Leaders today must not only be empathetic and champion their
teams, they must also be cognisant and able to leverage the disruptive changes
taking place in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (“4IR”). One of
these is the need for on-demand or just-in-time learning to upskill, increase
knowledge and boost productivity. Highly engaged employees, the social
capital, of an organisation are nurtured through access to flexible learning;
on-demand learning.
Organisations who were able to facilitate easy integration and increase
productivity of new recruits, of these 67% provided access to relevant
on-demand learning for onboarding employees. Leaders tend to measure
their learning spend return on investment through feedback and relevance of the
course, rather than the employees increase in engagement, innovation and
productivity.
The leadership context is understanding the factors impacting organisations and
how employees learn:
- how technology is changing and challenging operating models;
- how institutions need to revisit their organisational structures for agility, to:
- allow for employee mobility and flexibility in how they work and learn,
- facilitate growth; and
- social values shifts; from environmental values, ethics, different generational ways of work and leadership needs where:
- Boomers are structural, more formal and respective of authority; to
- Millennials who are individualistic requiring information, variety, a casual environment and latitude.
The workplace is changing and the need for on-demand learning is growing.
On-demand online learning is designed to help all employees including new recruits being onboarded. Online learning allows employees to upskill themselves to be more productive in their jobs from technical and leadership skills to personal development.
Leaders need to create a learning culture, giving employees time for development to build on their technical and soft skills so that they are up-to-date in their field. This promotes engaged employees who, because they are continually learning, are able to innovate and focus on their job’s deliverables and responsibilities.
Gallup research has shown that 70% of employees are not working to their full potential; 15% of employees are highly engaged and 86% of millennials would stay with the corporate if offered learning opportunities. Employees who are afforded the opportunity to continually learn are not only more highly engaged and contributing to the organisation’s growth, but they are also less likely to leave which reduces the cost of turnover and recruitment. To effectively balance learning and meeting work commitments, it has been found that 31-50 learning hours per year stimulates high engagement. Investment in upskilling of employees leads to improved teamwork and better integration.
Leaders who want committed and dynamic teams, given their leadership context, must co-create a development plan with each member, each employee to foster their growth; with the organisation’s ability to be agile and compete successfully in changing markets being the outcome. Being able to retain employees and fill positions without having to recruit externally to fill specific roles means that an organisation maintains and builds on institutional knowledge promoting its competitive advantage.
Online learning (on-demand upskilling or just-in-time learning) leads to high learning engagement. Employees who are able to choose when, where and what they learn has shown a 64% increase in active learning resulting in increased productivity, creativity and retention.