Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
(Editor’s Note: Today’s article is dropped at you by our friends at DDI, a world leadership firm that helps organizations hire, promote, and develop exceptional leaders. They were recently named to the Forbes America’s Best Employers 2024 list. Congrats to them and luxuriate in the read!)
A few months ago, I published an article on “10 Work Skills Every Manager Should Have Today”. If you happen to haven’t already seen it, I hope you’ll test it out. A reader asked an incredible query within the comments asking for tactics HR professionals can encourage learning.
It got me pondering. How can organizational leaders encourage worker learning? Since we’ve been chatting with our friends at DDI about leadership, I asked in the event that they would share their knowledge with us. Verity Creedy is DDI’s vp of product management. In her role, she has partnered with organizations to develop leaders and he or she has a special passion for the expansion of frontline leaders.
Verity, thanks for being here. Let’s discuss learning. But I would like to begin on the organizational level. Why should organizations need to create learning cultures?
[Creedy] There may be a transparent business case for the return on investment (ROI) from learning. DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2023 data shows that corporations offering effective leadership development in any respect levels are 2.7x more more likely to be a top financial performer of their industry.
Moreover, we all know that organizations which have a robust culture of development also enjoy more open feedback amongst colleagues, and better rates of worker satisfaction as they feel a way of growth of their company.
I’d wish to think step one in making a learning culture is being a self-driven learner. How can leaders be role models on the subject of learning?
[Creedy] Leaders play a critical role in encouraging employees to be self-driven learners. For instance:
- Do leaders reference their improvement areas and the way they’re striving to shut gaps?
- Do leaders model reserving and protecting time for their very own development?
- Do leaders debrief recent learning activities and share information and points of value they gained throughout the development?
While self-driven learning is very important, there are still times when leaders must encourage others to learn something recent. Are you able to share 2-3 things that leaders can do to encourage others to learn?
[Creedy] Leaders must support their employees as they complete learning. It’s one in every of the most important drivers of longer lasting behavior change. This support should come before, during, and after their team member’s development activities. For instance:
Before: How can they generate anticipation and discuss any barriers to the worker completely engaging during their development?
During: How can the leader encourage the worker to deal with key features to the training and the way it aligns to their day by day work? How can they motivate the worker to network during their development?
After: How can the leader provide ongoing feedback as they take responsibility for applying their recent skills?
From a human resources perspective, is there something HR can do to create a conducive environment for learning?
[Creedy] HR can play a continuous role in encouraging the training and development of employees. Firstly, they should make sure that the training they’re providing is effective and helpful. DDI has identified 5 critical features to designing top quality development experiences. These include:
- Relevant: Put the staff’ needs front and center, ensuring that what they learn is deeply relevant to their roles and day by day challenges.
- Personalized: Every minute employees spend on learning must be meaningful to them. Use assessments and insights tools to assist personalize learning for every worker.
- Immersive: HR will help to create an environment where employees can interact and perform tasks, while learning, as they’d in real life. This enables employees to authentically practice and apply their skills.
- Human: All and sundry brings their heads and hearts to their work, role, and interactions with others. So, any learning, especially on interaction / soft skills, must connect at a human level.
- Trusted: In a world driven by engines like google, employees must know that the event they’re getting is credible, effective, and that it would make their jobs easier and their performance higher.
Following on from this design work, HR should consider the branding of the training. Are they communicating in a way that inspires employees to participate and stay committed?
Lastly, we all know manager support is critical – so HR should engage the managers of learners, so that they are able to support and champion the event initiatives of their team members.
Last query and it’s type of a toughie. Many organizations discourage learning because they feel in the event that they train an worker they’ll just leave. How can leaders proactively help the organization understand the importance of learning?
[Creedy] The business C-suite is targeted on driving results, and just as previously shared, the correlation between worker learning and business results is evident: Organizations are 2.7x more more likely to be a top financial performer once they have effective development. There may be an obvious business case.
When it comes to the priority that growing employees increases the possibility in them leaving, I’d challenge that really … NOT growing employees increases the possibility of them leaving. Leaders who say they’ve the tools to do their jobs well are 5X more more likely to find their jobs filled with meaning and purpose than those that don’t.
So, leaders can do more to assist shine a light-weight on the business value of worker development, being an ally to HR teams or HR business partners. Leaders may also show how any development activities have been helpful by sharing examples of how a team member is using recent skills, or how development has driven recent innovations and enhancements, or how learning has motivated or retained talented employees.
I would like to increase an enormous because of Verity for sharing her knowledge and expertise with us. Considered one of the things we didn’t have time to talk about on this interview is how leaders can encourage several types of learning. If you must learn more on this, DDI has a few great resources:
“Using Micro and Macro Learning Effectively”
“Blended Learning Strategies for Leadership Development”
Each articles are a reminder that learning and development doesn’t should be a one-size-fits-all approach. In reality, that’s what’s wonderful about today’s learning environment … we have now options. And leaders should encourage employees to benefit from all the training opportunities available.
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