Employee Development in a Digital Age

Linking Skill Development to Job Satisfaction and Growth

With the advancement of new technologies there are more and more tools and potentially more skills that people can learn. However, the learning of new skills needs to be linked to their overall development, progression and job satisfaction.

Why Training Must Align with Organisational Goals

Similarly from an organisations perspective, who want to retain staff, achieve high performance and meet business goals, training programs need to really be orientated towards individual needs in order to achieve optimal results.

The Challenge of Adopting New Digital Tools

One of the challenges is that there are so many new technologies being rolled out and adopted. Site wide, companies are rolling out productivity tools e.g. Microsoft Power Platform. Co-Pilot and other AI tools are being rolled out or trialled – whether in a structured pilot program, or just by individuals who are curious as to how they could use them in their own role.

There are so many ways in which these tools can be used, and where they can help remove tedious tasks, help streamline and optimise some of what you do. But equally, if tools are just pushed out or “made available”, a considerable cohort of people can get overwhelmed by the possibilities and end up backing off and continuing to execute tasks as they have always done and accept the non productive or “busy work” which ultimately takes up a large part of their day and prevents them from developing and fulfilling their potential.

Risks of Unstructured or Generic Training

Rolling out structured training which isn’t tailored to the individual, their role, their function and their environment can be at best a missed opportunity, and at worst a frustrating experience for the individual.

The Role of Training Needs Analysis in Digital Upskilling

A training needs analysis can help identify the skills gap and level of digital literacy as it pertains to these new tools. But the relevance to the role is very important. In our view, cracking this involves sharing and discussing possible use cases, sharing examples in an open and friendly work shop environment before finalising the training program. The learning preference is also critical.

Effective Approaches to Training with New Tools

Hands-On and Project-Based Learning

Our experience would be that hands-on, project based or real-life example based training works best with these new tools. The projects or examples need to relevant to their role and their function or department. While it may be difficult to have fully personalised learning paths, we believe you can go a considerable way towards this while still having a training program that can be rolled out to a large group in an efficient and effective manner.

Growth-Oriented Training Design

We believe that a growth-oriented design, where you start with “what’s possible”, move on to the basics an build towards advanced features. Once the basics have been accomplished, moving on to real-life scenarios and use cases that simulate tasks they normally perform, or a mini project to deliver a win really helps deliver effective learning while also delivering a “win”.

Leveraging Lean Practices in Digital Training

Process Mapping for Learning Outcomes

Many of our customers are very mature from a Lean Adoption and Implementation perspective. We find that many of these skills such as problem solving and process mapping cane also be layered into the training. This helps make the employees more comfortable, helps them engage more and ultimately upskill on something that they see as directly benefiting them in the short term and helping them grow and develop in the long term.

Process Mapping a current task or process and then layering in some of these tools, where appropriate, in the future state really helps map out the training and learning outcomes in a context that makes sense to them.

Blended Learning in a Hybrid Work Environment

Combining In-Person and Virtual Sessions

One benefit of how many people work now in terms of hybrid working is that a blended approach to learning these tools can be an efficient and flexible way of delivering the training and learning these tools. A combination of in-person training a sessions conducted over MS Teams means that the training can be delivered in bite-sizes.

Coaching, Mentoring, and Peer Drop-In Sessions

Coaching is at the kernel of most Lean programs. This can also be built in to you training and upskilling program. “Drop In” sessions can be arrange where peers who are working on their own mini project can come together and share problems, discuss approaches and hear interactions with the coach or mentor. This helps create a community within the site and helps drive on the overall learning and adoption of these tools and create a culture of continuous learning.

Building a Culture of Continuous Learning

Reward and Recognition in Digital Upskilling

Reward and Recognition plays a key role in motivation, development and engagement. This should be part of your learning and development in terms of these digital tools. Celebrate the wins, the rollout of the new app which saves people time in collecting or collating data, the dashboard which provide accurate and timely data, the time saved in the elimination of “busy work”.

Celebrating Successes to Drive Engagement

In the same way that sites would present and celebrate the completion of an A3 project in an area, the completion of project based training should also be celebrated. There is huge satisfaction in sharing successes with colleagues and it really helps drive higher engagement in training programs and helps enforce the use of these digital tools in a consistent manner across the site.

Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment

Don’t leave people behind, create an environment where people aren’t afraid or threatened by these tools, and where they see these as an opportunity for them to contribute more and grow.

Contact us

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📧 info@dataworks.ie
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