Solving complex problems through employee development objectives

In order to equip a company for increasing complexity, staff development should be adapted to the increased requirements. A distinction should be made between the terms “employee training” and “employee development“, although the terms are often used as synonyms. In fact, they are two different concepts:  

Employee training is a program designed to help individuals better perform a specific task. Technical, social or organizational skills can be trained in this program. 

Employee development describes the process of improving employees’ skills, acquiring new knowledge and promoting their career planning. 

Training is a central aspect of staff training and development. However, development means much more than a series of trainings. Training should support the employee in acquiring skills that will be essential in the future and thus contribute significantly to employee development. Careers should be designed to enable both the individual and the company to solve complex tasks. In this way, investments in further training pay off in the long term. 

The following steps should be taken into account when determining your measures for staff development: 

• Defining goals and challenges
• Defining initiatives and tasks
• Defining required roles and skills in order to achieve goals
• Recording and identifying existing skills in the workforce
• Carrying out a skills gap analysis
• Prioritizing key areas for skills development
• Providing development opportunities
• Promoting informal and self-directed learning and working on a corporate culture that supports life-long development

For some of these steps, data-driven systems can save organizations a lot of time and resources. Supporting staff training and employee development at all levels, Learning Pool’s Skills Builder defines required skills and records individual skills to help you understand skills gaps and prioritize strategies to close them with personalized employee development recommendations.

In doing so, L&D and talent professionals are provided a 360 view of their organizations skills landscape. Not only can they identify opportunities for upskilling and reskilling, driving employee development and engagement but they can also promote other informal methods of learning, including peer-to-peer teaching.

As visible in the 70:20:10 model, colleagues play an important role in informal knowledge transfer – so-called peer-to-peer teaching and on-the-job development. In fact, research shows that 55% of all employees will first turn to a colleague to learn a new skill or to complete a complex task. With an artificial intelligence-based database putting skills at the center, expertise, knowledge or a specific competence can be made visible to colleagues. At a glance, employees can see which co-workers have the skills they are looking for and to what degree they have mastered them. 

With this knowledge, peer teaching significantly increases the number of trainers and experts within a company. It increases the chance of managing complex challenges, where learning becomes more integrated into the daily workflow. Studies, especially from the university environment, show that peer teaching has many positive effects. In addition to more intensive knowledge transfer, engagement is increased, togetherness and social climate are improved and performance is enhanced.

Learning Pool can help you drive employee development with its AI-powered Skills Builder and management system, equipped to identify the skills you have today and prepare the skills you’ll need tomorrow. Find out more.