Learning at Work Week may be an annual occurrence but it’s clear that Learning goes beyond this week of celebration alone. In fact, it’s a great platform to create a learning culture throughout the year.
Driving positive cultural change helps you create a workplace that continuously grows especially when you develop an environment where everyone can learn at their own pace and style such as a blended learning platform which offers the best of both worlds. In the current workplace there is so much change in place. Unfortunately, this change can make employees more stressed. Stressed employees are more likely to underperform, employee retention can suffer as employees look for more stable work and learned pessimism may create demotivated individuals and teams
There are several ways to use learning at work week to springboard your future. We’ve already shared 7 ideas for making the most of this annual event which starts on the 13th May 2024. However there’s nothing to stop you celebrating your own learning at work week later in the year.
When it comes to building the future of your organisation and your people here are 3 key topics to consider.
Removing Roadblocks
When your staff are driven by fear they underperform as stress and anxiety hinders their performance. There are several factors that can be at play here. Tapping into the challenges your people are experiencing and helping them to build resilience is a great way to invest in your people.
Understanding imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome holds back many of your leaders and high potentials, but this can also be prevalent amongst middle managers and specialists in new positions. Investing in individual development brings clarity in decision making, a key skill for leaders.
Setting future goals
“Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a month. We overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade."*
Setting the right goals is paramount not just for individuals but for steering the team on a journey they believe in.
Persuading others to embrace change
Many cultural change and business initiatives fail by not getting the right buy-in from the whole of the organisation. By looking at the benefits of successfully utilising social copying and getting influencers within each team this can make a powerful difference. Make the change relevant to each team, for example ‘higher year end profits’ is less likely to resonate with a manufacturing team unless there is a bonus involved.
However, bonuses should not be the only consideration, some studies actually show negative effects of some monetary incentives that are worth being aware of.
The role of leadership in employee retention
When employees don’t feel safe, they withdraw or leave which is why building a psychologically safe environment is so important. Often employees will leave due to poor leadership, this is why leadership development is so important, to develop communication skills in particular from empathy to responsiveness.
Building Your Future Team
Building the future of your team isn’t just about hiring great talent it’s also about maintaining and growing the skillsets of people within your team.
Here’s some things to consider:
Creating a multi-generational workforce
Find ways to tap into the unique skillsets of each generation and build an inclusive and powerful environment in which each generation thrives.
Build inclusive hiring processes
By creating systems that attract demographic diversity and allow neurodivergent individuals to apply you open the doors to new skillsets and different ways of thinking. Many hiring processes accidently attract ‘people like us,’ whilst work culture fit is important to an extent you can accidentally water down organisational innovation and creativity by creating a team of people that are too similar.
Once people are in your organisation psychometric tools such as Facet 5 are a good way to uncover hidden skillsets as well as find out how best to support your people through their core personality traits.
Tapping into cognitive diversity
You can leverage the power of cognitive diversity by identifying which ideas you may be missing out on and build this into your hiring processes.
You may also be missing out on ideas from your existing team members especially those who are less comfortable speaking up, or if there is not a good filtering system for ideas. Not everyone will respond to the same request for organisational feedback.
Preparing for future trends
We can’t always look introspectively when we’re growing an organisation. Many threats and opportunities come from outside.
Embracing new tech and AI
There are many disadvantages to using AI blindly but by exploring new tools in a way that helps your people and doesn’t scare them can give you a competitive advantage and means you aren’t left on the back foot.
Leading through innovation
Having a good pool of ideas and then the right processes, budget and people to make those ideas a reality is key. Understand the real-life importance and results of creativity and innovation whilst reducing the potential risk of unformed ideas.
Crisis Leadership: Preparing for the unexpected
Do you have a plan in place for each possible crisis? It’s impossible to plan for everything so investing in the leadership competences needed to tackle a crisis, and by identifying the likelihood and types of crisis you may encounter, you can prepare more strategically for the unexpected.
18 Learning at Work Week Skills
Do you have something you’d love to work on as part of your learning culture?
We’ve got 9 Learning at Work Sessions to unleash your learning power as a team, and create the future of your organisation, team and to grow as individuals, available all year round.
We believe exceptional organisational change starts with a great conversation as a team of top UK psychologists, executive coaches and facilitators. Reach us to start a conversation today about your plans.