Learning the “Live Enterprise” Way in the Testing Times of COVID-19

Organisations can experience enhanced productivity levels even in unprecedented times if its employees imbibe the culture of digital learning while working from a remote location. 

Can a live enterprise ever remain idle? The answer clearly is a resounding “NO”. What keeps a live enterprise moving ahead despite operating in a challenging environment or difficult times? It is an enterprise’s workforce!

It is alarming to witness the kind of havoc that COVID-19 which has created across the globe. Given the new demands and scenarios that the pandemic is bringing up each day, the need to keep workforce relevant has become absolutely important and non-negotiable. For many businesses, it is critical that their workforce is engaged and productive throughout the period of remote working, until the situation is back to normal or the 'new normal' as many experts talk about the situation post COVID-19.

The world over, organisations are grappling with the challenge of an escalating talent shortage in new technology areas. Large incumbent enterprises struggle to recognise potentially game-changing market stimuli, which means they have a limited ability to spot the new things and to respond boldly with new business models and choices. Add to this the current situation of a lockdown-like scenario where access to office premises, technology, and classroom training facility is curbed significantly. The aspiration to nurture start-up-like responsiveness, increase the velocity of innovation, and build new digital-powered business models in such tough times demands special action.

Employees and their ability to learn, reskill, and keep pace with what is required of them in this situation, will define the success roadmap of an organisation, both during this period of testing, and the period once the pandemic is over! Continually refreshing employees’ knowledge and skills via anytime, any-device, anywhere learning, can help them perform better in both existing and emerging roles. Whatever the situation maybe, learning should never stop! A pandemic may bring everything to a standstill, but organisations should not allow a pandemic to dampen the spirit of their workforce, and their ability to learn and move ahead, and contribute towards keeping the enterprise live, at all times!

What Do Stats Convey?

The acute shortage of skills is among CEOs’ most pressing problems – a global research and advisory firm reports that it is a ‘top three’ concern for 79 percent, reflecting the grim reality that 80 percent of employees lack the skills needed in their current and future roles. CEOs readily accept this logic: the report also mentions that 71 percent respondents emphasise on learning and employee retention over recruitment for bridging the skills gap; they also agree that continuous learning is the way to reskill the workforce. Regrettably, most organisations don’t walk the talk, causing employees to lament the lack of a meaningful learning culture.

The root of the problem is an outdated and traditional learning mindset that is continuing from decades past. It views learning as formal knowledge that is imparted to employees in the early years of their career, to be updated occasionally; it is something that is done off-the-job, in a classroom setting. The mindset rewards the accumulation of knowledge and reinforces this attitude by hiring based on educational background. Responsibility for spreading learning rests almost solely with the human resources department. As the need to transform into a Live Enterprise becomes an imperative, hiring new recruits with each new wave of technology is neither practical nor feasible.

Building a Digital Learning Culture is Especially Mandatory in These Times

What organisations need today is a culture of digital learning built on strong beliefs. An elemental part of learning is learnability that is, learning how to learn. Learning is not only for the classroom; it is for life, is connected and collaborative, occurring on the job and outside of it too. Learning can progress employees along their current career paths, but equally, it can put them on new ones too. Creating clear and flexible career architecture and providing guidance to employees, and exposing them to the possibilities of professional development is important and motivates employees, especially in tough times like the one we are currently experiencing. Enterprises must bear the following points in mind while making learning convenient, relevant and engaging for their workforce:

• Honing the ability to learn (or learnability) is more important than hoarding knowledge: It is the only way to beat obsolescence and remain relevant amid ever-changing technologies and job descriptions. Organisations with a digital learning culture also hire based on a candidate’s potential to learn, especially in unprecedented testing times. This means bringing in a change to the evaluation techniques/approaches adopted by organizations, as well. The old mindset is to worry about losing employees after spending money training them. On the other hand, a digital learning culture seeks to avoid being saddled with employees who don’t learn and also don’t leave. Responsibility for learning, and staying on top of changing trends, rests with an individual.
• It’s all about experiences: Today’s learner seeks ‘experiences’ and not just learning sessions. Learning is not always a scheduled activity but could be sought anytime and anywhere, varying in how and what is learned. Measuring learning effectiveness is an important driver. It is critical to have sufficient telemetry events in place to evaluate the progress of learners and provide contextualised and personalised guidance
• Knowledge is not always big and momentous: There are valuable lessons in micro learning that are acquired on the job, and often just when it is needed. Along with micro learning, organizations should also promote the culture of micro-feedback, which helps in driving the right interventions.
• Adopting micro-change management approaches to drive a digital learning mindset: Each micro-change management schedule is a small change in a learning routine periodically augmented by similar adjacent changes, eventually creating a new digital learning routine and thereby shifting behaviour with minimal resistance.

With continuous learning and reskilling being the only option, organizations must look critically at their approach to learning, freeing it of its traditional mindset to embrace a culture suited to the digital age. This approach will pave the way for the new tomorrow that the world desperately awaits, leaving behind them the dark past of COVID-19.

Thanks to my colleagues Hannah Sumithra and Rohit Gupta for their inputs