How Do You Prepare Employees For The Future Of Work?

Susan Rider, HCC’s Director of Compliance and Human Resources Consultant, shares her insights on creating a culture of training to prepare your organization for the future workplace.

Isn’t it interesting how trends come full circle?  As employers are looking for ways to upskill their current workforce, training must be at the core of your business.

In 2008 organizations were stating “I am on a budget and need to do more training with my staff.” Now their mindset has shifted with the current market demands –training and personal development opportunities have become necessary to compete with other organizations as they struggle to keep and recruit top talent.

Create a Learning Culture

A learning culture is important – it helps you capitalize on your employees’ potential and grow your business. From employee engagement to increased productivity, a learning culture is something every organization should strive to develop.

Is learning one of your core values?  At HCC, we can tie training back to each of our core values – Team, Perspective, Character, and Culture.

In the blog, “5 Tips to Train a Winning Team” by Sara Meij, she states “While you may have heard the time and costs involved in training and development are a drawback, the costs of not training are far greater – such as higher turnover, poorer work quality, and lack of loyalty.” 

Develop Performance Management Strategies

We are beginning to see organizations build development goals into their performance management strategies – individual, department, or organization-wide.

To produce the desired results, organizations should design training that looks at the below questions.

• How does the [job title]’s performance impact the desired business results?
• What does the [job title] need to do to impact the desired business results?
• What knowledge and skills does the [job title] need to perform these tasks?
• Does [employee or candidate] already possess any of the skills or knowledge needed for [job title]?

Our team can work with you to conduct a skills gap analysis that will help you to better personalize each employee’s training based on their prior experience. 

In today’s hybrid environment, we suggest the following tips:

• Record the training – allows team members who were absent to participate 
• Adult learning – incorporate visual (pictures, charts, or graphs), verbal (speak clearly, ask questions and request feedback), and gamification (hands-on activities).
• Include video clips
• Embrace being messy – nothing will be perfect, embrace the imperfection.  There are lessons to be learned from each experience.

For most organizations, an e-learning solution can be the most cost-effective answer, but e-learning should be mixed with face-to-face interaction to maximize adult learning.

Maintain a Good Mix of Learning Styles

With modern adult attention spans of less than 30 seconds, maintaining a good mix for all learning styles and generations is key. Remember, training is communication. While many Baby Boomers report significant learning results through relationship-driven development opportunities, many Gen X employees find these to be less than useful. These employees report they prefer a more equal, two-way learning environment.

For example, networking or mentoring groups where each participant shares their own knowledge while also learning from others, rather than one person being the “expert” and imparting wisdom to those “less knowledgeable” seems to be a more palatable option for many Gen Xers.

Millennial employees, along with Gen Xers, tend to also value opportunities for self-development through independent research, online self-study courses, and opportunities to try their hands at stretch assignments. Furthermore, many millennial employees also seem to value opportunities for relationship-driven development, such as traditional mentoring.

A learning environment starts with hiring. Use structured interviewing and assessment tools to screen new hires better, then develop and engage them with a training strategy aligned with organizational values.

In closing, training is a “must-have” for the modern organization but must be a priority from the top down for the organization to benefit fully from the investment. We find good adult education tends to bring new ideas from participants and builds a high-performing culture.

Finally, the design of the program should fit your culture. This is an ongoing process before, during, and in between each training session. Ensuring that the presenter(s) are given feedback, allows for enhancements at the next session.