How can you use data to cultivate employee growth? Try these smart strategies from an HR leader

4 Smart Ways You Can Use Data to Cultivate Employee Growth

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Data has percolated into every area of business — from the hiring process, to marketing programs, to charting a company’s strategy for the future. In fact, 80% of business leaders now say data is critical for decision making in their organizations. One area where the right data can make a huge impact is when managers are helping individual team members expand their professional skills. Here are some of the most powerful ways you can use data to develop people more effectively:

4 Ways to Use Data for Employee Growth

1. Set the Stage With Feedback Insights

Before applying data to help employees grow, it’s worth starting at the top — literally. Leaders can demonstrate the power of data by ensuring that essential information flows upstream and downstream across your organization.

Start by setting up continuous feedback loops. In other words, create communication conduits that facilitate the ongoing flow of feedback from employees to team leaders and back again. This can help you better identify areas where employees are struggling and respond more quickly to those needs.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management says effective and timely feedback is “critical to improving performance.” Often, feedback reveals trouble spots that leaders must first address on a management level. This process establishes a foundation that helps employees feel empowered to improve and grow.

For example, imagine that critical project status information is consistently slow to reach some corners of your organization. You conduct a brief employee survey and find that specific communication roadblocks are keeping people from interacting more openly and proactively. As a result, you implement a targeted communication improvement initiative, including tools, protocols, and training sessions that help employees understand when, why and how to communicate project updates.

If you want employees to grow and succeed in their roles, leverage key data from ongoing feedback, so you can encourage growth that also improves business results.

2. Use Data to Establish Performance Objectives

Working hand-in-hand with feedback efforts, data can also play an integral role in establishing employee goals and evaluating performance. The concept is simple. For employees to grow, they must understand where they need to focus and the goals they need to reach.

Smart goal-setting strategies often rely on collaborative OKR methods. This acronym stands for “objectives and key results.” Rather than simply setting a goal and trying to reach it, OKRs let you connect objectives with measurable key performance indicators (KPIs). Data can play a key role as you move through this OKR process.

For instance, say your business wants to boost sales revenue by 10% next quarter (your objective). To get there, you need to define a clear set of actions that will lead to that result. These actions could include a market analysis in the first month to identify additional target audiences, and roll-out of a market expansion sales initiative in the second month. Throughout the quarter, you can use KPIs to measure results and adjust the plan, accordingly.

OKRs are powerful because they tie individual and team goals to organizational objectives. These shared goals are managed and discussed on an ongoing basis. Ultimately, the measurable nature of OKRs lets you use data objectively to measure employee performance and growth over time.

3. Use Relevant Data

Data analysis is an excellent way for leaders to identify opportunities for employee growth. However, it’s important to use data carefully, so you don’t misapply it.

When measuring something like employee growth (which varies from one person to another), avoid using stale or unrelated data. This can cause you to set an unrealistic bar for goals or point you in the wrong direction entirely. Instead, use industry and company benchmarks to create relevant, achievable OKRs that fit into your feedback framework.

For example, leadership consultants at McChrystal Group have helped numerous organizations turn existing data into leading behavioral indicators of team success. The firm’s research underscores a need for workplace accountability and communication.

Specifically, McChrystal analysts have found that, compared with other industries, healthcare employees are 20% less likely to agree that accountability is upheld in their organizations. And separately, financial services middle managers are 15% less likely to say their organizations communicate clearly and regularly about objectives and best practices.

Although these statistics are interesting, they don’t apply to every workplace. So, what’s the key takeaway here?

Don’t use data just because it vaguely supports your situation. If you want to develop a stronger team, make sure your data is up-to-date and relevant to your industry, business, and team.

4. Use Data to Assess Soft Skills Objectively

It’s easy to use data when assessing hard skills and measurable results. For example, if a sales representative isn’t meeting quota, data can help you set objectives to resolve that particular shortcoming. If the employee lacks particular selling skills, data can help you pinpoint the issue and resolve it with appropriate training to improve their performance.

In contrast, soft skills are more difficult to assess. Fortunately, advances in data analysis are making it easier to assess an individual’s soft skills and determine how to improve when needed. This is especially important during the hiring process. But you can also use this kind of intelligence to encourage professional growth among existing employees.

For instance, People First Productivity Solutions recommends soft skill assessment rubrics. By entering data into these tools and analyzing the results, you can objectively determine if an employee’s soft skills are up-to-par at any point in time.

One word of warning about these assessments. You’ll want to be sure you don’t let bias and favoritism influence your analysis. The best way to do this is to measure soft skills against specific job requirements and performance. This will help you more reliably identify areas where an employee can focus to improve over time.

Final Notes

There are many viable ways you can use data to determine where and how to help your team members grow professionally and perform more successfully. From using feedback to set the stage, to creating OKRs and assessing soft skills, you’ll get better results by applying the most relevant, timely data and tools you can find.

Also, remember that a data-driven culture of growth starts at the top. If you’re a business or HR leader, you must set an example that demonstrates a desire to establish appropriate performance goals and a commitment to ongoing improvement. With this strategy, you can encourage (and even gently require) team members to dig deeper and pursue growth that will advance their career while simultaneously benefitting your organization.

How can you create a culture of learning that inspires growth in a hybrid work environment? Check these ideas on the TalentCulture blog

Learning Culture: Ideas for Nurturing Growth in a Hybrid Work Environment

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023
At what point in a career does learning stop? Hopefully, never! Most business and technical professionals realize that becoming proficient in a job and becoming more capable over time requires continuous learning. But this can be difficult for employers to support, particularly in a hybrid work environment. Here’s why…

The Business Challenge

According to research, 70% of employees feel inadequately trained for their current job. What’s more, 74% feel they could benefit from additional training. Yet, the U.S. economy loses an estimated $550 billion a year from workforce disengagement, due in part to a lack of learning opportunities.

Training is critical for employee retention. And retention is critical for organizational success, especially in difficult economic times when companies need to accomplish more with less. But in the wake of the pandemic, hybrid work is becoming more widespread, which further complicates employee development. It’s no longer enough to rely on classic learning strategies based on in-person classroom training, seminars, and conferences.

Although hybrid work creates new challenges for employee training, it also opens the door to fresh thinking. Effective training in a hybrid work environment requires an organization-wide learning culture that ensures equitable opportunities for in-person, remote, and hybrid workers, alike. That’s a tall order, but these ideas can help:

What is a Learning Culture?

“Learning culture” is a simple concept. It’s an understanding that professional growth and development are integral to daily work life and success. It’s also an active commitment to continuous improvement among individuals and teams within an organization.

A strong learning culture encourages and rewards people for developing and sharing knowledge and skills. That’s why employee training is often seen as a benefit, alongside retirement savings accounts, paid family leave, or medical and dental coverage. But a true learning culture isn’t just a perk. It’s a way of thinking and doing that enhances work experiences, while paving the way for future advancement.

This commitment is clearly good for employees — but it’s also good for business. In fact, statistics show that organizations with a strong learning culture enjoy 24% higher profit margins, on average. Also successful companies are nearly 5x more likely to have a healthy learning culture. So it’s worth the effort to improve the way your organization develops employee capabilities.

Despite the simplicity of this concept, a learning culture can be difficult to manage. In fact, ATD estimates that only 31% of organizations have a culture of learning. And now, as hybrid work environments take hold, fostering this kind of culture is becoming even tougher. Why?

The Social Learning Hurdle

Hybrid work complicates learning cultures because it introduces a different mode of remote engagement. This is a problem because many organizations still rely on more traditional methods of informal learning — what psychologist Albert Bandura called “social learning.” Specifically, he notes:

“Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling. From observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed. This coded information serves as a guide for action.”

In other words, we learn how to do our jobs largely by watching others perform similar tasks. As we watch, we pay attention to their expectations and responses, as well as the behaviors of others in our environment.

This is relatively easy to accomplish when people are located at the same place. But when work involves a mix of in-person, remote and hybrid experiences, social learning manifests itself in different ways. This can create problems — especially when our location is determined by factors like commute distance or personal preference, rather than our work role. Ultimately, these unpredictable work patterns can lead to social learning barriers and disconnects across an organization.

To attract and retain top talent, employers need to create a cohesive culture that overcomes these barriers by making continuous learning opportunities and reinforcement available wherever people are located.

Training Resources For Hybrid Work Settings

Bandura was clearly on to something with his social learning theory. Humans are social animals. We learn best from exposure to great teachers, whether they’re formal instructors, informal mentors, or peers. Keep this in mind when developing a training strategy for any hybrid environment. You don’t want to sacrifice the power of human interaction by focusing solely on classic modes of online learning, like asynchronous self-guided training modules. Otherwise you risk disconnecting people from one another.

