The world is advancing towards the era of entrepreneurship where every business leader wants to build a team which is competent, skilled and top-performing.
Picture this: You're a business leader, striving to take your organization to the next level of success. You've invested a considerable amount of time, money, and effort into developing a workforce that can drive growth and innovation in your industry. You hire a new employee feeling that he is a good fit for the role. However, after the new candidate joins, you feel that he's not able to deliver as per your expectations. After contemplating upon this, you realize that he is still adjusting to the work environment and hasn’t yet become familiar with your organization's operations.
To help the new hire, you consider assigning a senior to help him in understanding the work environment and systems. But before doing so, you interact with the senior only to realize that he too did not have as accurate and precise understanding of certain functions as you had expected.
At this point, it's natural to feel frustrated and want to react impulsively.
You feel like shouting at him but TAKE A PAUSE!
What if we tell you that both of them aren’t really at fault.
The challenge that your new as well as old employees are facing is INCOMPLETE OPERATIONAL UNDERSTANDING!
This problem can arise due to multiple causes like:
Let us analyze the situation again. The senior who had a considerable amount of experience in the firm was also non competent to train the new hire. Apparently it's because of his ignorance, but if we study human cognition (the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses), we will understand that it is pretty natural to forget any information if it is not put to use constantly and some part of the information is lost just after it is given to us.
The advent of internet technology has brought about a remarkable increase in the abundance of knowledge resources over the past decade. With easy access to the internet, one can refer to an immense number of articles, blog posts, and research papers about a single topic.
However, while the amount of information available is limitless, our brain's capacity for cognition remains the same as it was thousands of years ago. This has resulted in a phenomenon called hyper-information, where information is easily acquired but difficult to retain.
Studies suggest that the average human brain forgets up to 50% of new information instantly and up to 70% of it after just 24 hours. This means that your retention towards new information can be as low as 30%!
It's likely that you can relate to this scientific fact when thinking about your senior employee's inability to explain certain functions as per your expectations. Despite receiving initial training on those functions, your employee may not have performed or revised them for a significant period of time, resulting in a loss of retention.
When an employee is stuck at some point in his work, the first thought is to consult a senior and get his issues resolved. However, in this scenario unavailability of instant guidance raises a problem and can result in lesser productivity or worse, wrong output.
This scenario is too common in all the offices and workspaces, because a senior may be unavailable at the desired place and time because of his own workload, meetings, leaves, etc.. This can delay the urgent tasks and can make a company bear losses as well.
The impact of unavailability of instant guidance is particularly worrisome in today's fast-paced work environment where deadlines are tight and workloads are heavy. The pressure to perform and deliver on time can be overwhelming, and not having access to proper guidance when it's needed can add to the stress. Delayed work can create a backlog of pending tasks, leading to a loss of productivity and revenue. Additionally, it can also cause unnecessary strain on other team members who may have to pick up the slack or cover for the employee who is stuck.
A report by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 22% of employees leave their jobs within the first 45 days of employment due to lack of training and support.
A company may experience limited training facilities due to various reasons. Budget constraints are a significant cause, as training programs can be expensive to develop and implement. Smaller companies and those in industries with low profit margins may find it difficult to justify the expense of training programs, especially if they do not see an immediate return on investment.
Lack of resources is another cause of limited training facilities. Smaller companies may not have the internal expertise or dedicated staff necessary to develop and implement comprehensive training programs. Larger companies may have many employees in multiple locations, making it challenging to provide consistent and effective training programs to everyone.
Shifting priorities can also lead to lesser attention towards the importance of training programs. A company may need to reallocate resources to support a new product launch, expand operations, or respond to changes in the market. During times of economic uncertainty, companies may need to cut costs and prioritize short-term goals over long-term investments in employee development.
Overall, while training programs are essential for employee development and growth, budget constraints, lack of resources, and shifting priorities can make it challenging for companies to provide comprehensive training opportunities.
Even if this problem is resolved by the company by complying with all the necessities to provide training, different learning abilities can be a hurdle in the process of training sessions and an employee mayn’t be able to retain things to the best of his capacity. This argument gives rise to another gap in making a professional industry-ready- Different learning abilities.
