With the coronavirus public health emergency leading to all FDA staff moving to remote working and the cancellation of face to face events, our FDA Learn team have been working hard to make sure our members still have access to high quality learning and training opportunities.

In just two weeks, FDA Learn has had to completely rethink the service it provides to members and build a brand new offering from scratch. The outcome of this is a new series of FDA Learn webinars, which are free and open to all members and which can be accessed from anywhere.

We are living through an extraordinary time, with our members having to adapt to very different ways of working, often with significant additional pressures both at work and at home. It was therefore vital that, as well as finding ways to continue to offer learning on the topics our members expect, we also sought ways to help our members through these troubling times. Hence the focus of the first set of webinars on topics such as resilience, wellbeing and mindfulness.

The webinars are hosted via Crowdcast, and within each session there is a chat facility, enabling those taking part to both ask questions of the session leader, but also interact and offer support and advice to each other. The resources, including the video stream, can then later be shared with both attendees and other members who were not able to log in, meaning they too can benefit from these new learning opportunities.

The first webinar was held on Monday 30 March. Delivered by Katie Driver from the Thinking Alliance, the session focussed on building resilience and working well virtually. It attracted over 340 members with just a couple of days’ notice.

Further sessions have been arranged focussing on health and wellbeing, mindfulness and resilience, and remote leadership skills, and more will be added all the time. Members, check your inboxes for sign up details for future events, and see the FDA Learn page for more on what we have to offer.