Don’t take a ‘one size fits all approach’
Unless there’s a critical reason to, avoid blatantly assigning learning modules or courses to your staff members. By doing so, you’re ignoring your individual team members’ unique interests, skills and goals. You’re also making learning less compelling. During one-on-one meetings, talk to your team members about where they see themselves in the future. Do they want to go into management? Then they’ll need to learn more about complex problem solving in their field. Do they want to move into analysis and strategy? Then analytical reasoning is for them. Each person can be paired with a future skill that aligns with their interests.
Make learning a performance goal
When you’re writing out goals with your team-members, it can be easy to get caught up in performance metrics. A big mistake that managers make is not taking into account learning and development as a key goal that is documented for their employees to achieve. Documenting learning as a personal goal lets employees know that you’re willing to invest working time into growing their skills. We recommend doing this for all employees on a permanent basis, ensuring they continue to grow their skills in line with future trends and advancements. Of course, once they have completed their upskilling training, be sure to reward and recognise them within the team.
Use a Learning Management System
Once you’ve figured out what areas in which areas your team will upskill in, an extremely practical way for them to complete their training is by using a Learning Management System (LMS). When you use an LMS, you can create customised learning pathways for your employees. Upload your own content or choose from thousands of pre-made learning courses. You can easily select who from your team should complete the learning and assign the courses to them all from the platform. Managers and leaders can also quickly see the status of a particular course and make sure their employees are on track with their continual development.
Seek short courses
In many ways, we’re in the golden age of learning and development right now. Online learning has made sought-after courses globally accessible. Any manager will understand the importance of ‘soft-skills’ – the ability to be creative, empathetic and innovative are the marks of a great leader. A misconception about these skills is that you either have them or you don’t, as if care and charisma is somehow instinctual.
Looking to the future…
As we continue to navigate the “double-disruption” of the pandemic and dramatic tech advancements, it’s important to give teams the skills they need to be adaptive. Don’t wait for current skills to fade into obscurity, start inspiring your team to continually learn. You’ll be future proofing your team and your business if you do.
Alex Hattingh, CPO at Employment Hero
