The year 2021, which will be long remembered as a year of trying to survive and recover from the aftermath of a global COVID 19 pandemic, will also go down as a year of reckoning for employers and their employees – former trying to ensure their in-house talent is retained with Learning and Development and latter trying to skill-up to face up to any workplace challenges in organisation.
Retaining talent-pool
Employers desperate to survive the devastating commercial impact of protracted lockdown of their businesses will do anything to retain their time-tested pool of talent, just as employees look out for learning and development opportunities to up-skill and skill themselves to stay valuable and relevant to the organization.
Win-win situation
The importance of grooming talents at the workplace could not have been stressed more at a time when organisations have been trying to restart after nearly a year of inaction and minimal or no productivity.
· Organisations have to offer in-house learning and development support to their existing employees rather than hiring new ones to cut costs and skill them up for increasing productivity and company growth.
The long and short of it all is that it’s turning out to be a win-win situation for both employees and their employers.
Better alternative
· Organisations see cultivating in-house talent with Learning and Development a much better alternative than hiring new people.
· This makes ample sense especially in the wake of predictions about a likely ‘unusual labour market’ post-Covid 19 unlocking.
· ‘Companies have to invest more heavily into discovering their employees’ skills, and then developing their organizational chart, to harness talent and increase employee satisfaction,’ Jarin Schmidt has said in a recent write up.
Onus on employers
This implies the onus of retaining and cultivating talented workforce within the organisation mainly rests on the employers themselves.
Responding to the situation, organisations have taken initiatives to identify talents and skill them up to intensify productivity in a bid to compensate for the time lost during lockdown and recover the lost ground in the business.
Reaping dividends with L&D
The Learning and Development will make a big impact on organisations’ work culture in the coming days. As companies try and find newer ways of retaining talent it becomes an essential exercise to ensure employees learn and develop as they go along and add value to their individual skills alongside reaping dividends for organisations.
Investing on employees career
· While trying to nurture talent with L&D it also is important to know if your employees see eye to eye with you on your larger vision of growth for the company and its employees. Majority of employees will happily engage in the learning process if they see it as a company’s investment in their career. But there has to be clarity on the objectives of learning or training being offered by the company.
Feedback on talent
· Imagine a massive workplace situation with little or no communication between employees and their employer. It is just unthinkable in a modern L&D driven organisation where employees’ feedback on the learning process is such an important means of effective L&D strategy management tasks. Feedback helps to have a far deeper understanding of employees, not essentially always about their performance, in the process strengthening working relations and achieving goals.
Data on performance good
· Employees’ performance based data or PBT is another great way of constantly up-skilling them by addressing specific lacunae in their skill sets and upgrading them to facilitate better performance of job roles. In this, PBT platform using employees’ performance data offers quick, easy-to-learn individual centric solutions to help them take on newer work challenges.
Learn as you work
· Want to make learning a continuing process for employees? L&D experts say it is better to make learning a part of the work regimen in organisation. The learning should not come in the way of working. The learning process should be easy to access, flexible in terms of using contents and available round the clock and on any devices such as mobiles or laptops.
Agents of change
Significantly, giving a sense of belonging and being empowered, especially to those who have just joined the organisation, helps workplace talents learn to have a control over their learning process. It encourages them to take new initiatives and come out with new creative and innovative ideas and makes them agents of positive change in organisation.