Where should you focus instead? Hybrid is the keyword here. Invest in next-generation training experiences that bring in-office and remote workers together, with social learning as the glue. For example, consider these resources:

1. e-Learning platforms that support instructor-led breakout sessions, advanced gamification functionality, and in-training assessment and analysis. These capabilities support richer social experiences than isolated on-demand training modules.

2. VR and metaverse technologies that make it possible to create three-dimensional virtual spaces where social learning participants can engage within a shared digital environment.

3. Tools that enhance popular web meeting tools. For example, the Adobe Connect open architecture lets industry partners extend the platform’s core capabilities. Extensions include custom pods, learning management system integration, advanced authentication, login functionality, and much more.

4. Discussion and collaboration tools that function as standalone products or as features you can integrate into a learning management system.

5. Social tools that work within a digital learning environment to supplement and reinforce traditional onsite and online training. For example, Adobe Learning Manager offers built-in social learning tools that make it easy to informally share ideas, content and meaningful insights before, during or after people complete a course.

Supporting Learning Engagement in a Hybrid Work Environment

Of course, identifying helpful hybrid learning tools is one thing, but providing a culture that drives engagement and performance improvement is another. Here are some useful ideas:

1. Proactively encourage all team members to pursue learning opportunities on a regular basis. For example, allocate a particular number of hours each week to the pursuit of development goals. By making resources accessible across devices, platforms and locations, you can enable people to participate at their convenience.

2. Acknowledge and reward team members for the time and energy they invest in learning. This can take the form of financial incentives or team dinners. Even something as simple as a Slack shout-out can boost motivation when employees achieve development milestones.

3. Knowledge sharing is essential for a healthy learning culture. And when team members are rewarded for sharing knowledge, they become more invested in the learning process. So don’t overlook the deep expertise already available within your ranks. Think about how to empower individuals as subject matter experts. Establish methods for people to create, promote and recommend content, so you can get everyone more invested in collaborative learning, even across hybrid teams.

4. Measurement matters in any learning endeavor, so you can determine baseline benchmarks and track progress over time. Digital systems can automatically track training engagement, progress and completions. But you’ll want to track other metrics as well. For example, think ahead about the kind of feedback you want to gather from team discussions, post-learning quizzes, and organization-wide surveys. All of these can help you determine learning effectiveness and map the way forward.

5. Better culture starts with better conversations — especially in a hybrid work environment. That means open feedback channels are essential. What works? What doesn’t? How can your organization improve hybrid learning experiences? Be sure to involve team members in the process of planning, evaluating and evolving their learning journey, for more successful outcomes, all around.

Should you create an AI-driven talent marketplace? Learn how one company successfully navigated this process

Should You Create an AI-Powered Talent Marketplace?

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After years of upheaval that have redefined society, business and work, we’ve entered a period some call the “Great Reflection.” During this era of mindfulness, employees everywhere are reevaluating what they truly want from their career and their employer. In response, companies are investing more heavily in workforce retention strategies. For instance, the internal talent marketplace concept is rapidly gaining momentum.

Why marketplaces? CIPD research says 30% of employers intend to increase wages in 2023. This is certainly one way to show people you value them. Who wouldn’t appreciate competitive compensation? But many people are looking for deeper reasons to stay onboard. As a result, more companies are focusing on employees’ career development concerns.

According to Gallup, 76% of people are seeking opportunities for professional growth. At the same time, modern businesses know they can’t advance their agenda without a future-ready workforce.

That’s why now is a good time to invest in an internal talent marketplace. This kind of solution offers multiple pathways to develop more skilled, innovative individuals and teams. But how can you accomplish this in a way that is cost-efficient, personalized, and accessible? This is our story…

Inside a Talent Marketplace: One Example

To accelerate internal mobility, Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated energy solutions, has developed and deployed an Open Talent Market (OTM). This marketplace leverages leading-edge technology to help retain talent and stimulate employee growth.

OTM is an AI-driven career development and internal mobility platform that matches workforce skills and ambitions to opportunities across the organization. First, employees describe their current skills and past experiences, as well as their future aspirations. Then OTM provides information about relevant open positions, part-time projects, and possible mentors.

The platform also offers career planning capabilities. For example, people can explore potential career paths and establish short-term development tracks to address immediate upskilling needs or develop new skills for the future.

How the OTM Process Works

This talent marketplace is open to all connected employees at Schneider Electric, and through pilot programs for shop floor employees who don’t have daily access to a work computer. With artificial intelligence as its backbone, OTM manages the entire experience at speed and at scale.

To get started, employees create a profile in the platform, which can be based on a LinkedIn profile or resume upload. Next, they can edit and expand their profile information, adding appropriate skills, experiences, interests and development areas. The more data an employee includes, the better the AI results will be.

Schneider Electric embraces the “3E” development framework – Experience (70%), Exposure (20%), and Education (10%). And because OTM is so easy to use, employees can independently explore upskilling and development opportunities that align with each of these learning methods.

Talent Marketplace Benefits

In addition to improving talent development and mobility, this solution has formalized the way our organization manages its internal gig economy. Now, by offering part-time projects through OTM, the company can unlock hours from employees who are eager to work on stretch assignments.

But the real beauty of this talent marketplace comes from its underlying AI, which makes it possible for anyone to discover opportunities that might not otherwise have been considered.

Too often in the past, finding a new position or mentor was all about who you knew. Now, it’s about transparency. That means everyone has access to a broader spectrum of opportunities that might not have been visible previously.

At the same time, the AI personalizes the matching process. In other words, it helps employees focus on opportunities that fit their unique skills and interests, instead of requiring them to filter through a sea of options. This levels the playing field and accelerates the talent matching process by identifying the strongest possibilities, regardless of current role or business unit.

Preparing to Support Internal Mobility

An effective talent marketplace depends on a culture that is open to internal mobility. For many organizations, this requires a significant mindset shift before and during the rollout.

At Schneider, the end goal is to retain our employees by placing them in opportunities that are best suited to their skills and help them continue to grow. This is why we strive to foster open dialogue among employees, current managers, and hiring managers about internal mobility and talent development.

To set the stage for OTM, we adjusted several key policies and procedures, and built OTM logic to support our business objectives:

Policy Changes

  • To help employees pursue new opportunities more on their terms, we’ve removed minimum “time in current role” requirements, as well as the need for a manager’s approval when applying for a new position.
  • To encourage actionable communication about opportunities, we ask internal candidates to receive feedback about any application, regardless of its outcome. In the past, this was not occurring consistently.
  • To support continuous learning and development, we request that employees dedicate 10-15% of their time to projects outside of their current role.

System Functionality

  • When using OTM for career planning, employees can see possible career paths based on several criteria, including their desired roles, typical paths that others in their current role have pursued, or whether they’re interested in moving into management. Within those paths, they can see existing open positions, as well as skill development opportunities to help prepare for future roles.
  • In addition, employees can use OTM to build shorter-term career tracks based on skills or experiences they want to gain or a specific position they want to pursue:
    • A track based on skills and experiences lets employees browse available opportunities, as well as courses offered in our learning management system.
    • A track based on positions lets employees select a specific position they’d like to pursue. Then the AI compares market data to find the skills most often applied in that role and identifies which of those skills the employee already has and indicates any gaps. The platform then suggests available projects, mentors and courses in our LMS that could help an employee fill those gaps.
  • Lastly, OTM is not a one-way street. The AI helps employees uncover matched opportunities. But it also lets recruiters and project owners discover candidates with a skill or experience needed for a position or project role. This feature required change management to ensure that our managers perceive it as a tool that enhances internal mobility, rather than “poaching.”

Talent Marketplace Results

To-date, 80,000 Schneider Electric employees are registered OTM users. And since its launch in May 2020, this solution has helped more than 26,000 employees connect with projects, positions or mentorship assignments.

OTM has been a highly effective way to actively involve employees in managing their careers. It supports people as they develop, grow, and shape their future. And it helps the organization more fully utilize talent, while strengthening engagement and retention. At Schneider, our commitment to a world-class talent marketplace is leading to a brighter future, all around.

 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  In developing this article, Jessica Staggs collaborated with Michele Egan, Open Talent Market Digital Transformation Lead at Schneider Electric

When you train employees do you also boost retention? Find out how to make this strategy work in from FranklinCovey CEO Paul Walker on this #WorkTrends podcast

When You Train Employees, Do You Also Boost Retention?

