We all know that no two humans are the same and that the way people learn can be hugely different from one another, but how often does that human truth show up in our learning and development (L&D) opportunities?
It’s something that I’ve been thinking more and more about as we continue to see a rise in demand for personal development opportunities in the workplace. In fact, millennials rank the opportunity to learn and grow in a job above all other considerations and 69% of non-millennials say it’s important to them. Technical workers are no exception — they’re looking to continually grow in their career and want learning opportunities that speak to them. Here are three key concepts to keep in mind when approaching custom tech training to drive employee and employer growth.
Learners Need Options
Having a team with diverse skill sets should be celebrated and encouraged, which is why providing a wide range of development opportunities within different interest areas is essential. By providing learnings in various areas of expertise such as no-code/low-code software development, artificial intelligence (AI), leadership and soft skills, employees can choose what they are truly interested in, furthering their personal growth and advancing their company.
As leaders build these comprehensive learning programs, it’s easy to provide too many options — which can feel overwhelming to learners. For this reason, it’s critical to use feedback to focus your learning curriculum. Asking employees what they want out of an L&D program initially and assessing what skills your employees could improve upon will help leaders better gauge their teams’ development needs.
At SAP, for example, we are currently implementing a skills transformation program to assess current upskilling needs to provide tailored development offerings to our employees. When fully implemented, we envision that our skills-based framework will create powerful network effects for SAP employees, leaders and the company at large, diversifying skill sets within the team.
Mentorship and Training Go Together
It’s important to ensure that mentorship and training programs are closely interlinked. One-on-one mentorship is a great way to personalize L&D opportunities for employees. Mentorship not only benefits individual employees but can also positively impact the entire company, as it helps with employee retention and higher job satisfaction. In fact, 9 out of 10 workers with career mentors said they were happier in their jobs, while 4 in 10 workers without mentorship had recently considered quitting.
Dedicating one-on-one mentorship time allows mentored employees and their mentees to zero in on specific focus areas employees hope to improve upon, which is especially helpful when it comes to soft skills development. Improving soft skills can strengthen collaboration and enhance communication skills among teams. Additionally, mentors and mentees can discuss training they are actively working on and share their learning experiences — gaining insight and holding each other accountable along the way.
Foster Peer-to-Peer Learning
Dedicating time and space where technical workers can collaboratively learn with others is a great way to make L&D more personal. Creating a forum for information technology (IT) employees to ask general questions, comment on technology trends and share tips from their own learning experiences can be incredibly beneficial to learning in real time.
Community collaboration can inspire increased innovation as employees of all backgrounds seek other tech workers with the shared goal of upskilling and refining their current skill sets.
No two learning journeys are the same — and they shouldn’t be. Each team member brings a unique background and perspective to their role and with it, unique aspirations of how they hope to grow and evolve. Fostering these learning goals can lead to a wonderfully diverse team of thinkers and achievers.
By offering employees tailored, selectable, personal and collaborative learning experiences, tech leaders can show their investment in their team’s future development, leading to higher employee retention, employee satisfaction, business growth and ultimately greater innovation and creativity.
