Skip to main content

Learning and Development - What do employees want?

 Employees want to learn and they want to develop. Yes. What does that mean?

They want learning opportunities. 

How does one get learning opportunities? How does one develop?

As an employee/human being, I learn when I stretch (not necessarily in terms of hours) myself. I learn new things through the process of failure, unlearning and relearning. And as I learn I develop. Can there be development without learning? My take - almost always not - there can be exceptions, but every project I have picked up has resulted in  a learning. 

And as an employee, I need such opportunities. When I stagnate in a job/role I dont learn or develop. I might also "develop" under a bad boss, but thats not really an opportunity or something to look forward to is it not? 

So, as someone heading an L&D function what do I need to do? Enable these - simply put. 

Learning skills might be a pre-requisite in terms of how I grow in my job. And I might also be able to develop on being opportunities for self reflection, being vulnerable as I learn new skills and put them to practice and make them second nature. 

So, provide avenues for skill building. Practice. Reflection. 

Now whether you do it using AI or HI or whatever mode depends on the scale of the org, your budget, your employee pool and so on. 

This set of principles - have been core principles for a while - whether you were a farmer, factory worker or someone working in AI tech. I need to learn and develop at the job - after all I am investing a good part of my life in it. 

Developing thoughts...


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mintzberg triangle

At a recent training, someone spoke about the Mintzberg triangle. I located it here . Image from that page reproduced here. The page linked above has a better explanation of diagram above, but what intrigued me was that the triangle exists for practically anything. The facilitator referred to this in the context of facilitation. Of how facilitation has science, craft and art to it. That is so true,  I thought. Worth a thought! Need to read of Mintzberg though...
Post a Comment
Read more

On sales techniques

Just as we speak, I received a spam sales mail. As an L&D head, I receive a whole bunch of sales "spam". Not all of it classifies as spam, let me clarify. But a badly crafted sales message is spam. Similarly,  A mail that does not take the organization need into account. A mail that uses techniques like "can we meet this week or next" is pointless - because I dont intend to meet - because your mail did not connect to our need at all.  A mail that is not compelling.  A mail that has no differentiator.  Yes, you are a training company and yes, I am a potential client. Yes you need to get my attention and I might be happier ignoring it. So, how to make that transition? To me the method is to stand out, make the other curious and thats it. When the need arises the client will come (having been on the other side). Someone I had 5 years ago will be working with us because they are "different" - and that is what we seek now.  But my point is - unless your cus
Post a Comment
Read more