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 to invest in employee development. The more opportunities you give your employees to learn new skills and grow in their careers, the more likely they are to bring their best to your company and stay with you for the long term.
What sets you apart from your competition are the people who work for you, and therefore your company should make a long-term commitment to employee development and learning rather than just adding a few happy hours and lunches. free at their times. Below are five employee learning initiatives you should opt for:
1. Prepare them for professional training
From the start of their stay with you, you need to prepare your employees for professional training. Not only will this pave the way for future learning, but it will also instill in them a sense of growth. Their first weeks in their new role should include training on work conduct, office culture, company policies and ethics. This would allow them to grasp the overall personality of your company, and thus allow them to contribute to their new role in a unique way. This would also include training in their new role with a colleague who can guide them through the orientation process.
2. Encourage self-study
As a company, you must invest in and encourage the self-training of your employees. Self-study can be accomplished by enrolling in a college or university or a degree or course fully or partially funded by your organization. Self-study can also be done by your employees taking online courses through websites such as Coursera or Udemy. Your employees would receive digital badges at the end that they can use on their business pages or Linkedin. Self-learning 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 their personal development
Ultimately, the health and development of your employees should top everything. Your employees can only be productive if they are doing well mentally and personally, so that 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 to their employees. You should also help boost their physical health by running a small on-site gym or offering discounted or paid memberships.
4. Encourage cross-departmental work and collaborations
Given today’s diverse and globalized workforce, your employees are unlikely to stay in their current position indefinitely. Even so, your employees may become tired or bored in their current position and seek to switch departments altogether. Therefore companies should encourage cross-development collaborations to allow different employees to learn from each other while getting familiar with different aspects of your business. Apart from helping in employee development, it will also help your business by increasing its efficiency and profitability.
5. Maintain a Culture of Mentoring
Mentoring It’s basically when senior members of management commit to taking juniors under their wing and helping them develop important skills. While your employees can acquire all the explicit knowledge possible through employee training, self-study and on-the-job learning, they can only acquire tacit knowledge through mentorship by members of the knowledgeable and experienced staff. Mentoring is basically used to impart high-level skills such as strategic management, vision and leadership and is only effective for middle and senior managers.
6. Organize participation in seminars and conferences
Whether these seminars and conferences are industry-focused or soft-skills focused, you need to make sure you arrange for your employees to attend on an annual basis. Your employees could thus interact with interdisciplinary professionals and connect with other industries. Not only would this enrich their overall work experience, but it would also contribute to their professional development. Seminars and conferences are a great way to combine learning and relaxation, especially if these conferences are held in another city or country. Plus, if you make attendance at these conferences something that rewards your best employees, others will strive to give their best to be chosen for prestigious events like these at the coming.
Conclusion
Engage in employee development and employee learning should be high on your to-do list. Your employees are your greatest and most important resource and you should treat them as such. Training and professional development of existing employees is also always more cost effective than hiring someone with the experience you are looking for. By considering the above metrics, you can most likely transform your existing talent pool and also reduce employee turnover.