In my first blog post here, I wrote about some challenges I faced so far in my career as a Learning and Development (L&D) professional. I promised to follow up with how I overcame them:
Training is often an afterthought.
Your company needs to become a culture of learning, we as L&D professionals need to design training in a way that it becomes part of the everyday tasks of each employee. This way, we support performance and your learning programme will be on everyone’s minds the minute they issue a job offer or a new product is on the horizon.
Tip
Collaborate with and make friends in every department. Find out what they struggle with and help people learn and develop in a way they feel comfortable with. This in turn helps everyone be more productive, keep learning and the company becomes more efficient. Put training on top of everyone’s priority list!
Training does not have a (big) budget.
And actually, it does not always need one. By subtly integrating training activities into every day work lives and facilitating knowledge sharing, we can start creating a culture of learning. Although once training is on everyone’s priority list it will be easier to free up cash for solutions that really help the whole company become better at what it does.
Tip
Use already established, free of charge options for employees to exchange ideas, best practices, ask questions and organise themselves: use social media. It doesn’t have to be Facebook or Instagram, but you can use Skype, Slack and even WhatsApp. You can organise people into groups according to departments and projects and let them create their own groups to chat. They don’t always have to be work related. Sometimes it’s really good for colleagues to get to know each other on a more personal level. The more people have in common, the more they will collaborate.
In addition to being free, most people also already know how to use these tools, so no introductory guidance is needed! If someone doesn’t, arrange for a colleague to show them – facilitating knowledge and skill sharing is everything.
Staff complaining about boring PowerPoint presentations…
This is a difficult one. Or is it? Learning by doing is best, right? If you ever watched The Office (the American version), this little gem might delight you: Fire Drill – PowerPoint is boring. If you haven’t watched it yet, this was your introduction.
Tip
Don’t do what Dwight did in the video, for it is a bit extreme. But, instead of you always being the one to present, facilitate. Invite people to workshops, for them to share what they might already know about the topic or what they think it’s about.
Create short activities that people not just participate in but contribute to.
Example: Send out information and guidance about the topic for everyone to study before a meeting (pre-reads) and ask everyone to give a 2-minute presentation on a specific part – but not to use PowerPoint. See what happens. Try out different methods and find one or more that work best for you and your colleagues. Just get people involved.
Too many different skill sets are expected from one person.
This one is also fairly difficult to overcome, probably the most difficult of all. You ca
n try 100 times to explain to your manager and finance director that you need money to either attend training and learn the relevant skill sets yourself or to employ someone who has them already. If there is no money in the budget, then there is no money in the budget. To be honest though, a company that does not understand the need for employees to develop and pay for the relevant training, might not be a company you want to stick around at.
Tip
This might not be what you want to read, but despite what I just said in my last sentence, maybe instead of the company paying for your training, you can pay for it yourself? Maybe you can make a deal with the company to pay you back (even partially), once you produced the first results from your training.
If not, pay for it anyways because you will always be able to use your new skills somehow and somewhere. There is one important thing I have learned about work and the future of it: be a perpetual learner. Don’t rely on your company to teach you everything you need to know about your work.
Was that helpful? Leave a comment to let me know. 😊