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Sponsored by FranklinCovey

If you’re involved in hiring or managing people, no one needs to tell you that competition for top talent is incredibly fierce. And keeping teams engaged and motivated is getting more difficult all the time. That’s why it pays to be especially thoughtful and strategic about how you train employees.

This isn’t just my opinion. It’s the conclusion of organizations like SHRM, which found that employees are 76% more likely to stay onboard when their organization has a dedicated process to support workforce learning and growth. Similarly, Deloitte estimates that retention is 30-50% higher among companies with a strong learning culture.

But this begs the question — exactly how can you build and sustain a learning environment that engages people so they want to stay onboard and advance your agenda? That’s the topic we’re exploring today with a brilliant business leader who is also a recognized expert in learning and development…

Meet Our Guest:  Paul Walker

I’m honored to welcome Paul Walker, President and CEO at FranklinCovey! As the company’s chief strategist and operational leader, Paul is committed to transforming organizations and enabling greatness. He actually started his career at FranklinCovey 22 years ago, and has grown and adapted along with the company. So clearly, he knows first-hand how learning and development can help retain top talent. Please join us as we explore this topic:

Connecting Learning With Retention
Welcome, Paul! Let’s dive right in. How is training tied to workforce retention?

Our work with clients and research from others tell us that training is integral to retention for several reasons:

  1. When you train employees, they feel valued because you’re investing in them. And the more valued people feel, the more likely they are to stay.
  2. It helps people perform better. We all want to do our best work everyday. If we need skills to do that, and our employer is helping us acquire those capabilities, it not only helps us do better today, but may also prepare us for something exciting in the future. Again, we feel valued.

How to Train Employees Effectively
What do people really want from work-related training?

There are probably more factors, but over and over again we see employees focusing on these things:

  1. Is it easy for me to access, so I can get the most out of it?
  2. How well does it fit into the flow of my daily work life?
  3. How relevant is it now, and will it prepare me for where I want to be in the future?
  4. Is it useful? Does it actually help me perform better?
How Can You Train Employees for Retention? Join us for a live #WorkTrends Twitter Chat - Wednesday, March 29th - 1:30-2:00pm ET. Follow @TalentCulture on Twitter for questions - and add the #WorkTrends hashtag to your tweets so others can see your comments and interact with you!

JOIN US ON TWITTER!

Choose Learning Metrics That Matter

Retention is important, but what other KPIs should we consider?

When we want to train employees, we need to be sure we’re not just advocating for retention or other objectives that may feel a bit soft to people who make budgetary and strategic decisions. These leaders don’t necessarily see how learning supports what they want to accomplish.

Instead, we need to focus on how learning improves the quality of the team’s results. That’s crucial to the organization’s performance.

We need to talk in the language Deloitte used in its research that says:

  • 92% of companies with more intentional, sophisticated learning develop more novel products and processes,
  • 56% are often first-to-market with products and services,
  • 52% are measurably more productive, and
  • 17% are more profitable.

Make It a Leadership Priority to Train Employees

Absolutely. There’s value here, and our KPIs should reflect that…

I would also say the best organizations have figured out how to ignite a passion for employee learning in their leaders. In other words, people development is a key leadership expectation, and leaders want to be involved in helping their people grow and develop. It’s not just the responsibility of HR or L&D…

For more insights from Paul about how to train employees for retention, listen to this full podcast episode. And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

In addition, we invite you to join our live Twitter chat about this topic on Wednesday, March 29th from 1:30-2:00pm ET. Follow us at @TalentCulture for questions and be sure to add the #WorkTrends hashtag to your tweets, so others in the community can easily find your comments and interact with you!

Also, to continue this conversation on social media anytime, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Developing entry-level talent: How to invest for success

Developing Entry-Level Talent: How to Invest for Success

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Imagine you’re a hard-working entry-level employee who’s been in your current position for less than a year. Your skills are solid, but they don’t help you stand out from other entry-level talent. You know which skills could help you advance, but you’re not sure what resources are available to you or how to get support for a growth plan. You don’t see a pathway to expand your skill set. You just feel stuck.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual. But scenarios like this can have serious consequences for employee morale, mobility, and retention across an organization. For example research says:

It’s no surprise that people look elsewhere when they believe their skills aren’t seen, valued, and nurtured. But this doesn’t need to happen. As an employer, you can avoid losing entry-level employees by investing more effectively in their future with your organization.

Where Employee Development Fits In

A comprehensive professional development program is one way to demonstrate your commitment. Upskilling, reskilling, cross-training and continuous learning practices help employees keep existing skills fresh, develop new capabilities, and expand their career potential over time.

Future-minded employers know that developing entry-level talent is not just good for employee engagement and morale. It’s also a smart business strategy because it builds “bench depth.” By encouraging employees to embrace new responsibilities and growth opportunities, you can create a more diverse internal talent pipeline that will adapt with you as your business needs change.

A commitment to developing entry-level talent also sends a powerful message from the highest levels of your organization. It tells people that every member of your workforce is important, and you’re invested in their future success.

What’s at Stake for Employers

Organizations that invest in entry-level talent realize significant benefits:

1. Higher ROI

When you’re facing workforce skill gaps, recruiting qualified talent may seem like a faster, cheaper, easier solution than employee development. But this is a short-sighted approach that doesn’t necessarily lead to a stronger team. Bringing in new talent requires multiple costly, time-consuming steps, from recruiting to interviewing to hiring. And there’s no guarantee new hires will onboard successfully and become committed contributors.

Why bet on an uncertain outcome, when you already have a team in place that you’ve worked so hard to recruit and onboard? If you spend the same amount of time and money helping existing employees grow, you’re more likely to achieve a higher return on investment.

2. Less Brain Drain

The value of institutional knowledge is also important to consider. The lower your commitment to development, the higher your turnover rate is likely to be. And as employees leave, they’ll take away “insider” intelligence about how your organization gets things done. For example, you’ll lose insight into strategies, tactics and processes that worked, as well as those that didn’t. This kind of information can make or break operational efficiency, effectiveness, cohesion, and more.

By developing entry-level talent, you can equip employees with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in your environment. Along the way, you’ll build and reinforce institutional knowledge, rather than eroding it as disenchanted employees leave.

3. Stronger Employee Value Proposition

We know people are drawn to employers that emphasize continuous professional development and growth. If your loyal workforce sees you turning to new hires instead of investing in existing employees, what should you expect to happen? Morale will sink, the desire for professional growth will vanish, and skills will stagnate. Eventually, employees will look for growth opportunities outside your organization.

Instead, why not reinvigorate your team through learning? Focus on reskilling, upskilling, and cross-skilling. It’s a more sustainable way to strengthen employee satisfaction, commitment, retention, and performance. To get started with a successful entry-level employee development program, consider these five steps:

5 Ways to Develop Entry-Level Talent

1. Establish a Reasonable Budget

Start by defining the key elements of your employee growth plan. Identify the professional development topics and skills your program should address. Any development model will involve both direct and indirect costs, and these should align with market value.

However, expenses aren’t the only consideration. You’ll also want to estimate the value of potential benefits. For example, you may choose to establish a mentorship program that pairs new hires with veteran employees. This is a relatively low-cost way to support a culture of learning, but it can lead to significant tangible results.

2. Provide Time and Resources for Employee Participation

Simply put, employees need dedicated time and support to engage in professional development. Allocate a specific number of days for this purpose — perhaps even paid time away from the office, if possible.

A little workplace flexibility goes a long way in helping talent feel valued, and giving employees choice in managing their schedules encourages accountability and self-regulation.

3. Tap Into the Power of Work Relationships

Ask entry-level employees what kind of development support they feel would be helpful. Then ask managers to co-create a roadmap with their direct reports, based on the knowledge and skills they want to develop.

Managers are likely to know how to leverage connections among team members so they can learn from one another. Research shows that these relationships matter. For example, McKinsey found that 91% of people supported by mentors are satisfied with their jobs. In addition, cohort-based learning enhances workplace communication, overall.

4. Include Team-Building Opportunities

Besides mentorship programs, consider other ways for entry-level employees to learn from teammates. Cross-departmental collaboration, for example, is an underused resource. When employees work with others and learn from one another, they can sharpen both interpersonal and job-related skills. They’re also more likely to understand the company’s inner workings and see the value in individual workplace roles.

5. Showcase Progress

For any program that demands time and energy, employees and employers alike want to see results. To reinforce the benefits of participation, plan to demonstrate how development efforts lead to professional growth, improved performance, and team success. For instance, one study of U.K. reskilling programs resulted in positive economic returns and improved morale. These are the kind of concrete results everyone appreciates.

