Contents of Elearning! Magazine - MAY-JUN 2012

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

Page 46 of 54

TipsL&D; Challenges The New Business of Business Leaders: Developing Employees
As a business leader, you're focused on meeting your orga- nization's business objectives now and in the future, growing revenue and improving prof- itability. You know that your most important asset in all of these endeavors is your people. So how do you make sure your people stay engaged, agile, and up to the task?
DEVELOPING YOUR EMPLOYEES' SKILLS Change is happening faster than most business leaders can manage it. To succeed, the rate of learning must exceed the rate of change.
Bench Strength is Important, But So is Starting Strength Succession planning, including
building strong bench strength, is not just for top executives in the organization, but for all crit- ical roles. A focus on succession however cannot come at the expense of keeping your current employees—your starters— equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to perform. Reflect on your current team members and ask yourself are they keeping up? Do they have a learning mindset? (Some research suggests that this figure might be as low as 10 percent.)1 Talent intelligence provided
by robust talent profiles allows you to quickly determine whose knowledge and skills are out-of-date. Information about their certifications, assessment scores, indicated expertise areas, and even less formal indicators such as "gamified" points or badges, will all help you size up the current state of your team's abilities. Such talent intelli-
gence also gives you critical data at the intersection between each employee's goals and development needs, as well as the learning opportunities available to support both. With this data, you can create tailored learning plans that sup- port an individual's par- ticular goals, or career
development plans that can
help revive an employee with poor performance reviews.
44 May / June 2012 Elearning!
You don't have time or money to waste on ineffective or unnecessary training—so you need talent intelligence to help you make the right talent development decisions.
Expand Your Team's Talent Breadth According to numerous research studies, most busi- ness leaders know more about their depreciating assets (computers, buildings, etc.) than their appreciating ones (employees.) This lack of knowledge has serious conse- quences on how talent is used, but it has equally seri- ous impacts on the growth and appreciation of your tal- ent assets. One of the reasons that peo-
ple appreciate in value is because of the natural growth in their experience and expert- ise that is implicit in the work itself. Most leaders take such growth for granted and many more fail to capitalize on the appreciation factor by reas- signing the same sort of work over and over—a practice which leads to diminishing returns relative to growth and skill development. In this sce- nario, the overall appreciation of the talent asset may still be marginally positive, but it's nowhere near its potential. This can result in dissatisfac- tion for the employee as well as unrealized and underutilized capability for the organization. The contrast here is one of
breadth versus depth. If all you do is shore up your people's existing dimensions of strength, you aren't yet focus- ing on their weaknesses or adding new potential strengths. In some roles, it might be important to focus first on deepening an individ- ual's knowledge and skills in an existing knowledge area. But in many cases it is equally important to regularly intro- duce your employees to new skill areas for several reasons.
MORE CHALLENGES TO COME Business leaders face two more key challenges: increasing engagement and retention, and developing leaders, including themselves. Download the com- plimentary white paper titled, "The New Business of Business Leaders" at: http://www.2elearn- ing.com/www/resources/researc h-white-papers.html.
Source: 1 As reported by Harvard
Business Review, research from the University of Virginia's Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration found that only 10 percent of executives had a learning mindset.
About Taleo
Taleo helps organizations improve performance by unlocking the power of their people. Learn more at: www.taleo.com