to connect more deeply with partners
- Time to spend with the children you see far less than you would like
- Time to do those odd jobs that you have been putting off
- And, yes, time to catch up with the movies you have been promising yourself to watch
However, the real opportunity is the time that you now have to focus on professional development. It’s an incredible window of opportunity. But this window won’t be open forever. In a few weeks, the world will start to return to normality. Your time will once again become the commodity that weighs most on those who have least of it.
Seize the Opportunity
Why not seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Schedule time to develop your knowledge and skills. There are plenty of online courses that you can take, and many organisations have rapidly redeployed their training and development from classroom to screen.
One such example is how the Institute of Corrosion is rolling out its training courses and professional development events online:
- We had planned a Corrosion Engineering Division Working Day around corrosion control in transport and infrastructure, to be held on 29th April 2020 at the UK’s National Railway Museum in York. We have moved the full day online and made it a free event – making it more accessible to delegates from around the world.
- Our Coating Inspector courses are all available online, providing industry professionals with invaluable training and career-boosting qualifications.
- Together with training partners we offer a whole range of courses leading to industry qualifications that are increasingly available online, and we’re supporting the rapid transition of more professional development opportunities to online delivery.
The Institute of Corrosion is not standing still during the COVID-19 lockdown. Nor are other organisations in other industrial sectors. In every field, there are increasing and improving online opportunities to boost your professional development.
When you return to work and you’re asked how you spent your time, what will your response be? Will you role out the catalogue of movies you watched, or will you discuss your new skills and qualifications and discuss the new career opportunities available to you because of them?
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis. Stay safe. Stay healthy. And create your opportunity from the adversity.