Elearning! August - September

2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

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TipsStrategy Use Strategies, Not Tactics, To Fill Employee Skill Gaps One in three CEOs knows that innovation of the company's products or services can sufer if talent lacks key skills, according to a 2012 global CEO survey. Talent acquisition can only be part of the solution. CEOs seem to understand that many of the people their organizations need simply aren't there. Two-thirds (67 percent) say that over the next three years it's more likely that talent will come from promotions within their companies. Tey know — as you know — that developing talent internally over the long term will be most of the solution. Massive overhauls of programs aren't necessary. While all of the following options may not be possible with your budget, these fve steps can help you as an HR leader to start flling the skills gaps in your organization. Socialize learning into everyday behavior. Your organization needs to shif its 1 perception toward continuous learning, integrating it into the workplace and everyday behavior. Social tools can be the "go-to" sites within your organization. Employees want to use social networks and collaboration tools to fnd subject-matter experts and other important information at work — just like they do in their personal lives. Employees can learn from experts within their own companies — regardless of location — just as easily as from industry specialists in social media. Let employees learn on the go. Social learning should also help employees learn when, where, and how they want to. Is your learning management system fexible enough to change with the times? Are you able to track and audit learning activities in your organization to increase compliance? Learning is going mobile, on 2 tablets and other devices. It's getting social, too. Workforce adoption for social tools integrated into learning and development is projected to grow 100 percent over the next year. Consider looking at solutions that can break your LMS free of the desktop — and organizational silos — and improve collaboration. Give people a chance to stretch their skills. Increasingly, businesses address skills shortages with short-term and stretch assignments, especially if the business is growing into a key market or segment. These initiatives could include moving experienced people from the home market to newer markets to fill skills gaps, using reverse transfers, and moving top performers in emerging markets into developed markets for a short time. As a result, employees can gain experience that can't be acquired through coursework and the enterprise can reduce the costs from traditional long-term assignments. And creating structured assignments with progress checkpoints can help you avoid the extremes of "burned-out high potential" or "international party animal." 3 Create partnerships to take learning outside of the ofce. Formal education can include tuition support for business education as well as investments in 4 40 August / September 2013 Elearning! adult and vocational training programs. Anything from languages to engine repair could be important to the success of your company. Talking to local universities about training your people could not only fll some skills gaps, it could also put your business in touch with future talent. Show the ROI. To protect any programs, speak to the bottom line that leadership is watching. Determine what small changes you can make to the learning programs that will have a big impact on the business. Use standard business measures — such as productivity and labor costs — to measure the progress and success of learning programs. Increased knowledge only works as a metric if it is tied to organizational results. You can pull dashboard reports that show progress — including reductions in costs, decreases in training time, and increases in course completion. Executives will appreciate how you can quantify the fnancial results of efective learning programs. And shifting learning programs from tactical training into key strategic workforce initiatives can help you address skills gaps in your organization. 5 —Excerpted from a SuccessFactors whitepaper titled "Best Practices: Five Ways Learning Managers Can Make a Strategic Contribution." More info: www. successfactors.com

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