As our life and work contexts are fast evolving, hybrid working, hyper-connectivity, deep digital penetration, focus on holistic well-being, and fast-changing skills, are becoming mainstream. In this context, a renewed and robust approach to talent identification and attraction, developing, growing, and retaining them, are key blocks to ensure that we stay successful in the War for Talent.
Learning and Capability Building is a key lever to this. To do an effective job, it is important that learning teams rethink their strategy and approach on a regular basis.
The article focuses on four key approaches that learning and development should look at, considering the current and emerging context.
Look Beyond Learning and Development
Learning has always remained a key enabler for various aspects of talent management, like attraction, retention, engagement, and employer branding. It is important that there is an active and conscious focus on the same so that learning is not just an enabler, but a key driver for the above aspects.
Building a strong internal and external brand for learning, ensuring that learning addresses both organizational and employee needs, and making explicit its contribution to employees’ current performance and future growth are all important aspects here.
At Reliance, our approach of learning democratization, which ensures access to various learning tools and resources, contributes greatly to employee engagement and growth. Employees have the opportunity to set their learning plans, which gets them to play an active role in their development.
In addition to session end feedback, pulse check surveys, with different employee groups are done periodically to check if learning is leading to larger engagement. Involving employees in the learning agenda to curate content and facilitate sessions, and extending certain aspects of learning to families, are all factors that contribute immensely to the “beyond learning” aspects.
Deepen Focus on Capability Building
A robust approach to capability building should lie at the core of any learning strategy. This should focus on the following –
- Current performance and future-readiness
- Skills that are fast-changing and capabilities that are long-lasting
- Skills pertaining to one’s own domain along with cross-skilling
- Sharp focus on power skills or behavioural skills
Clarity on how each one of them will be addressed needs sharp focus. Questions around what can be the focus of self-learning vs guided learning, what can be driven by HR vs what should be run by business, needs to be deliberated upon.
At Reliance, Upskilling has remained an important focus area from the pre-pandemic days. The organization has a structured approach to Upskilling for new tech skills, domain skills, and behavioural skills.
Our functional academies cater to the current and future needs of employees in their own domains. They also collaborate to address the cross-skilling needs of employees. We follow a role-based and skill-based approach to address the behavioural needs in different parts of the organization.
Leveraging the Power of Technology
While learning teams swiftly made the transition to virtual learning, the power of technology is yet to be leveraged fully. A deep understanding of both what is available in the market, as well as our internal tech stack, is important.
Data and digital would not just enable in understanding and predicting learner behaviours, but will go a long way in fulfilling the expectations, be it learning at the point of need and in the flow of work, personalization, immersive learning, peer learning, and more.
At Reliance, we believe in Technology Enabled Learning Value Chain. We have made possible learning anywhere, anytime and on any device for all our employees. Gamification and simulations have been leveraged across different types of learning. We have digital platforms to support both micro skilling and deep skilling.
Building a Culture of Learning
With continuous learning becoming a success imperative, it is important that we focus on building a culture of learning. Some key elements of a learning culture are the following –
- Is learning pulled by employees or pushed by the learning team
- Do different stakeholders like, leaders and managers, play an active role in the learning agenda
- Is learning limited to the classroom, or are there structured processes and practices for driving learning beyond
At Reliance, we follow a metrics-driven approach to drive all of the above. We report self-learning hours as a percentage of the overall learning hours. Leaders act as sponsors for all our flagship interventions.
Multiple experiences and exposure-based approaches like action learning, mentoring and business immersions are offered as a part of our learning journeys and as stand-alone modules as well.
Conclusion
Focusing on the above-mentioned aspects will ensure that we fulfill the expectations of both our business and learners. Learning and growth have remained one of the top asks from employees across sectors. Addressing this effectively will be a key factor in winning the war for talent.
