The success criteria for talent management in any organisation is the availability of the right people, with the right skills and knowledge, at the right time, for the right job. This is indeed a tall order! It requires a well orchestrated interplay of different HR functions like recruitment, talent management and learning & development, in alignment with business strategy. This article focuses on the diversity in the available learning resources, the judicious application of which can go a long way in addressing the people development strategy, besides creating a learning culture in an organisation.
Employees can leverage a wide range of resources, often provided by organisations, to develop their subject and process knowledge, and people management, leadership and professional skills.
Instructor-led classroom training is by far the most often used learning resource for helping employees inculcate and hone the required competencies for a job. While this is an important first step in setting an employee on a learning path, it serves, at best, as a springboard for learning and generating awareness related to a particular subject. Whether the person actually imbibes the newly acquired skill or knowledge depends on whether the workplace offers an opportunity to practice the skill and apply the knowledge, and, most importantly, the individual?s motivation for taking the learning forward.
Organisations often use customised e-learning programmes to facilitate employee on-boarding and for training on internal processes. They have the option of leveraging programmes in the areas of personal effectiveness, financial domain and people management from a wide variety offered by global service providers like Skillsoft, Intuition and Havard Mentor Manager.
Other learning resources constitute books, book extracts, articles, Webcasts and subscriptions to online libraries such as Skillsoft?s Books24x7. Organisations provide these via physical libraries or through learning portals, but as with e-learning programmes, these too are underutilised.
Open learning and brown bag sessions are great forums for promoting learning pertaining to various businesses in the organisation, industry trends, etc. These forums provide general and unstructured learning, as employees benefit from getting a better insight into the organisation and learning about topics outside their immediate area of work from senior colleagues and experts.
A prudent use of the above resources, complemented with the interventions mentioned below, would constitute a good approach for employee development at senior levels.
A mentoring programme offers a great resource to an employee by way of a mentor, who can play a pivotal role in employee development by acting as a sounding board, sharing experiences and insights, giving advice and offering a different perspective. The mentee can learn from the mentor?s functional experience and knowledge of the organisation and its culture. It provides a great opportunity to an employee for building his network and getting an insight into the best way to negotiate one?s way forward in an organisation.
Job rotation constitutes another learning opportunity as it lends breadth to one?s knowledge and experience by providing an exposure to different functions, departments and processes, thus adding richness to one?s intellectual capital. The rich learning from this resource cannot be duplicated in any instructor-led training programme.
An opportunity to be a part of a cross functional working group, or a task force, that has been entrusted with the responsibility of solving a real world business or departmental problem, or critically analysing and making recommendations related to a new concept, idea or initiative, can provide immense experiential learning to an employee.
Facilitating memberships on relevant professional associations and encouraging employees to participate in industry forums and conferences provide an excellent opportunity to learn about industry trends and best practices. Employees get an exposure to the way other organisations are structured and their approach to problems. This indeed constitutes a huge learning!
The success of these interventions is contingent upon senior management sponsorship and involvement in employee development. A session by a senior manager who makes a point by sharing personal experiences can be exceedingly powerful, as employees are able to relate to it better. The manager can get involved in employee development in other ways to help him take his learning beyond the classroom. First, be a role model by participating in professional and career development opportunities himself. Second, work with the employee to carve out a development plan aligned with his goals and developmental areas. Next, encourage the employee to make time not only for formal training, but also for informal learning forums like learning fairs and brown bag sessions. Further, hold a dialogue around how the employee plans to practice and imbibe the learning. The best presentation skills programme, for example, cannot transform a person into an ace presenter, unless he gets several opportunities to make real life presentations post training, and receives feedback on these.
Ultimately, however, an individual needs to take ownership of his own learning and development, by leveraging the learning opportunities provided by the organisation.
The author is vice-president, learning & development, with a leading investment bank. These are her personal views