Have you ever felt like tracking your employees learning goals and growth oppratunities might be somewhere down the list of priorities?
Let me tell you why that might be a mistake (that you can change!)
You get into the office, you start talking to someone, that goes into another conversation, you’ve barely had time to make your coffee, your manager calls you over and there’s this meeting that you completely forgot about and…
The day is over. You’ve barely had the time to breathe, not to mention the time to look over your own employees, how they’re doing, what they may need and how you can help them advance and get more of their jobs. And who can blame you? Employee success may not even be something you’re specifically evaluated upon in your everyday workplace. So, why should we? Why should we track our employees learning, weaknesses and strengths, and maybe intervene every once in a while?
Look, we’re not going to tell you to change your work day and curve out special evaluation meetings in your already drowning schedule. But – as the new generation (the newest is generation Z) is joining the workplace, we have to give mind to some of their characteristics: their short(er) attention span, their passion towards anything techy, and their tendency to be purpose-centric (according to this e-learning industry article). This means everything they do must have a meaning, or they’ll simply not do it (or do it a lot worse).
As managers, the way to get the best results (this we swear by) is making sure your employees are doing the best job possible, meeting their goals, and honestly – making you look great. That means putting a bit more effort into seeing how each employee can develop him/herself, what further learning opportunities we can offer them, and where they may be falling behind.
Reading the Business Insider’s “The 50 Best Places to Work at in 2017, According to Employees”, there are a few trends that turn up again and again – employees feel that the more they are challenged, respected, and are given oppratunities to develop themselves and their skills, not only do they succeed more in their jobs, but the company succeeds as well and everyone feels it. Do we need to convince you any longer?
The Ease of it All
Now what does this all have to with learning? Well, from our experience, there’s many things you can’t control in a company – the market changes, people have different ideas, and the coffee machine doesn’t always work (ok that’s specific to us, but still).
What you can control, though, is learning and how its done – and it’s also one of the many aspects in your company that may have the greatest impact on your employees’ success stories, sales, satisfaction, and your own success, of course.
The good news is that employee tracking no longer has to be a hassle. That’s right: consider this new era of eLearning the messiah of all frustrated employers who feel like they just aren’t dedicating enough time to their people (we all have good intentions – sometimes finding a place to begin is harder than anything).
LMS systems, and LearningZone specifically, give you the ability to set specific reminders and notifications about your employees’ learning performances to be sent straight to your inbox. So every time an employee finishes a course they’ve been assigned, or maybe a whole learning path, and looks like he isn’t doing much to advance himself proffessionaly (when he definitaly should), you can be aware and stop to think –
“maybe I can send him to some certification that will advance him personally or proffessionaly?” Surely that ought to boost your employee’s satisfaction, their respect of you and the company’s goals to advnace and develop them, and boost their overall performance.
On the other end of the spectrum, if an employee is struggling in a specific course, or maybe hasn’t gone in and done an assignment or certain certification that he needs to do for his job (think safety, sexual harassment, diversity – that sort) – wouldn’t it be smart if someone reminded him of it? Think about it – who is the blame going to come to if an incident occurs and your employee isn’t fully certified? Yah, exactly.
With the ease of getting reports straight to your inbox, you can finally be fully responsible for your employees –and not be dependent on the R&D department to chase after you because they haven’t completed an assignment, or gone to a course, or anything else really – the wheel is in your hands.
Look, this is coming from experience – we’ve seen at LearningZone several managers with the best of intentions for their employees, who simply did not have the time to follow their every move, thinking at every turn how they can improve them and others around them. A manager must assign one of his goals to be “bettering my employees” in order to this right – and if a system can make that goal ten times easier, why wouldn’t we put it up there?
Check out our website, and see what tracking solutions LearningZone can offer you moving forward.