In today’s world everything is changing at a higher pace than ever before – from home appliances or mobile phones to new technologies in the workplace or even new industries altogether.
Add to that a crisis such as Covid19 when everyone has to keep a social distance and work has changed tremendously for the majority of businesses. Millions of people had to upskill and reskill themselves to be prepared for the new way of working and now employers need to support their employees to transition and reinvent themselves by providing learning and development opportunities.
In this context, continuous learning is vital both on a personal and on a professional plan because old ways are “decommissioned”.
We live in the era of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things, of smartphones, smart houses and even smart cities. From the bakery down the street to the largest multinational, technology and innovations are part of the everyday life. We use technology to work faster, better and easier. Organizations rely on technology to be closer to their customers, to reduce costs, increase productivity and empower their employees. Existing technology changes constantly in its pursuit for “better versions” and new ones are released on a daily basis.
In order to adapt to this new context and stay competitive in today’s marketplace, we need to adopt a habit of continuous learning. It is essential for both employees and employers to ongoing develop skills, abilities, and knowledge through various avenues.
When organizations do not support a continual process of learning, innovation does not happen, processes remain unchanged, and nothing new is ever accomplished while creating a learning culture within your organization is a great way to improve performance and innovation. In addition, more and more people are innately motivated to learn, grow and develop new skills so as employees, they look for organizations which support both their personal and professional development.
Organizations should not only support at a declarative level their employees’ growth but also should provide them the time, tools and resources to do so. They should make a growth plan for the employee and should make sure he/she has all the means to achieve it.
By doing so, organizations will have happier, more loyal employees, a higher retention rate thus lower costs with the recruitment process and higher productivity to mention a few benefits.
How can you do this?
It starts with the leaders – they should promote a culture of continuous learning and encourage the employees to take the time for professional development, they should provide relevant resources like books, technology, trainings, access to online or on-premise courses or workshops, they should encourage idea sharing among their employees and last but not least, they should praise and reward those employees that adopt and maintain the habit of continuous learning.
We at Crayon have already adopted a culture of learning and developing our skills and we are playing our part towards our customers to ensure that their employees get access to the best development opportunities during this period.
We have developed our own tool dedicated to learning and development called Empower-iQ where employees always have quick-help tutorial videos at hand to successfully work with different technologies, in a flexible way, on their own pace. It gives users access to more than 100 trainings and courses on Microsoft technologies on the platform and is a great way for employers to invest in workers who are significantly struggling in this climate.
Remote work is here to stay and will become a big part of our lives so organizations should be proactively supporting their employees so that both them and the business will thrive.
We offer Empower-iQ on a monthly subscription model priced per user and if not totally convinced by now you can also request a trial subscription to test it with your employees, so reach out to us and we’ll go in more detail.