Summary

These suggestions are intended as launching points to help you make the most of your investment in entry-level talent. With these development factors as a framework, your learning programs can make a measurable and lasting difference in workplace communication, productivity and innovation. Most importantly, this kind of investment can help you build a stronger team that will be invigorated and inspired to move forward together. Everybody wins.

How can your LMS bridge the skills gap? An expert explains how a modern learning management system can help develop essential workforce skills

How Can Your LMS Help Bridge the Skills Gap?

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Sponsored by Learnsoft

The Skills Gap is Growing. So is Pressure on L&D

Demand for skilled employees seems limitless. Modern technology and automation are  displacing workers in all industries, even while creating new jobs that need to be filled. Baby Boomers are rapidly retiring, but entry-level people from younger generations haven’t yet developed enough expertise to take on these positions. And competition for skilled professionals in technology, healthcare and other specialties remains fierce.

Throughout the pandemic, HR departments felt pressure to deliver a high-performing workforce. Unfortunately, that pressure isn’t likely to ease any time soon. In fact, by 2030, talent shortages in the U.S. alone are expected to result in $162 billion in unrealized revenue. 

If these trends give you heart palpitations, I apologize. But the good news is that these pressures are causing employers to look within their organizations to bridge this skills gap. As a result, we’re seeing increased investment in upskilling and reskilling of current employees. Even so, L&D programs are not as efficient as HR and business leaders want them to be.

In part, this is because organizations are not leveraging available learning tools and resources to their full capacity. If you see this happening in your organization, how can you improve?

Let’s take a closer look at the primary types of skills gaps and how organizations are responding. Then, I’ll explain how a learning management system (LMS) can go beyond simply delivering training content to help your business address critical skills challenges.

3 Kinds of Skills Gaps: What Are They?

“Skills gap” is generally used as a catch-all phrase for whatever is amiss in the employee/employer productivity relationship. But actually, there are three gaps to consider:

1. Skill Gap

Unlike the broader term, this specifically refers to intellectual or functional gaps in a person’s ability to perform a particular job effectively. For example, in healthcare this can be demonstrated by a lack of certification required to provide patient care. Or in construction, skilled laborers may need to develop proficiency with new equipment before they can use it at a job site. This differs from a knowledge gap.

2. Knowledge Gap

When employees do not know relevant information about their job or how their role fits into their department or organization, this is a knowledge gap. It can surface during onboarding – but can persist throughout an employee’s tenure. This is why hiring managers need to understand a new employee’s industry and job-specific knowledge, and then provide resources to bring that individual up-to-par as soon as possible.

3. Performance Gap

To perform well in a role, skills and knowledge are essential. However, motivation and commitment are just as important. This brings us to the performance gap – which is the disparity between an organization’s goals and an individual’s performance. This can be measured by a lack of engagement, low productivity levels, poor quality output, and other relevant metrics. These gaps can be especially detrimental, because they tend to expand over time when organizations lack tools to accurately measure key performance factors.

How Employers Are Addressing Skill Gaps

The most efficient way to accurately measure skills in an organization is with an appropriate skills management tool. For example, almost all large companies (98%, according to Training Magazine), use an LMS to manage and deliver e-learning courses and training programs.

The most-used function of an LMS is the ability to track training completions and course certifications within the learning platform. This solves some of the basic skills problems organizations face. However, the missing piece in many LMS platforms is a comprehensive and intuitive reporting capability.

For years, organizations in many industries tracked individual skills and knowledge through manual processes. In some industries, this is still managed manually.

That’s right. In 2023, organizations continue to struggle with automating and streamlining data management and reporting. Even when training is conducted online through an e-learning platform, the data is not easily transferred between applications.

I’ve worked with organizations where employees complete training online or in-person, and then a data entry specialist spends time manually extracting the completion data and copying it into an excel file. Next, they manually import the information into another HR application. This process is time consuming, inefficient and leaves room for error. But fortunately, there are better ways to manage this data-intensive business process.

An LMS Can Do More Than Deliver Content

1. Leverage Integrations

To truly maximize the benefits of an LMS, you need to integrate it with other enterprise applications and tools. By integrating your LMS with your HR ecosystem, you can streamline and automate your training processes, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance the user experience.

Your organization can track and manage L&D goals across the entire company using a single login system that connects an end user to any application within the LMS system. Users don’t need multiple logins to access the intranet, the compliance training portal, benefits and payroll, professional development courses, and so on. Instead, they’re all housed in one system – and those systems talk to each other so they can verify transferred data.

Here’s the benefit from a skills gap perspective: Because these applications work together within the HR ecosystem, you can easily identify employee reskilling and upskilling needs.

2. Support Employee Career Advancement

Understanding employee competency is essential to optimize the talent available in your workforce. This is why an LMS platform’s reporting function is just as important as its content delivery function. Job turnover is bound to happen, but how can an LMS help you more rapidly fill unexpected job openings?

L&D can quickly turn to a comprehensive reporting dashboard that identifies team members who are compliant and certified to fill a role. Intuitive reporting can make it easy to identify these qualified employees, regardless of their team or location. You can also leverage reporting to pinpoint existing skill deficits and make data-driven employee development decisions.

3. Establish Clear Paths to Success

The most important step in closing any skills gap is offering individuals opportunities to upskill through learning experiences and resources that expand their professional knowledge. Research indicates that employees agree. In fact, according to SHRM, 76% of employees are more inclined to stay at a company where continuous learning is available.

This is the strong suit of a modern LMS. It can help L&D teams work with managers to define skills benchmarks, build assessments that identify skills gaps, and determine how development can close those gaps.

You can outline specific courses employees must complete to move up in rank. Then you can communicate about these career growth opportunities and the path forward.

4. Meet Employees on Their Learning Terms

The keyword here is learning. There are many ways to distribute information. But you need to ensure that employees don’t just “acknowledge” that information. The goal is to absorb it, understand it and retain it.

A lack of learning engagement doesn’t benefit employees, and it can even put your organization at risk. For example, Corporate Compliance Insights found that 49% of survey respondents skipped or did not thoroughly listen to mandated compliance training. Imagine almost half of your workforce admitting they don’t pay attention to required learning! Sadly, this is a reality.

How can you avoid passive learning and drive engagement? Whatever content you create, it’s important to bring training directly to individuals and make sure the experience is as accessible, useful and relevant as possible. 

Be sure people have access to personalized training that best suits their needs. In some scenarios, this means face-to-face virtual training. In others, it means microlearning modules people can knock-out in 5 or 10 minutes.

Engaged learners make empowered workers. It is important to remember that people are lifelong learners. Employees need to train, retain, and show competency in their roles. This doesn’t stop when they clock-in for work. A flexible LMS can help employees train at workstation or remotely on a laptop or phone. And it should support personalized learning paths that help tailor learning to individual interests and goals. 

Your Organization Has Changed. Has Your LMS?

Addressing the skills gap means prioritizing your employees by making learning accessible, personalized and engaging. Most LMS providers require organizations to enter a multi-year contract – some up to 10 years. That’s a long time to use a platform if it doesn’t meet all your needs.

Is your LMS keeping pace with the needs of your workforce or your business? Consider these criteria of an effective LMS platform:

  • SaaS-based solution with flexibility to address diverse, changing needs
  • Integrates seamlessly with your HR ecosystem
  • A user experience that is easy for learners, instructors and administrators
  • Functionality that accommodates individual learning schedules and needs
  • Supports various content types to drive learning engagement
  • Streamlines upskilling/reskilling/cross-training efforts
  • Enables self-directed learning paths with recommendations based on job position, requirements, skills, competencies, and performance.
Employee Development - 5 Flexible Approaches that Work

Employee Development: 5 Flexible Approaches That Work

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Over the last three years, flexible and agile work models have been at the forefront of workplace disruption. Emboldened by work-from-home standards enforced during the pandemic, companies across numerous industries stopped requiring employees to be present at the office everyday. Now, many of these organizations are enjoying improved productivity and performance. But how does employee development fit into these new work scenarios?

Recognizing it’s time for large-scale change, more business leaders are willing to try new work methods, tools and solutions. With agility and flexibility at the heart of this ongoing workplace transformation, an increasing number of firms are now turning to flexible development strategies, so they can help members of their workforce realize their full potential.

With widespread talent shortages still posing recruitment obstacles, personal and professional development has become a strategic priority. But organizations that embed flexibility and adaptability into their development process will fare better at retaining people and equipping them for the future.

