The Career Path of every single Individual in a Company is of utmost importance. One of the common discussions heard is between the two C-Level Executives in an office. One asks, what happens if we train the staff and then they leave. The other replies, what happens if we don’t train and they don’t leave? Though this discussion has become a cliché, it warrants its own importance in today’s learning and Development requirements of an organization.
In Today’s Era, the Learning and Development comes broadly under three major verticals.
Each of these are important in their own way and none of them can be less important than the others.
When it comes to IT related work, we talk about the Programming language or the tools which one works on. The real challenge in today’s IT industry is the rapid changes one needs to adopt, from technical standpoint. It’s no longer just about the languages and the tools. It’s also about the various platforms that one needs to get used to, which was not the case a decade back. With the Advent of Cloud platforms hosted by the Software Giants, one needs to be very thorough on them, and every single task which gets done on a cloud is chargeable and is highly dependent on the efficiency of the software from resource utilization point of view.
The tools which are used in today’s work environment are getting better by the day. The organizational tools, which can be synced across all your devices are a norm. The features are getting enriched day by day and most of them are not just features which remain as advertisements, but one which are used by many and become the selling points.
Having the tools is one part of the equation, but which one to use for a given use case is a different ball game all together. That’s where your domain knowledge comes into play.
Soft Skills form an important aspect of your professional career. Right from the eating habits to the manner in which one documents an email, are part of your soft skills. Most of the decisions across the organization does have an important parameter of Soft skills and how well one manages with them. As they say, it’s not what you say, but how you say that matters. Preparation of documents, the Presentations, way one portrays himself to others are some of the important parts where in one is judged.
Due to which its extremely important to make sure you are on top of the game in most of the categories in the soft skill areas.
Management doesn’t mean you are leading a team and you need to make sure that the team delivers what it promises. Management goes way beyond that. Most importantly, it’s not limited to the professional life again.
The management skills need to be sharpened as one grows in his career ladder. Delivering the project deliverables to making sure that, your team is fit a fine at a personal level are of prime essence. Management is one of the easiest subject to understand, but most difficult to execute. The variables in management keep changing dynamically and it’s this dynamic variable that one needs to keep in control and make sure things are indeed going as per the plan.
The following are some of the considerations when one is planning for Learning and Development.
The management skills need to be sharpened as one grows in his career ladder. Delivering the project deliverables to making sure that, your team is fit a fine at a personal level are of prime essence. Management is one of the easiest subject to understand, but most difficult to execute. The variables in management keep changing dynamically and it’s this dynamic variable that one needs to keep in control and make sure things are indeed going as per the plan.
The Organization GoalsThe Organization Goals should be percolated to all the levels in the organization. And when each individual works towards the attainment of the Organization goals, then automatically the organization goal is taken care.
For example, when one company found that, they are noticing a huge amount of software security breaches in the company, they planned for an upskilling program on the keeping the infra structure clean and safe. The training which was in online mode, was received by many and the learning did make a visible impact in the issues faces the subsequent year.
The Business Strategy If the organization is planning to enter into newer technologies, then all the required employees need to be upskilled in the required skill sets. This will make sure that the business strategy is in line with the Development plans of the employees
The Tools for Learning Though classroom trainings are still considered to be the best, but off late online trainings have proven to be quite effective, for the given time and money. The online courses can be run on mobile devices and hence many do trainings during their travel time. From Classrooms to the moving vehicles, the location of trainings has really evolved over time and rightly so.
The Upskilling of the Resources Though organizational goal is one part of the learning and development; in the long term it also helps to make sure that the resource is learning newer technologies which can be used in other projects. This also helps in the overall confidence of the employee.