EDITOR’S PICK

Working from Home a Learning Experience

I remember when I asked a former employer if I could work from home eight years ago or so. They were not receptive, at least at first. Eventually, however, the group of us wore them down and the whole team started working from home. Since we were already dealing with a production team in India, it was very apparent that we could all work from home and put out a magazine just fine. 

All this meant that when I went freelance in 2014, the transition to “work from home” wasn’t a big deal, as I had already been doing it for a year at that point. But for everyone forced out of their offices by COVID-19 in March, there was no transition. They had to scramble to set up a home office if they did not have one already. They had to figure out how they were going to communicate with their team, more than just using email. Google Hangouts? Zoom? Skype? Webex? Slack? And their HR and learning people had a new challenge: how to offer education and training remotely. Was it even possible to be effective? 

The authors in this issue of AMA/MCE Quarterly enthusiastically agree that it is possible to work and learn remotely. Our cover article features William Thallemer, PhD, an AMA faculty member who talks about what it takes to restructure training and development in a work-from-home economy. Others, such as Paul Eccher and Angela Kegler, talk about developing remote opportunities for executive training. Suzanne Bates and Randy Moon speak about the best ways leaders of remote teams can effectively engage these employees. And Martin Emrich, a faculty member at Management Centre Europe, AMA’s European counterpart, talks about how to navigate in a VUCA world (and the pandemic has certainly shown us how volatile the world is right now). 

AMA/MCE are standing by with the tools and training to help executives at this time. As AMA President and CEO Manny Avramidis points out, the organization was one of the first to adapt an online modality, putting 120 titles, products, and services into a virtual classroom “literally overnight.” 

Human beings are extremely adaptable. We’ve survived for this long, and in the era of COVID-19, we will continue to grow.