The Case for Flexible Development

Flexible employee development makes it possible to combine diverse learning methods that meet individual and organizational needs. This is gaining traction for several reasons:

1. More organizations are embracing inclusion as a core value. As a result, respect for individual needs and preferences is being reflected in business practices of all types. For development, this translates into personalized training and resources that accommodate diverse learning habits, skill requirements, and professional interests.

2. Key characteristics of the Industry 4.0 era include broader skill gaps, increasing automation, shifting workforce demographics, hybrid jobs and the rise of non-linear careers. A one-size-fits-all approach to employee development doesn’t address these factors.

Indeed, within modern work environments, rigid development paths are counterintuitive. They leave people feeling bored, disengaged, and ultimately excluded. In contrast, flexible learning options are the most effective way to enhance the value of every employee.

Ideas for Implementing Flexible Development

Over the last 12 months, we have been watching the various ways companies in different sectors are implementing flexible employee development, as well as its impact on talent acquisition, retention, and performance. Below are several noteworthy examples:

1. Design an EVP for Every Discipline

It’s easy to find companies that rely on a generic Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to recruit and retain top talent. But smart employers know this isn’t sufficient. Instead, define compelling career pathways and clearly communicate how employees actually grow and progress within your organization. Also, keep in mind that employee motivations often vary across different professional disciplines.

This was the strategy of Atom Bank – the UK’s first digital bank – during its campaign to hire more senior engineers to deliver core services. In the highly competitive tech talent market, a unique EVP enabled the business to stand out from the crowd and attract highly qualified people.

2. Build Depth Across Functional Roles

The ideal way to expand anyone’s capabilities is to challenge them to complete tasks and projects outside of their standard responsibilities. The objectives are twofold:

  • Offer experiences that help individuals add desired skills that align with their career aspirations.
  • Fill organizational talent gaps and ensure operational continuity.

In the beverage manufacturing industry, for example, Coca-Cola identified an HR staff member’s interest in manufacturing operations and created a hybrid HR/plant management role in response. The outcome was so successful, it became a catalyst for broader implementation. The company began moving more employees into different roles and establishing lines of progression for other career opportunities across the local business unit.

3. Offer Job Rotations and Stretch Assignments

Employees in similar functional areas can learn new skills by rotating jobs and tasks. This method is popular in food manufacturing. For instance, at Nomad Foods, plant managers encourage production workers to gain engineering skills so they can perform basic machine maintenance. Nomad says it not only helps people build new skills, but also improves cross-functional teamwork.

At more senior levels, stretch assignments are a highly effective way to help employees push the boundaries of their current role, so they can improve and expand their professional skills and become better prepared for next steps. In the tech industry, for example, organizations are challenging developers to step out of their comfort zone and take on project management and other client-facing responsibilities.

4. Support Academic Learning

Often, employers lose strong talent when younger workers resign to continue academic studies on a full-time basis. Employers are responding with a variety of attractive alternatives. For instance, some companies pay educational expenses for people who remain onboard. They may also reduce an employee’s work hours. And some employers are offering these options even if people are seeking qualifications that don’t directly relate to their current role.

Here’s how this is working at consumer goods retailer, Iceland. A recent job share arrangement made it possible for two staff members to work reduced hours, so one could return from maternity leave and another could continue university studies. Building flexibility like this into the employee experience demonstrates a serious commitment to employee wellbeing and ongoing development.

5. Emphasize Shared Leadership and Mutual Accountability

Shared leadership and accountability can help different divisions work together more effectively. With this approach, organizations assign common objectives to separate functions or business units, and then measure their collective impact. This enables division heads to gain important skills, knowledge, and experiences that help them become more agile leaders.

Nomad Foods firmly believes in encouraging different division heads to work together, while giving them flexibility in how they achieve mutual objectives. According to Nomad, expanding a leader’s influence in this way tends to drive employees’ overall willingness to take ownership and accountability for outcomes.

Conclusion

These examples are only some of the ways organizations are successfully introducing more flexibility into their employee development strategies. If you’re just starting to implement these methods, first try a limited test case or pilot program and evaluate its impact before committing to wide-scale change.

Regardless, it’s important to recognize that organizations are moving aggressively in this direction. So, the sooner you can identify flexible alternatives that will enhance your classic development offerings, the better.

Strategic Learning 9 ways to prepare for the future of work

9 Strategic Learning Moves to Prepare for the Future of Work

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In HR circles, we talk a lot about employee development. Often, we focus on its role in improving workforce engagement and retention. But strategic learning is about much more than that.

No question, when employees have an opportunity to add new work skills to their portfolio, they become more motivated and involved in their professional growth. It may well spark a desire to stick around, earn a certificate, and aim for further advancement.

Research certainly supports this assumption. For instance, 76% of employees are more likely to stay with a company that offers continuous training, according to a recent survey by TalentLMS and The Society for Human Resource Management. But these days, we need to recognize the power of learning and development as a strategic business move.

The Value of Strategic Learning

Certainly, employees need the right knowledge and skills to perform well in their current roles. But are you preparing them for tomorrow? Strategic learning looks ahead and introduces new practices, approaches, technologies, and solutions that will drive business success, going forward.

The future of work is unquestionably complex. It will be transformed by automation and furthered by machine learning and AI. If people don’t have the means to evolve and expand their capabilities, we’ll all be held back as the workplace enters uncharted territory.

More Than Just New Skills

Effective learning and development is not just about helping employees acquire new skills. It’s also about embracing learning as a strategic imperative. Over the years, I’ve discussed the importance of this perspective with numerous experts. In particular, one previous conversation stands out.

In 2020, I invited Dickens Aubourg to join me for a #WorkTrends podcast interview. Dickens is a learning and development expert who, at the time, was Director of Client Learning at Paycom:

9 Ways to Elevate Your Learning Agenda

In this interview, we explored Dickens’ perspective on strategic learning — and the 9 points we covered still resonate:

1. Treat employee training as a key business strategy that integrates retraining, reskilling, and upskilling. Ultimately, the goal should be to gain and sustain a competitive advantage through workforce readiness, competence and innovation.

2. In most organizations, learning and development isn’t sufficiently supported. Nor is it defined correctly. Learning isn’t an isolated act of class attendance or content consumption. It’s actually part of the daily employee experience. A mix of ongoing formal and informal learning is essential for effective professional development and performance support — including opportunities for social and collaborative learning.

3. We need to value informal learning for bringing context and relevance to work. It’s a way to improve connection and collaboration within teams and across the workforce, in general.

4. Quantifying and recognizing both formal and informal learning creates experiences that help leaders drive meaningful business impact and results.

5. The shift to remote and hybrid work enables organizations to more easily develop people from within. This is critical in modern work environments.

6. HR products and platforms that focus on learning will be an increasingly important component of the HR tech ecosystem. We won’t be separating learning from other people functions, nor should we.

7. It’s important to remember that, while training is not the only form of learning, it is central to employee development. Training on new tools and processes can be woven into an overall learning program that offers other development opportunities, giving employees a sense of growth and accomplishment, as well as the potential to reach new horizons.

8. Leaders will benefit from a better understanding of upskilling. The best way to do that? Start upskilling high-level managers and others in leadership positions. Ask them to identify gaps in their capabilities and offer pathways for professional growth. Targeting only lower-level employees for upskilling isn’t fair, and it’s actually short-sighted.

9. Continuous learning breeds a more nimble, agile workforce, which is what the new world of work requires. Organizations are constantly incorporating new technology and tools. We saw it during the pandemic, but it’s accelerating now. Individuals and teams must keep pace. A culture of learning supports this.

Top Takeaway: Strategic Learning is About Optimism

Employers can no longer afford to hold back on training, development, educational resources, and a commitment to workforce learning. Not only does strategic learning contribute to HR goals, but it also is essential in helping organizations achieve key business objectives. So, for individuals and employers, alike, this means learning is an act of optimism.

I’ve witnessed this firsthand recently at partner companies that are turning to new approaches and processes for growth and improvement. And as a result, they’re thriving.

So here’s the lesson: Tapping into everyone’s potential for growth is not just wishful thinking. It’s an opportunity to strengthen the employee experience and improve performance, while advancing your business agenda. The sum total? We all win.

How to build a learning culture from the ground up - talentculture

How to Build a Learning Culture From the Ground Up

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The great resignation, the rise of hybrid work, and the fear of recession are making one thing certain — today’s talent must be agile and adapt quickly. A culture of learning is vital now because it helps organizations thrive when moving through change. But this kind of culture doesn’t happen spontaneously. It requires intentional effort. This article offers guidance for leaders who need to build a culture of learning that will stand the test of time.

