Blogs

a) Tips for a budding L&D/HR professional 

• Learn, Unlearn and Relearn – Learning agility is the new game now. It’s all about unlocking change proficiency and succeeding in this VUCA world.  
• Know your Audience – It’s not about you, it’s about them. The better you craft your content and adapt to their needs, the better it will resonate.
• Ask relevant questions – What are the vision and the mission of the organization? What is the purpose of doing something? What is the value that you can add? The more relevant questions you ask, connect with the business would be high and these steps ultimately lead you to success.   

b) Your personal achievement as an HR professional?

I believe that once you are passionate about your job, achievements get built over a period of time. For me achievements have been in the form of learnings like –

Empathy – It is the crucial factor in designing a meaningful experience, and developing this skill is indeed a great achievement

Rephrasing – There are times when I rephrase like a child, I believe rephrasing requires a lot of curiosity and letting go of assumptions, so this for me is definitely an achievement.

Addiction to Learning – To be relevant and sensible in this VUCA world, our profession has to walk the talk by being the ambassadors who embrace change and invest in our learning.

c) How can an HR/L&D contribute strategically to the organization?

By following the ABCDE model:

A – Attract & retain the right talent – Employees are being retained only as long as they can add value to an enterprise. They are now in charge of their personal and professional growth and development 

B – Build the Brand – An organization’s brand is one of its most important strengths and conveys a great deal about the company’s success

C – Culture of Learning – Promoting a culture of learning in your organization is vital if you want to see positive organizational growth.

D – Develop Capability Gap – It is the only possible opportunity to improve performance else leaning intervention may be an absolute waste of time.

E – Embrace new Technology – We live in an age of technology. Technology dictates how we communicate, how we do business, and now how we learn.

d) One HR/L&D practice that has always worked for you as an HR. (share an example)

Creating Personalized Learning Experience is something that has worked well for me as an L&D professional– Since the majority of the workers are gen X, Y and Z, access to information is as per their mercy. They expect learnings in all the forms, could be e learning, mobile learning or instructor led version. The traditional method of one size fits all approach is redundant these days. We need to concentrate our efforts on providing tools for learners to access content on their own. We need to gear up to speed up with learner’s expectations, and create eLearning courses that are personalized, and positioned on them and their goals.

e) Do you think experiential learning is more impactful? Give an example.

Experiential learning is a growing trend that has been adopted by many organizations these days. When compared to the conventional methods, experiential learning is 100% impactful. If the experiential session is an outbound activity, the results are even better. Some benefits to pen down –

• Meta Learning – Participants are given the opportunity to apply data and ideas in a real-world situation where they too play an active role and it is all about learning to learn.
• Creativity – Teaches creative problem solving, participants learn multiple solutions to challenges
• Opportunity to reflect – Participants are encouraged to analyse how their actions affected the issue, and how their outcome may have varied from others and the mistakes become valuable experiences for life. 

f) How do you create a buy-in for training at workplace?

The only way to succeed is by having leadership buy-in from the top down. A few tips to keep in mind –

• Know your leader and understand what he wants – This is going beyond the target
• Identify your strategy – Your approach needs to be aligned with the business
• Show the solution – Show them your plan A & B to fix the highlighted issue, demonstrate the thought behind the scene as well
• Collaborate – Working in silo will not get you any buy-in, seeking support, discussing with the stakeholder and finally implementing the plan with their support will help us create a buy-in.