*Pete (not his real name) employs around 15 staff in a services based industry, and has owned his business for close to twenty years.
Pete works on the tools in the business, which he enjoys.
What he does not enjoy, is dealing with what those of us not in HR might loosely refer to as ‘the people stuff’.
Pete bought the business after a few years working as an employee for a larger organisation; he had no experience of management or leadership prior to buying his business.
Pete had always been so busy working in his business, that he had not had an opportunity to acquire leadership skills.
When he reached out to me seeking my assistance in conducting a cultural audit, it was because conflict within his team members had reached such a level that it could no longer be ignored.
Pete had little time for anything else, other than trying to manage these issues. This was frustrating in and of itself; but more importantly, Pete was afraid of ‘doing or saying the wrong thing’ in attempting to solve the problem.
He had a previous (bad and costly) experience in Fair Work Australia, and was keen to avoid a repeat of that experience.
One of the clear findings of the cultural audit confirmed what Pete had already told me.
He lacked knowledge about how to lead and manage his team. And yes, it is fair to say he also lacked an interest in doing so.
With knowledge comes confidence; without it, Pete was adrift. Plus his concern about potential repercussions for taking action, meant that he instead took no action at all.
Knowledge or the lack of it, is a fundamental issue when it comes to leaders and managers. The age old adage about people being promoted due to their technical skills, without any assessment of their ability to lead AND without teaching them how to lead, remains as true in 2022 as it did back when I started my professional career.
Of course it is not only managers / leaders who need knowledge.
The 2022 LinkedIn Global Talent Trends Report found that employees believe professional development is the number-one way to improve company culture. And the consequences of neglecting development are significant. According to a report by The Executive|Search Group, 86% of professionals said that they would change jobs if a new company offered them more opportunities for professional development. {HBR]
HBR also shares the finding of a recent survey from Better Buys, that ‘found that employees who get professional development opportunities are 15% more engaged and have 34% higher retention than those who don’t’.
In fact, learning and development is one of THE top drivers of employee attraction and retention.
Organizations with a strong learning culture are 92% more likely to develop novel products and processes, 52% more productive, 56% more likely to be the first to market with their products and services, and 17% more profitable than their peers. Their engagement and retention rates are also 30–50% higher. [HBR]
Millennials in particular rate opportunities for career development and progression (ie via acquiring new skills and knowledge) as one of the top two reasons why they consider moving organisations. BTW in case you’ve forgotten, Millennials will make up approx 75% of the global workforce by 2025.
Let’s not forget the pandemic in this discussion. Remember one of the buzz words for 2020 – pivot?
Yeah, if you are a business who doesn’t encourage your employees to continually develop and acquire new skills and knowledge, then I’m guessing you weren’t one of those businesses who were able to quickly and successfully pivot in the first year of the pandemic.
A culture of learning and development also encourages innovation. Want to know why innovation is important for great culture?
Here’s a little something we here at Workology Co prepared earlier.
If by some chance you still remain unconvinced, then may I offer you one final submission:
The World Economic Forum predicts nearly half of core skills will change by 2022 alone. A 2020 report by McKinsey & Company stated that up to 40% of all workers in developed countries may need to move into new occupations or at least significantly upgrade their skills sets. [McKinsey]
In other words – we all need to learn new stuff!
How
I’m very confident that by now, you’ve accepted the importance of knowledge aka learning and development to having a high performance culture. I mean would you still be reading this far if you hadn’t?
And of course it wouldn’t be a Workology Co blog if I didn’t share with you some tips about how to incorporate L&D into your workplace culture.
And honestly, it would be a highly unusual WCo blog (at least in the A – Z of workplace culture series) if I didn’t do that by way of an infographic. Which is why, I now present to you, exhibit A:
Some other suggestions that you may like to consider introducing, which comes to us courtesy of of two of my absolute favourite workplace culture gurus – Culture Amp & Atlassian- include:
- Adopting Linked In’s practice of one “InDay” per month, which is set aside for employees to focus on “themselves, the company, and the world.” Linked In do this via monthly themes, and employees are invited to participate in whatever way works for them, through the many scheduled activities or on their own.
- Udemy, an online learning company, holds what they call ‘Drop Everything and Learn’, or DEAL. Every month, on a Wednesday at 3:00 p.m., Udemy employees participate in DEAL, where everyone drops whatever they’re doing and takes an online class — in anything they want.
And last but definitely not least, is the power of the review. At the end of any project or piece of work that your team or business unit works on, take time to reflect on what you can learn from this piece of work. What went well, what didn’t? What could you do definitely next time? Atlassian has a couple of guides that can help you do just that:
- https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/4-ls-retrospective-technique
- https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/learning-circle.
Incidentally, this second ‘playbook’ can be adopted by learning communities or utilised during lunch & learns, as suggested in the infographic above.
In all honesty, there are *approximately a million and one ways you could ensure knowledge, and the acquiring of it, becomes an entrenched part of your people strategy.
After all, L & D is a subset of HR in its own right.
But for the purposes of this blog, and workplace culture in general, the key learning (see what I did there ) is that you provide opportunities for all of your employees to expand their knowledge.
Which might include you personally. Especially if you’re like Pete, our leader from the start of this blog.
Who, btw, is now an infinitely more confident leader following several training and coaching sessions delivered by yours truly.
We covered topics including:
- having clear / difficult conversations
- delivering and receiving feedback
- performance management 101
- conducting annual performance reviews and (separately, salary reviews)
- managing conflict
- inappropriate workplace behaviours
- wellbeing (for Pete and his staff).
As well as exploring Pete’s individual Clifton Strengths, and how he could utilise those to be a better leader.
Need help imparting knowledge to your leaders and employees? Workology has you covered.
Let’s chat and learn a few things about each other and your circumstances.
Knowledge is power after all.