What is a Learning Culture?

Culture is the combination of beliefs and values that drive organizational behavior. In other words, “how stuff gets done around here.” When you center beliefs and values on behaviors that encourage continuous growth and development, you can create a foundation for ongoing innovation and improvement.

A strong learning culture encourages and rewards both individual and organizational growth. It takes time and dedication to build a learning culture, but the outcomes can be transformational. What else does this process require? Focus on these factors:

8 Steps to Build a Learning Culture

1. Plan Effectively

Start by assessing your organization’s recruiting and hiring practices to be sure you’re attracting talent with a growth mindset. This should include a careful analysis of your onboarding process. Do you emphasize the importance of learning? Onboarding often focuses on what employees need to learn. But new employees also need to know who they should learn from and with.

Also, examine your approach to upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling current employees. This will give you better insight into how prepared your organization is to support future needs. 

Use these findings to plan for retention. Keeping employees onboard is critical now. According to The New York Times, “The rise in turnover since the pandemic started has a cost in productivity: It’s taking longer to get stuff out the door.”

Meanwhile, the talent pool remains limited. Currently, for every person seeking a job, 1.7  positions are available. In today’s competitive environment, employers can’t afford to lose top talent. And one of the most powerful ways to keep people committed is through a culture that supports learning and growth.

In a recent report about what we call Work 3.0, we explain how some talent models are more effective than others at achieving these outcomes. For example, organizations with remote and hybrid work models must be careful to ensure that learning opportunities are inclusive and equitable.

Smart leaders rely on the planning process to guide their decisions about learning priorities. This includes careful data gathering and analysis to verify the organization’s current state, define its future goals, and establish a strategic roadmap to bridge this gap. 

2. Ensure a Receptive Environment

Successful learning cultures begin with psychological safety. In a workplace where this is high, people feel comfortable asking questions, voicing their opinions, and taking responsibility for their mistakes.

In fact, after studying nearly 300 leaders over 2.5 years, we found that teams with high degrees of psychological safety had higher performance outcomes and lower interpersonal conflict. This kind of environment encourages employees to learn more fully from their mistakes and from one another.

3. Align Learning With Business Imperatives

What matters most to your organization? This should inform your culture. The most effective learning strategies align with business priorities. Alignment helps scale learning while keeping it relevant, meaningful, and applicable.

Environments that welcome open, honest discussions (including respectful disagreements) are more likely to align learning with the organization’s vision, mission, and goals.

You’ll want to emphasize opportunities to develop mindsets and behaviors that move your agenda forward. This should include incentives and rewards for employees who embrace desired growth.

4. Model the Change You Want to See

It’s essential to recognize continuous learning as a key to better business results. Because culture is shaped by leadership behavior, it’s critical to exhibit the actions you want to see in others. Leaders who exhibit an interest in learning and in rewarding others for their growth will inspire employees to focus on these activities.

Leaders play a significant role here by communicating expectations and modeling behaviors they want to see. For example, it’s important to regularly express curiosity, offer feedback, admit mistakes, and share knowledge.

Effective communication and storytelling by leaders can also help your workforce understand what’s expected and why it’s important for everyone in your culture. This includes engaging in authentic conversations, sharing personal learning experiences, and proactively seeking feedback.

5. Integrate Accessibility Into the Process

It’s vital to scale development opportunities so learning is accessible to everyone, not just high-potential individuals. This is particularly important in today’s environment, where employees don’t necessarily work onsite in a central location.

To improve accessibility, offer development through a variety of modalities. This can include a mix of formal in-person training, virtual courses, asynchronous informal learning, micro-learning, experiential learning, self-paced e-learning content, as well as social and collaborative learning options.

Offering a library of resources can also help keep workforce knowledge and skills up-to-date. For example, you can provide resources such as books, articles, podcasts, and videos through a central digital repository.

A learning management system (LMS) or learning experience platform (LXP) with enterprise licensing can help you scale this kind of learning content. This also makes it possible to track consumption and tie learning to individual and team performance.

6. Invest in the Right Tools and Support

A strong learning culture naturally emerges when development becomes integrated into daily work habits. Leaders can play an important role here, by regularly encouraging staff to devote sufficient time to absorb, practice, share, and apply whatever they learn.

One standard is based on the 70-20-10 rule: This approach suggests that 70% of learning comes from working through challenging assignments and experiences, while 20% comes from developmental relationships, and 10% from formal training and coursework. The process is reinforced when employees take time to reflect on their learning endeavors. You can support this reinforcement phase through mentoring as well as “reverse mentoring.”

7. Customize Appropriately

Today’s employees — especially those in remote and hybrid work settings — prefer development opportunities tailored to their needs. When considering how to elevate your learning culture, be sure to ask employees what they want to learn and how they prefer to engage in learning. Then consider how to provide “core” learning opportunities for all, combined with various options that any individual can pursue. 

Ideally, a customized approach delivers learning experiences that address each employee’s unique needs and interests over time. Research shows that offering various delivery methods tends to boost learner engagement and knowledge retention. Ultimately, that can improve job performance, satisfaction, and commitment.

8. Measure Effectively

Finally, plan to measure your progress and use that intelligence to improve on a continuous basis. 

Formal evaluations can help you track trends, learn from the data, and adjust accordingly. Less formal options, such as the agile review methodology of, “Liked, Lacked, Learned, Longed For” can give you immediate feedback while also changing mindsets.

Strive to make after-action reviews a natural part of work routines. Regularly ask for feedback and use pulse surveys. Also, don’t forget to establish metrics that help you determine how well leaders are advancing the overall learning agenda.

Conclusion

When you build a learning culture, you’ll see how all of these elements are interconnected. If the atmosphere is hostile or complacent, or if content isn’t accessible to all, your mission is likely to fail. If you don’t understand your objectives, measuring progress will be impossible.

Recognize that changing any aspect of an organization’s culture is easier said than done. Progress takes time, patience, support, and persistence — especially from leaders and managers. To secure buy-in, tie improvement metrics to each leader’s performance objectives. Also, to keep learning top-of-mind, publicly celebrate early wins, and keep the cadence rolling.

Eventually, any organization can lead with learning. But it won’t happen until you invest in thoughtful planning and consistent implementation. Remember, it’s a process.

Should You Cut Your Learning Budget During a Business Downturn?

Should You Cut Your Learning Budget in a Downturn?

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At some point, every organization will face an economic downturn. It could be a global recession or a serious slump in one of the industries you serve. Regardless, too many organizations jump to the wrong conclusions too quickly. They slash investment in employee development to save on variable expenses. But cutting a learning budget in haste can lead to much more severe business damage over time.

That’s why smart leaders embrace a long-term growth mindset before, during, and after a downturn. It’s why they double down on developing their people, even when times are tough. And as a result, these organizations don’t just survive. They thrive.

Learning: Strength in a Downturn

Wondering how some businesses actually flourish during difficult economic times? Take a look at the research. During the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000, a small minority of companies (9%) showed strong performance. In fact, they outperformed competitors by at least 10% in sales and profit growth.

What was their secret? In part, they invested in helping employees make better-informed decisions, improve their responsiveness, and adapt more quickly. What was the common denominator beneath these improvements? Learning. People needed the right knowledge and skills to pursue new roles, embrace new tasks, work more resourcefully, and make more effective decisions.

That’s why organizational learning is critical during a downturn. Yet ironically, L&D is often among the first departments that suffer when budgets are cut. It’s time for learning leaders to challenge this practice. Because employee development is not just a nice-to-have option when times are good. It is actually a powerful way to increase productivity, retention, and competitiveness — especially during uncertain economic times.

Flip Your Perspective

A downturn often brings uncertainty and fear. But seeing it instead as an opportunity for growth and differentiation can help your organization position itself as a market leader when recovery eventually comes. Preserving your learning investment can help your people do exactly that. If you cut back your learning budget now, you will hinder your future success.

I might be preaching to the L&D choir. But this is a vital message to spread far and wide across your senior stakeholders. Why? Chances are, the learning budget has already been slashed in each of your competitors’ organizations. If so, you can plant seeds now that can eventually grow into a competitive advantage.

Build the Case for a Sustained Learning Budget

To communicate effectively with executive stakeholders and colleagues, focus on understanding their unique priorities, fears, and challenges. For example, issues that matter to your CFO won’t necessarily be what keeps your CHRO up at night.

