SPECIAL SECTION: EDUCATION
SILENT LEARNING:
What Employees May Be Missing While Working From Home
Make consuming this info as simple as overhearing a conversation BY MARY KAY SCULLY | SPECIAL TO NATIONAL MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL
O
ver the past few months, most of us can probably agree that remote work presents a learning curve for both employees and employers. With an entire workforce scattered across their various homes, there are many adjustments that have to be made to ensure their success. In the current COVID-19 world, employers have had to be flexible in ensuring that each employee can balance their responsibilities while away from their usual workspace. With many children taking part in remote learning, parents have had to help educate their kids while maintaining close to normal production levels at work, which now might consist of extra steps or meetings that may not have been as necessary when in a face-to-face environment.
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In addition to these learning curves, a few unexpected consequences of company-wide remote work have come to the surface. In the office, there are so many nuggets of information that employees pick up on, but since they’re isolated in their homes, they miss out on this nuance. While most employee training can be done remotely with almost no problem, these subtle things employees pick up on in the office are a bit trickier to teach.
WHAT IS MISSING? In the mortgage industry, it feels like new rules, guidelines and updates are coming down the line at every turn. Recently, in response to the economic impact of the pandemic, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been making more updates than usual
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– as many as one or two per week. Most employees do not have the time or patience to sit down and comb through these new rules multiple times weekly. Typically, one employee might find this out when they have a loan returned with conditions because of something that has changed. Once they learn of the issue, the employee might vent to a coworker, that coworker might share with someone else or the conversation is overheard and the news spreads. However, news can’t easily travel among coworkers as it once did. With team members working out of their homes, conversations are not overheard or as easily spread. It’s much easier to mention something to a coworker in passing than taking the time to send a message. Another element of work that