Remember your college days when the whole class was taught by the same teacher following the same pedagogy? However the results of the students varied at the end of the session. This experience raises the question: why do people learn differently, even when exposed to the same environment and learning processes? There are many factors that can contribute to this, including individual learning styles, cognitive abilities, motivation, and even genetics.
This makes us come to the conclusion that two people exposed to the same environment and the same learning processes can take different time span and approach to develop the same level of skills.
Hence, it is quite possible that all employees requiring the same skill set may not be able to acquire the same skill set when exposed to similar training. The pace of the training can produce different results for two different people and having no access to a custom training which is in accordance with their learning abilities can lead to unfavorable results.
However, imagining the best case scenario, let us assume that an employee gets proper training, retains all the information and has the same learning capabilities as other employees. But what if the training he undergoes doesn’t pass the test of time and technological advancements pose a challenge to his growth.
This makes us come to our next problem:
Before the Covid 19 hit, majority of people were unaware of technologies like online meeting platforms, shared online workspaces and digital coworking spaces. This made it difficult for a lot of employees to cope up with the technology used in their offices during the pandemic making them incompatible to the working structure of the industry at that point of time. The technological shift made it even more difficult for the people hailing from non-technical backgrounds to comply with the online working systems.
Many industries are inculcating automated processes and Artificial intelligence in their working systems making advancements in different segments of work. According to an article published by Forbes in the year 2020, 84% of enterprises said that AI was essential for their company and the growth is exponential.
If we talk about different industries, automation has taken over and an employee needs to learn these processes in order to comply with the required skill sets.
Sometimes, even a small update in an existing software in the company may also have several implications. Employees who don't keep themselves updated with such advancements are found to struggle the most when they are put to actually use those softwares and systems to keep the functions running up in the company.
Rapid technological change means that employees' skills can become obsolete quickly. If employees don't keep up with the latest technological advancements, they risk becoming redundant in their jobs.
Due to Lack of Retention, Limited Training Facilities, Unavailability of Instant Guidance, Different Learning Abilities and Technological Advancements an employee may feel incompetent to the workplace.
To resolve these issues and make your workplace more productive and employees more competent, we have developed a one stop destination for professional learning- The BluBird University
BLUBIRD UNIVERSITY: A REVOLUTION IN PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
BluBird University (BBU) is an online learning platform created to make industrial education easy and accessible to everyone. Curated to meet the practical learning requirements of the professionals as well the workforce as a whole, BBU is a step towards making professionals industry-ready. Currently in the making, BBU aims to eradicate the issues discussed above by offering innovative solutions to each of them.
Let us address these problems and see how BBU can help you curate a learning environment for your employees and help your organization to flourish.
To cope up with lack of retention,an individual can access the platform 24*7 and can revisit the information as many times as required. This can help the professional to learn things at their own pace, eradicating the issue of lack of retention. Finally for more retention, the courses are filled with quizzes to test the ability of the enrolled students.
Did you know that the "testing effect" suggests that retrieving information from memory (such as through quizzes or practice tests) is an effective way to enhance long-term retention of that information.
Additionally, the curriculum of BBU is designed by industry professionals and the course content is curated to provide accurate and targeted information,eradicating confusion. This accounts for quick guidance on any problem faced by a professional.
BBU has the required back-end infrastructure, access to world-class applications and a team of experts who are experienced at creating the optimal curriculum and learning material for any industry specific role. Other companies can be powered by BBU in getting their workforce transformed into a skilled-force through a learning management system tailored to meet their learning requirements. Hence, the training infrastructure requirement will only be limited to a mobile/desktop device and an internet connection which are very common today even in the small and medium industries.
Moving further, different learning abilities are taken into consideration and the course content is designed such that the information is easy to grab and retain. The platform is equipped with a progress tracker that can help you complete the course at your own pace. Furthermore, it is divided into various segments for easy accessibility of information.
Moreover, the enrolled students can refer to the material as many times as they want, to eradicate the fear of asking again or forgetting.
The courses are custom made for specific job roles and hence technological advancements are taken into account while designing the course. BBU offers updates in their courses as per technological advancements in softwares, systems and working environments as well.
Offering innovative solutions to the problems discussed above, BBU is a one stop solution for professional learning.
So come back from the pause you took in the beginning and put an end to the incomplete operational understanding of your workforce with BBU.
