Learning at work week – Create the future

Create the future

This year’s Learning at Work theme is, ‘Create the future’, which I believe is quite apt when we consider the constant need to continually invest in developing our young people and providing opportunities for people to retrain later in life, to allow for gaps in the job market to be filled and futureproofed. Steve Jobs famously said, “Learn continually – there’s always ‘one more thing’ to learn”, and for myself, this rings true in all areas of life, but as employers it’s key to ensuring that employees have the access to the right training at the right time, in a way that they want to learn. The 2023 LinkedIn Workplace Learning report for the UK, has found that 92% of organisations are concerned about employee retention and that 68% of organisations think providing learning, is as important as having flexible work arrangements, when it come to improving retention.

Enabling employees to have access to the right training at the right time, is so much more than just providing ‘traditional’ structured training. Allowing people to understand that training comes in many shapes and forms is essential for individuals to stay connected with their employer and benefit from a culture that encourages them to develop – both professionally and personally. The 70/20/10 model that has been around since the 1980’s is commonly used within Learning & Development functions. The model follows the principle that 70% of learning comes from experience, experiment and reflection. 20% derives from working with others and the final 10% comes from formal interventions and planned learning solutions. When it comes to learning, it is vital that employers highlight and shout about the 70% and 20% as much as the 10%. Without doing so, people will not be clear on all of the learning opportunities available to them.

A culture of continuous learning

A survey conducted found that 88% of UK L&D professionals agree that proactively building employee skills will help navigate the evolving future of work. At Pick Everard, we consistently support our people daily. We aim to provide everyone with work and projects that will continually challenge and enhance their skills, enabling them to develop their knowledge through ‘doing’. Through this, our people not only build on their skills and knowledge, but their confidence, resilience and efficiency all improve. Giving these opportunities shows trust in all of our people and allows us as a firm to continue to demonstrate our culture to #DeliverBetterTogether.

At the end of 2021, we launched our internal mentoring programme – RISE. We have had a third of our management team sign up to be mentors as part of the programme, meaning that all of our people have the opportunity to connect with those in senior roles and begin to improve the skills that they want to work on. And then in 2022, we launched the firm’s national, cross-discipline training programme, Springboard. Springboard has been designed to provide those in our ‘early careers’ career level with a structured training pathway to build up their soft and business skills. Building on our employee’s skills ensures that we can develop our people from within, allowing them to create inspiring careers for exceptional people.

As much as the 70/20/10 model is 40 years old, and that the actual percentages can vary depending on an organisation and individuals, it is hard to argue that it doesn’t have a place when we look at learning in work today. The importance of the 70/20/20 model in organisations, I believe, will remain for many years to come, as we navigate an ever-changing world and continually adapt to it’s needs.