Employee Learning initiatives are important success factors for employees. Here’s why!
To grow within your industry, as a leader your number one priority should be investing in employee development. The more room you give your employees to learn new skills and advance in their careers, the more likely it is that they give your company their very best and stay with you in the long run.
What makes you stand out from your competitors is going to be the people who work for you, and hence your company should be making a long-term commitment toward employee development and learning rather than simply adding in a few happy hours and free lunches to their schedules. Given below are five employee learning initiatives that you need to opt for:
1. Set them up for professional training
From the very start of their time with you, you should set your employees up for professional training. Not only will this set a stage for future learning, but it would also instill in them a sense of growth. Their first few weeks in their new role should include training about workplace conduct, office culture, company policies, and ethics. It would allow them to grasp the overall personality of your company, and allow them to hence contribute to their new role in a unique manner. This would also feature training regarding their new role with a colleague that can walk them through the entire orientation process.
2. Encourage self-study
As a company, you should invest in and encourage self-study for your employees. Self-study may be accomplished by enrolling in a college or university or a diploma or course that is fully or partially funded by your organization. Self-study may also be achieved by your employees taking online courses through websites such as Coursera or Udemy. Your employees would receive digital badges upon completion that they can use on their company or Linkedin pages. Self-study would allow your employees to pursue topics they are passionate about and also learn tools that can be beneficial in their current roles.
3. Help them focus on personal development
At the end of the day, your employees’ health and development should surpass everything. Your employees can be productive only if they are doing well mentally and in a personal capacity, and hence this should be your priority too. You should introduce your employees to online courses or in-house counselors that help them maintain emotional balance and pay attention to their mental health. Offices that cannot maintain an in-house resource should offer therapy credits for their employees. You should also help stimulate their physical health by running a small in-house gym or offering discounted or paid-for gym memberships.
4. Encourage cross-departmental work and collaborations
Given the current diverse and globalized workforce, your employees are not likely to stay in their current roles forever. Even so, your employees may get tired or bored in their current positions and look to shift to a different department altogether. This is why companies should encourage cross-developmental collaborations to allow different employees to learn from each other while also becoming familiar with different aspects of your company. In addition to contributing to employee development, this is also going to help your company by increasing efficiency and profitability.
5. Maintain a culture of mentoring
Mentoring is essentially when senior members of management commit to taking juniors under their wing and helping them develop important skills. While your employees may gain all possible explicit knowledge that they can through employee training, self-study, and on-the-job learning, they can only gain tacit knowledge through mentoring by senior and experienced staff members. Mentoring is essentially used for imparting high-level skills such as strategic management, vision, and leadership and is only effective for mid and senior-level management.
6. Arrange participation in seminars and conferences
Whether these seminars and conferences are industry-focused or about soft skills, you should be sure to arrange the participation of your employees on an annual basis. Your employees would hence get to interact with interdisciplinary professionals and get to connect with other industries. Not only would this enrichen their overall work experience, but it would also contribute to their professional development. Seminars and conferences are a great way to combine learning and letting off some steam, especially if these conferences are located in another city or country. Additionally, if you make attending these conferences something you award to your best employees, others would strive to give their best to be chosen for prestigious events like these in the future.
Conclusion
Engaging in employee development and employee learning should be at the top of your to-do list. Your employees are your biggest and most important resource and you should be treating them like it. Training and professionally developing existing employees is also always more cost-effective than hiring someone with the experience you are looking for. By taking into account the above measures, you can most likely transform your existing talent pool and also reduce employee turnover.