Department heads can be a goldmine of insight into high-priority projects, as well as the skills needed for successful outcomes. Partnering with these leaders increases buy-in. And with more voices supporting you, the less likely your learning budget will be cut.

Internal partners can also help you define learning programs that will have a deeper impact on your business. For example, when Capital One implemented a new cloud-based digital transformation, senior learning leadership worked closely with the CIO to define and develop required skills, assignments, and content.

Align Learning With Business Success Metrics

During a downturn, leaders are laser-focused on return on investment (ROI). To avoid seeing your budget hit the cutting room floor, L&D should focus on business metrics that show how learning contributes to the top and bottom line. When you show evidence that learning boosts performance, productivity, and operational efficiency, your C-Suite will think twice about trimming your funding.

Again, partnering with other departments can help uncover relevant data that may not be available in your learning system. For instance, you could link learning behavior with business data such as sales leads, onboarding time, or customer satisfaction scores.

The more directly you tie learning content and consumption patterns with business readiness and productivity metrics, the better. It’s even better if you can prove your learning strategy delivers a tangible business impact at a lower cost than a legacy learning system or process.

Make Every Dollar Count

Ericsson is a good example of this strategy in action. When investing in a new online learning system, the L&D team found that course completions rose by 62%, while the cost of operating the learning technology ecosystem fell by half.

At the same time, business units saw a 41% increase in ethical practices, with 97% of employees completing new anti-corruption training within two months of launch. This was a month faster than previous campaigns with higher completion rates.

In addition, the L&D team discovered that the number of workers who learned Ericsson’s five company-critical skills (5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, collaboration, sales, and automation) increased by 14%.

Address Employee Uncertainty

A final point you can make to your C-Suite involves the human aspect of thriving in a recession. Make no mistake, your people are feeling very vulnerable right now. If they think their jobs and livelihoods are at risk, they cannot do their best work.

People may need to expand their workload in the wake of hiring freezes or layoffs. They may need to switch to another role, team, or project to keep your business operating smoothly. Or, they may have extra capacity when a project is canceled or delayed.

All of these situations affect employee wellbeing and performance, especially if people don’t feel equipped to perform well. In fact, nearly 60% of workers say a lack of confidence in their skills makes their job more stressful, and nearly 40% believe their mental health suffers as a result.

Offering a tailored learning plan with clear career growth opportunities that extend beyond the immediate downturn can have a huge influence on an employee’s perception of job security.

The Marketplace Values Skilled People

Companies that treat their people well during a downturn are building lasting loyalty and a strong employer brand that can pay off over time. For L&D, actions you take now to preserve your learning budget can directly influence your organization’s ability to attract and retain talent in the future.

This is also a strong confidence signal to those outside of your company. It shows prospective customers, analysts, influencers, and investors that you understand this is just a moment in your business lifecycle, and that you’re preparing your workforce for the inevitable upturn.

After all, if your people aren’t prepared with the right skills when the opportunity arises, your business won’t be able to seize the day. In fact, if you wait to upskill your people when a recovery begins, you’ll be too late. Others who invested in learning during the downturn will lead.

Grow Now, Lead Later

Historically, some of the most innovative and inspiring businesses continued to grow during downturns because their leaders understood that opportunities don’t necessarily come during good times. Tough times present challenges that can force you to rethink processes, reskill your people, and develop a competitive edge while other companies may pause.

Learning is crucial in all economic climates, but especially in uncertainty. Skills are the building blocks for your future. You don’t want to cut back on them and find yourself without a springboard to success when the going gets better. For the kind of business impact that will stand the test of time, resist the temptation to cut your learning budget. Instead, double down — the sooner the better.

What is skillability - and why is it so important for future-minded organizations?

Skillability: Will It Solve the Talent Crunch?

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The current talent market poses numerous challenges for leaders and employees, alike. Perhaps the most disruptive force redefining the post-pandemic business landscape is persistently high employee turnover. This “Great Reshuffle” demonstrates just how quickly teams can change—even beyond the pandemic shift to remote work.

A New Business Necessity: Skillability

This fluid employment environment brings good news and bad. Employees are welcoming it as an opportunity to advance their careers. But among employers, it has given rise to the practice of talent poaching. Global companies are proactively pursuing candidates from all over the world, culling the best talent away from other, smaller businesses.

And on top of this highly competitive talent market, employers are now struggling with the effects of inflation. As the cost of living continues to increase, so do demands for higher wages. And candidates are willing to hold out when employers don’t meet their salary expectations. These dynamics can make it tough to fill openings, even for high-paying, highly-skilled roles.

At the same time, employees face a volatile economic landscape that is sending conflicting messages about how to weigh the stability of an existing job against other attractive options. Today’s sky-high inflation hasn’t done employees any favors, either. Even though individuals have more bargaining power, inflation quickly eats into any wage increases gained from a job switch. As a result, economics plays a much more active role in career choices these days.

But despite all of these issues, both employers and employees can rely on one shared secret weapon. It’s something I call skillability.

The Power of Skillability

A skill is an individual’s capacity to perform a job task or function, based on existing knowledge, ability and competence. Skillability, in contrast, is an individual’s capacity to develop proficiency in an unfamiliar skill.

The faster and more efficiently someone can develop a skill, the better. So, skillability can be measured by determining the time an employee needs to develop new skills, along with the investment needed to build those skills.

Training, alone, is not enough to improve skillability. It also requires a supportive, learning-forward work environment. Together, they can nurture professional growth and create a win-win for individuals and their employers.

It’s essential for leaders to develop key workforce skills internally. This gives them new ways to support employees in their current roles, while helping them prepare for future growth within the organization. At the same time, by proactively encouraging team skillability, leaders can uncover new growth opportunities for themselves.

For example, consider technology advancements. While new technologies may promise greater operational efficiency and profitability, they also require specific skills that existing employees may lack. Employees with a high level of skillability can help companies hedge against the uncertainty of changing technology by being adaptable and agile in the face of change.

Building Skillability Within Your Organization

Skillability may sound like a trait, but the ability to develop new skills can actually be learned. It’s all in your approach to training, development, and talent acquisition. Here are just a few ideas to help your organization move forward with this strategy:

1) Consider Candidates Who May Not Fit the Mold

Candidates who lack one or more “required” proficiencies can bring a background or experience that enables them to quickly pick up new skills, duties, and responsibilities. Don’t screen out these individuals.

This approach offers several advantages. First, it opens your organization to new, often untapped talent pools. Also, it encourages the development of existing internal talent, which can drive retention and avoid the consequences of unwanted turnover.

Think about it. If you hire new employees for skillability and their desire to learn, you’re not just investing in their future, but in your organization’s future competitiveness, as well.

2) Build Achievable Benchmarks Into Training

Benchmarking is nothing new. Business leaders use it to determine the highest standards of performance. However, it can also be used for training and onboarding. Benchmarks and timelines can spur self-driven learning over a defined period.

Industrial technology provider, Emerson, relies on a powerful version of this model. It instills lifelong learning “DNA” in new employees to ensure that they will be skillable throughout their employee journey. This kind of approach indicates early on whether employees are likely to grow continually and take on new challenges as they arise. It also encourages the most enterprising employees to quickly distinguish themselves and demonstrate their skillability.

3) Break Employees Out of Their Comfort Zones

Sometimes, the most effective way to cultivate skillability is to nudge employees toward learning opportunities that push their existing boundaries and routines. This strategy is inspired by the fact that people learn more effectively when they’re somewhat uncomfortable as they explore new ways of thinking and doing things. 

Effective learning disrupts the status quo, so to speak. And overcoming these challenges has a way of encouraging people to continue pursuing learning opportunities for themselves. This means you’ll want to put employees in new situations that force them to challenge their thinking, expand their knowledge, test their abilities, and ignite their desire to grow and evolve in their careers. 

4) Establish a Supportive Environment

The climate you establish for new and existing employees is paramount to skillability’s success. It’s important to create a setting where fear is seen as an invitation to grow, rather than a signal to hold back.

Often, leaders inadvertently discourage growth in others because they fear negative consequences or they’re anxious about their own ability to grow. This can intimidate others and put a damper on skillability. One way to avoid this is for senior leaders to consistently and openly encourage all team members to develop skillability, and for the organization to reward people at all levels who step up to the challenge.

Final Thoughts

Employers can become so invested in hiring for a specific skill set that they fail to consider a candidate’s skillability. When you hire people, you’re already planning to involve them in training. So, why not broaden your talent options to include those with a stronger likelihood to learn much-needed skills in the future?

