How to Support Professional Development in a Digital Workplace

by Alton Zenon III
June 8, 2020
Woman working on her digital professional development
shutterstock

Employee growth shouldn’t stop just because office life has. 

Tech professionals working from home due to COVID-19 should still be able to advance their skills, acquire knowledge and ultimately, grow their careers. Leaders have a responsibility to ensure their team members are well-equipped to take advantage of all the professional development opportunities a company has to offer. 

While the desire for skills advancement might not have changed, the tools employees use to facilitate their development have. Boston companies, for instance, are relying more heavily on their in-house learning management systems (LMS). These platforms help employees see the metrics that determine success in their current or future roles and offer resources to get them closer to reaching those goals. 

Companies are also providing access to LinkedIn Learning training suites and encouraging employees to discuss their ongoing remote development with each other on collaboration tools like Padlet and secondary LMS platforms, such as Spark. 

 

Liza Gottsegen
Learning and Development Program Manager • Simply Business

How has professional development at Simply Business changed in light of COVID-19?

As the business world continues to adapt to these new working environments, it has become evident that our employees are expected to learn and adapt to a changing environment faster than ever before. While the scope of roles may be shifting, it is essential for us to prepare our workforce with the tools they need to not only do their jobs, but also to focus on their individual development goals. We shifted our development opportunities to be more tech-friendly, which promotes self-directed learning, because we want our employees to own their career and development.

Our LMS infrastructure is built on user testing and feedback.”

 

What interesting tools is your team using to support remote professional development?

Fortunately, our people strategy has adapted well to the changing climate. We strive to create personalized, bite-sized, blended learning experiences that are accessible anywhere, anytime. These elements are at the forefront when thinking about the technology we onboard. Our new LMS Spark gives learners access to the entire LinkedIn Learning library. It provides employees the ability to learn anything, like leadership development or even photography. 

Virtual learning experiences can be optimized through social learning, and Spark allows users to curate their own learning content and share it with their peers via various social channels. It ultimately creates a learning community where users are able to learn from each other, as well as share their own expertise and experiences.

 

How do you ensure employees feel empowered to take advantage of these tools?

Our leaders, people team and managers appreciate and understand the importance of allotting time for professional development, and often encourage employees to take advantage of the resources we offer, like our performance development framework. We built that tool and others alongside our employees to ensure that we meet their needs. Our LMS infrastructure is built on user testing and feedback. With these insights, we continue to iterate the look and feel of tools to increase their usage and maintain adoption. 

Our performance development framework is a byproduct of team feedback on what “good” looks like for a team member in that function. This tool gives employees — either those developing in their current role or looking to move into a new one — the ability to understand what resources and skills they need to achieve their goals while having the support to do so. 

 

Jim Page
Senior Director of Talent Development • Catalant Technologies

How has professional development at Catalant Technologies changed in light of COVID-19?

The organization doubled down on learning and development despite the craziness that has come with COVID-19. Employee utilization of learning opportunities is up over 200 percent. We were able to shift all of our learning to digital platforms, spanning across employees at all stages of their careers. Onboarding new hires, developing leadership and soft skills, as well as enabling managers are all fully virtual now.

Despite the change in the delivery of curated content, we continue to ensure we’re providing the right resources ahead of time for the right employees. We look six to 12 months out to see what skills are expiring, evolving and emerging. Then we solve for that outlook, today.

Employee utilization of learning opportunities is up over 200 percent.”

 

What interesting tools is your team using to support remote professional development?

Our internal learning experience platform, LFGrow, leverages bridge technology. It combines one-on-one planning, internal and external learning opportunities, and employee goal-setting. Its mobile app has been great for employees to get away from their laptops. 

Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning provide over 10,000 combined courses for employees across the company to take advantage of. Padlet is a tool I leveraged back in my teaching days, and carried it with me into corporate. It’s an online Post-It tool that we tapped to help drive interactive career conversations at the company, particularly with our distributed workforce today. 

 

How do you ensure employees feel empowered to take advantage of these tools?

The engineering team and leadership partnered to build dedicated learning time into sprint cycles. So employee learning and development is part of each person’s role, not just something they can do if they have time for it. 

Beyond that, we believe in articulating “permission to take the time to learn.” It may sound corny, but it’s more imperative now than ever that managers give such permission to their teams, then lead by example. The permission isn’t required, but spelling it out goes a long way in promoting a culture of learning. 

 

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