Focus on hybrid people development in a changing world

How prominent is people development in your business? Could a lack of people support and development be affecting the retention of your employees?

Holding on to team members and recruitment are both becoming more challenging, at the moment, so developing your most important asset – your people – has never been more important.

Hybrid has no doubt had an impact. With many organisations working remotely, less face-to-face contact can have a negative impact on team togetherness and relationships with managers and business leads. Adapting people development to meet the needs of the hybrid world is crucial. This article shares some ideas on what you can do in your organisation.

Did you know…

  • 84% of HR professionals agree that recognising employee contribution increases engagement
  • 70% of the variance in employee engagement is down to managers
  • 36% of businesses are already redesigning learning and development (L&D) activities for hybrid – are you one of them?
  • 63% of companies fail to have regular discussions with their employees about their career growth and aspirations.

How can you better develop your people so they’re in it for the long run?

A great place to start is reviewing your onboarding process. From the moment your new employee accepts the offer, what do you do next? It can sometimes be quite a while before a new team member starts and it’s important to keep them engaged. What is their onboarding programme from day one – is it well-structured and consistent across all employees? Do you have a suite of training courses and materials which your team can access wherever they are working? It’s important for team members to feel valued, right from the start.

Do you have a structured process for identifying skills gaps, career development opportunities for individuals and a way to match this to your business goals? If you need support in this area, you may find the eLearningPlus+ Strategic Learning Canvas helpful.

The canvas helps to successfully build the essential foundations needed to create your strategic learning framework alongside your tactical learning delivery programme.

This approach ensures you target appropriate learning needs, build a supportive environment and secure buy-in from your learners and stakeholders. It also helps implement ways to measure and review against key KPIs identified and communicate outcomes regularly to your key internal stakeholders.

Invest in management team training

The hybrid environment is likely to have changed your original way of developing and facilitating your team training programmes and development. Unless you predominantly delivered training through eLearning – which your team easily accessed wherever they were working – you’ve probably had to make some changes.

As mentioned above, 70% of the variance in employee engagement is down to managers and 63% of companies fail to have regular discussions with their employees about their career growth and aspirations. If they are in the office, they’re likely to see their managers on a regular basis, even if it’s just in passing. If your team mostly works remotely, or some are in the office and some remote, then they may be experiencing out of sight, out of mind.

Managers and leaders have to be more vocal about feedback and development to meet the needs of the hybrid workplace. Training your managers and leaders on how to achieve this is essential. If an employee is unhappy, feeling undervalued or think they lack skills and development, these signs are not as easy to spot when they are working remotely, rather than in an office environment. More thought has to go into how leaders and managers are trained to enable a great working culture.

Do you need support in embracing hybrid people development in a changing world?

Contact us today to talk to a Hybrid eLearning Expert at eLearningPlus+. Call us on 0161 669 4418 or drop an email to info@elearningplus.co.uk