Even if you look within your ranks for employees with motivation and a commitment to continuous learning, you’re likely to find viable job candidates you might not have otherwise considered. It may only take a gentle push in the right direction and an environment that gives them the support they need to grow and succeed.

make change

Want to Make Change Stick? Rethink Work Meetings

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Change. For better or worse, it’s a constant in today’s workplace. And in an uncertain future, it will remain a strategic priority for organizational success. But encouraging people to change is also one of the biggest challenges leaders face.

How can we leverage internal communications to make change initiatives work? Could we find the answer in something as simple as everyday meetings? Join me as I explore this question in depth on the latest #WorkTrends podcast episode.

 

Meet Our Guest:  Lindsey Caplan

Today, I’m excited to speak with Lindsey Caplan, organizational psychologist, communication strategist and founder of The Gathering Effect. By blending her experience in education, entertainment and business, Lindsey offers practical tools to help drive lasting workplace change. Here are highlights from our conversation:

Keyword: Gathering

Welcome, Lindsey! I’m looking forward to talking with you about how organizations can drive more lasting change today. Let’s start with the concept of “gathering.” Tell us, what does this term mean to you?

I define gathering as bringing people together to match a message with a moment for a specific effect. Those of us in HR are very familiar with gatherings. They’re happening all the time, whether they’re virtual or in-person or hybrid.

They come in many forms: town halls, all-hands meetings, off-sites, retreats, conferences, classes, and new hire orientations. These are all tools we can use to communicate about change and help employees do things differently.

Connecting People with Change

Why do gatherings play such a central role in the change process?

Just like a hammer, we can use gatherings for different purposes. There are four different effects that gatherings can produce, depending on the choices we make. The key is to start with the effect you want, rather than the content you want to share.

Know Your Objective

So you’re saying we should begin at the end? Interesting…

That approach may feel a little different, but it really is a significant strategic difference that determines how gatherings can make change stick. So I teach people to diagnose and define the effect they want to achieve, and then adjust their gatherings to align with the effect they want.

What Matters When We Gather

What should we consider as we plan gatherings designed to drive lasting change?

We need to look at multiple factors. Do we know the needs of people that will attend? Do we know what they care about? What’s at stake for them? Often, as leaders, we probably know. But maybe we don’t have a sense of what employees really care about.

How Culture Fits In

You say gatherings are “culture on display.” I think that’s so powerful, Lindsey. But can you explain what you mean by that?

Especially in a remote or hybrid environment, logging into a company-wide meeting, town hall or training class is rare. Right? These are high stakes moments. Often they’re important points in an employee’s journey when everyone is  together. People are listening. They’re paying attention to what leaders say and how they’re saying it. So these are excellent moments to reinforce and build your culture.

What’s Ahead

As we look ahead to the post-pandemic era, what do you see next for work gatherings, communication, and change?

I hope the pandemic workplace has given us awareness about the opportunity to do better. And I think it has revealed what we’re really gathering for—which is not information, it’s connection.

Brilliant! Yes, it’s about becoming more human, collectively. It’s about simplifying. And it’s about being mindful of what’s at stake when we make choices about when, where, how, and why we show up and communicate with others.

 

I love Lindsey’s perspective and her practical how-to advice, don’t you? I hope you’ll find this #WorkTrends episode useful as you plan change-related communications in your organization. It’s always here as a resource if you want to replay it again in the future.

In addition, you can learn more about how to leverage gatherings to drive lasting change by visiting Lindsey’s website, TheGatheringEffect.com.

For more advice from other world-of-work experts, don’t forget to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. Also, to continue this conversation anytime on social media, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Learning

8 Learning and Talent Development Topics for Better Employee Retention

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impact awardInvestment in learning and talent development is an essential ingredient of every company’s engagement and retention plans. What is one crucial topic to include in employee L&D that will lead to better employee engagement and retention?

To help you create an effective L&D program, we asked L&D professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From including interviewer training to developing individual talents, there are several essential topics that may help you deliver a robust employee L&D for better engagement and retention.

Here are 8 must-have topics for better employee retention:

  1. Interviewer Training
  2. Communication and its Impact on Business
  3. Feedback Delivery
  4. Celebrating Achievement
  5. Leadership Development
  6. Build Emotional Intelligence Skills
  7. Goal Setting and Performance Feedback
  8. Develop Individual Talents

Interviewer Training

A must-have learning opportunity for all employees is interviewer training. By focusing on a task and responsibility that most employees engage in throughout their careers, you simultaneously give your employees the skills to contribute to building a more successful company with the right talent. Additionally, you give them skills to carry with them wherever they go next. Interviewer training empowers everyone to become a brand ambassador. It also encourages a truly inclusive and diverse workplace and gives all employees a chance to be better.

Ubaldo Ciminieri, Co-Founder and CMO of interviewIA

Communication and its Impact on Business

Studies show that collaboration drives workplace performance. Learning the value of communication and how it impacts the business should be a priority for all employees to understand. Beginning with the “why” communication is crucial to show how it can affect and change the culture by building trust across the leadership team and staff.

In creating a high-performing, high-functioning organization, there needs to be collaboration on all levels. This means we need to communicate and over-communicate. Things change when people you work with understand what you are trying to do, the why, and how it affects them. The outcome is a high-performing team where work gets done with highly engaged staff, and the company exceeds expectations on all levels.

Denise Moxam, VP of HR and Engagement at Production Solutions

Feedback Delivery

There are countless learning topics that can positively impact employee engagement and retention. One of the areas that I believe to be crucial is feedback. To be able to skillfully provide regular, accurate, and timely feedback can improve performance, increase trust, and build relationships. All of which have a direct impact on both retention and engagement. Of course, the results are dependent upon individuals’ competency in this area. While some people may have the inherent ability to deliver feedback the right way, at the right time most of us need training and practice.

Greg Forte, Senior Director of L&D at Precision Medicine Group

Celebrating Achievement

Celebrating is a powerful skill that all leaders need to have in their toolkits to confidently & effectively lead now. When you celebrate a teammate, you are demonstrating that you see them, care about them, and value their contributions and how they show up in the world.

Celebrating is a skill, and it needs to be included in your L&D strategy. When you have leaders who properly and consistently celebrate their employees, you will see motivation, trust, connection, belonging, engagement, and retention skyrocket! Throw that confetti, leaders!

Leah Roe, Leadership Coach & Founder of The Perk

Leadership Development

While it’s not typically part of the category of employee learning, building a healthy leadership practice at all levels of the organization may be the strongest driver of employee retention and engagement. Employees need the opportunity to grow and thrive in their careers. This will rarely happen without leaders who recognize and encourage their development.

We know that most learning happens on the job and in conversation with others who already know the job. A learning function that equips front-line, mid-level, and senior leaders with the mindset, skill set, and tool set to effectively grow their employees will have an exponential impact on employee engagement and retention (not to mention business results).

Leaders who simply see employees as a means to the end of profitability, customer service, or meeting their operational metrics miss the key ingredient to meeting these business goals. They will see their employees walk away to another opportunity where they can grow.

Dave Adcox, Director, Learning & Organizational Development at Whitley Penn

Build Emotional Intelligence

By building emotional intelligence skills in our leaders and our teams, we support their ability to create an environment where employees are engaged and want to stay. Through our learning and development efforts, we can help our employees understand and manage their emotions, navigate relationships, and build trust. Additionally, we can help them show empathy, reduce stress, communicate better, and inspire others. In doing so, we create a place where our employees thrive and our business grows.

Mary Tettenhorst, Sr. Vice President, L&D of General Electric Credit Union

Goal Setting and Performance Feedback

Since studies show engagement often hinges on an employee’s first 90 days, providing new hires a supportive onboarding experience that includes context on company objectives, culture, and communication standards is critical. Supplementing this with assistance on goal setting will help level-set expectations and facilitate a growth path for the employee.

Always, make sure that your managers are equipped with the knowledge to articulate performance expectations, deliver feedback and coaching, and provide development opportunities for the employee along the way.

Glenn Smith, L&D Manager at Nextbite

Develop Individual Talents

The single most important L&D topic has to be how to effectively develop your people. Unlike a capital investment that has a fixed ROI, investing in human capital has almost unlimited ROI. Not only are you increasing the capacity and competence of your team to create value, development telegraphs that you believe in your people enough to invest in them. When people feel like valuable members of a winning team, they will provide higher levels of engagement and discretionary effort. Development creates a virtuous cycle that benefits both the organization and its people.

Thane Bellomo, Director of Talent Management and Organizational Development of MI Windows and Doors