– Sukhdeep Aurora, Chief People Officer
The world is changing at the speed of light and things that were completely unheard of have now become a routine. The last two years have created a huge shift in the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we collaborate and the way we learn. With these disruptions, it is imperative for organizations to upgrade and align themselves with the new market realities.
But what has enabled us to align ourselves with the reality? AGILITY!
In the corporate world today, what is that one thing that concerns us – hiring the right talent and retaining existing talent. Was it always a burning topic? Yes, it was but this has gained even more prominence in the recent past.
Have we ever thought how some organizations have weather-proofed themselves from storms such as the pandemic and have seamlessly navigated these turbulent and unpredictable times?
One of the key ingredients helping organizations is their unique learning culture. An organization, young or old needs to adopt a culture that nurtures an open mindset, a progressive quest for knowledge and flexible learning structures which empower employees to design their own development journeys.
In the era where we have an ever diverse and multigeneration workforce, an agile approach towards enhancing existing capabilities and acquiring, newer, future relevant skillsets plays a significant role in retainingkey talent. Such an agile learning culture can be created by investing in new-age technology solutions and designing supporting operational models which in turn help organizations differentiate themselves from their competitors.
An agile learning approach hinges on Speed (quick delivery or easy access to upskilling), Focussed Development (customised learning paths, future-relevant content), Flexibility (choice of content, choice of when to consume this content) and Productivity (efficient utilization of the learner’s as well the L&D’s time and efforts). How does it help? It helps align personal goals with organizational objectives in a more meaningful way, encourages employees to experiment and innovate, and most importantly improve employee engagement.
Learning & Development function itself is undergoing a significant transition; from being an extremely rigid structure of training akin to the waterfall model leading to inefficient use of time and resources, to a tech-enabled business-partnering function with huge focus on bringing progressive design elements to content creation and experimenting with new age delivery mechanisms.
Technology perse has brought about a significant transition in the way we learn and upskill and in the way development opportunities are provided to learners. This has encouraged L&D professionals to first upskill themselves in being able to bring latest tools of development to their stake holders. L&D professionals are fast realising the need for “Netflix way of learning” i.e. creating an intuitive, self-paced learning ecosystem which allows learners to ‘choose which skill to acquire’ and ‘choose when to acquire’ it. This is the essence of an agile learning system– Learning On The Go!
There are three key pillars which can drive this change:
- A robust technology platform –
- intuitive User Interface (UI),
- possibly applying AI/ML and data analytics to enable users to create customised learning graphs and provide meaningful insights to learners, managers and L&D professionals
- enable users to search for content super effectively, for instance, using parsing software to search through text and even video formats
- Content
- Hyper customised content at business, role and individual level
- New age formats which are more interactive and engaging like infographics, animations, byte sized videos and gamified content
- Crowd sourced content where experts within the organization are enabled to create relevant content thus adding bandwidth to the L&D teams
- Feedback & engagement
- Enabling quick and continuous feedback and using it to improve the learning ecosystem on an ongoing basis i.e. daily and weekly as against once in a few months
- Creating opportunities for learners to get feedback on their learning journeys like Online quizzes at the end of a session, showing relative ranking amongst learners, creating meaningful certifications which can be posted on social
- Creating a platform for leaners to interact amongst themselves to share insights from their respective learning journeys or establishing best practices
We at ANAROCK have adopted this Netflix way of development for our employees with the convenience of accessing content from anywhere anytime.
ANAFLIX is an internal platform/app which enables employees customized content based on the lifecycle of their journey and their role in the organization as well as their aspirations. There is a significant transition from instructor led programs and using power point presentations to upskilling with Anaflix through variety of videos, gamified orientation programmes, certification courses, and content created by colleagues.
And, we have not stopped at just upskilling at Anaflix. We have envisioned this platform to become a key communication channel as well as enable holistic development. Our intention is that through Anaflix, our learners to stay updated about current market knowledge, access key data and information relevant to their work, become aware of industry events to attend, know more about different businesses in our ever expanding organization, know more about ANAROCK’s culture and also for leaders and colleagues to post interesting videos around important communication.
As companies grow and employees work to keep up with this constantly changing environment, it is important for each one of us to encourage agility which can be the perfect remedy to uncertainty and unpredictability.
We are confident that ANAFLIX will connect us better, bring in more visibility, improve efficiency and increase collaboration across businesses.
