New analyses of over 42,000 learners across its global audience from February to March, showed homebound workers are reskilling on digital sales topics such as Digital Marketing Strategy, User Experience, and Performance Marketing during their weekends, while spending time learning work-based topics such as eCommerce, Big Data and Programmatic Marketing during the week. Indicating that weekdays are spent improving how they do their current jobs and weekends are spent diversifying their skill sets to enable them to pursue a different or additional career.

There were 381% more workers learning during the weekend, with a 500% average increase on Saturdays in March. The sharp increase at the weekend follows a 64% average increase midweek. The 42,302 users analysed completed an average of 9,421 hours of learning throughout March compared to 7,587 in February, a 25% increase month on month.

The data suggests the unstable global economy is sharpening the focus of many homebound professionals who are logging on to educate themselves on digital skills. New learners on the platform increased by 135%, which suggests that most of the re and upskilling is coming from new learners on the platform.

A combination of an unstable economy and a drive to work on personal development is behind the figures, according to Richard Townsend, Founder and CEO of Circus Street, which carried out the research said: “In the 10 years we’ve been providing digital training to global clients we’ve never seen figures like this. We expected learning to go up during the week, which it has slightly, but we were surprised to see such a big rise in weekend learning.

 “Learners across the globe and many of them have told us that the pandemic has sharpened their focus and they’ve realised the need to learn new skills, especially around improving their eCommerce skills and Agile working. 

“Remote working has meant a drastic change in many people’s working lives and so it’s perhaps no surprise that professionals want to improve agile working practises. Using weekends to reskill demonstrates that people are busier than ever during their working week but are using their downtime to catch up in an ever-changing digital world.”