There is a fundamental difference between grown ups and children. Children need to be told what is good for them and what is bad. Grown ups are expected to know what is good for them. At least that’s the expectation.
When it comes to training, there are plenty of checks and balances to ensure that employees undergo training as planned. If there is a classroom based training program, attendance is recorded and if there are no genuine reasons for not attending the training session, you are penalized or pulled up by your boss. It is encouraging to learn that most of the employees actually ask for more training and hence there seems to be an implicit agreement on the fact that training results in better performance leading to career growth, recognition, and financial rewards. Check out my earlier blog on employee engagement.
I firmly believe in giving control back to the employee or the learner to choose their own training path and in fact training content most appropriate for their own context. While standardized training material is required, there should be flexibility in letting people choose content that makes sense to them. In Anywhere Learner Mobile, Sify’s mobile training platform, the learner can choose to create their own action plan based on their job context and personal priorities on their smartphones. Rather than tracking if an individual has actually read an action item, it would make sense to measure how many action items are being added into the action plan. In some cases, the whole point of tracking action items and training content consumption becomes meaningless. So rather than worrying about how every click can be tracked, training departments should give the employees freedom to adopt self-directed learning.
Enjoy this clip from Disney.
Srinivas Krishnaswamy
