Category: COE

How do onboarding programs help?

The most important resource for any company is its labor force, the human resource we are talking about. What’s challenging in today’s scenario is finding the best talent from a pool of workforce, someone who will be a good fit for the firm given its culture and work environment.  Higher employee turnover ratio not only reflects badly on the firm but also drains profitability and revenue.

Firms in the 21^st century have learned from their past mistakes and most of them have an outstanding onboarding program for the newcomers to make them feel more connected to the mission of the organization and their individual role in achieving the objectives. Let’s dive a little deeper into how the onboarding programs help the newcomers.

First and foremost, a robust onboarding program created by the company helps to increase the employee retention rate by providing them insightful information into the job they’ll be performing and the means to excel. Also, it helps to create a sense of belongingness for the employee and they are more likely to stick around for a longer period.

How to create effective onboarding programs?

Now that we know how onboarding programs help the firm in multiple ways, let’s talk about how we can create an effective onboarding program. Research studies have concluded that employee performance can be improved by up to 12% with a robust onboarding plan in place. Here are a few tips on how to create an effective onboarding program.

Creating a cross-departmental team for the onboarding process

Employees from different departments like HR, IT, Management, etc. can be included in the onboarding team. This will provide the employee with a holistic view of the company and also help the employee with a point of contact in every department.  Also, keeping a co-worker from the team can help the new recruit with understanding the day to day of the organization more effectively.

Communicating the firm’s expectation from the new hires

Communication is the key while hiring new talent; it helps with providing the new candidates with a benchmark as to what they’ll need to achieve the given objectives. It will also help the manager and the employee to evaluate the progress and take necessary measures to improve productivity.

Breaking the ice with team members

Planning an activity that’ll help the new candidate to gel-up and socialize with the team is paramount in the onboarding process. This not only helps with creating a positive work environment but also with developing a sense of belongingness for the new employee.

A proactive approach to the onboarding process

Maintaining communication with the new employee between the period of their hiring and their first day at the company is very crucial. People get anxious about their first day at the company, keeping in touch before their first day will create an inclusive environment for the newcomer.

Reminding the Hiring Manager

The hiring manager has a huge role to play when it comes to the success of a newcomer. Reminding the hiring manager to prepare for the first day of the candidate is a crucial step in the onboarding process. A reminder email to the hiring manager should focus on multiple aspects such as roles and responsibilities, buddy system, scheduled check-ins, etc. to be set up before the first day of the newcomer.

Giving access through QR codes

Using QR codes to provide the newcomers with important information such as training materials, company information, individual objectives, etc. can be an effective way to start the day instead of mailing a bunch of PDFs and handing out hard copies for sharing information.

Taking feedback from the newcomers

Newcomers not only bring new ideas but also have a different perspective on things. Taking feedback from the recruits as to how their onboarding experience was and what can be done to improve that experience is significant in designing better training programs for the future.

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There is no end to learning. In this era of competition and advancement, if you have to keep moving ahead, you have to learn new skill sets as and when required. Of course, one can skip these processes, but then again how will you step out of your well?

The learning and development process (L&D) is a rich practice to ensure new skill sets and respective opportunities for the employees. In the corporate world, the L&D process falls under HR responsibilities, but one can also learn from his/her colleagues, through brainstorming sessions, etc. There are L&D departments in many colleges too. Let us see how learning and development help in scaling up.

Pros Of The Learning And Development Process

• Through the L&D process, any particular firm gets to know about its weaknesses. It also helps in discovering loopholes in the company/firm. We get to know which employee is facing trouble in any particular area & then we can teach that particular employee. Besides wasting time on every employee, we can target the weak employees and can give them more concentrated learning. The rest of the employees can be taught some new skill sets.
• Interaction and communication among the employees and managers increase through the L&D process. This increases employee satisfaction and loyalty. Good office culture is formed where people help each other to scale up.
• Through training, employees get to more about their job and company. This results in increased productivity and financial profits.
• When employees are trained and equipped with proper skill sets. They come up with new and innovative ideas that help in increased innovation.
• According to LinkedIn, the most required skill set among employees is blockchain in 2020. This trending technique can be taught to the employees so that they are able to do diverse jobs.
• A firm can identify its future needs and can train its employees in the present. This will help in moving ahead of others and the job can be with more accuracy if we have a prerequisite.

Key Insights Into The L&D Process

According to LinkedIn surveys, 82% of L&D experts say their employees actively support and are happy about the L&D process and training conducted at the workplace. The survey also tells us that the budget for the L&D process has increased from 27% in 2017to 43% in 2019. Firms and companies have identified the importance of learning and development and are taking it pretty seriously as the stats suggest.

LinkedIn surveys tell us that 87% of team leaders are confident that their team size will either the same or will increase at the end of a financial year. This tells us that the learning and development process increases customer satisfaction.

Employees are satisfied with their jobs and team leaders in those workplaces where the L&D process is taken seriously. The learning process can be done through different substrates, like E-mail marketing and online programs. There is no such traditional rule to be followed, the managers can embed new skills in their employees through any medium in which they feel confident.

There are many processes that fall under the L&D process like reskilling and upskilling. Brushing up of skills is required every now and then. There is a little bit difference between Learning and Development, learning is the process of absorbing information through concentrated training or programs whereas the development process focuses on personality and skill set of any particular employee and tries to find out the weaknesses and strengths and the areas which need more focus. Filling skill gaps within the workplace is done through the L&D process.

Conclusion

The surveys and reports tell us that soft skills are also required as much as hard skills. The demand for these skills in employees keeps on changing as per the market behavior. The L&D process helps employees in upskilling and adapting to new advancements. This article was all about the profits of the L&D process. I hope it helps!

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“If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business”

                                                                                                                         -Bill Gates

The past decade has been all about digitization, no matter what industry you are in you need the digital presence to address the audience of the new era. With growing internet penetration and affordability of smartphones, the digital world has seen a huge surge.

From cutting down your marketing expenditure to reaching customers all across the globe, the digital world has a lot to offer. From banking to retail commerce every industry has been influenced by the digital buzz and customers have been blessed with improved services and higher convenience. Now, this whole transformation requires the workforce to have the required skills for staying competitive in the game.

Let’s dive deeper into the digital skill gap that persists in the contemporary.

Understanding the digital skill gap

What exactly is the digital skill gap? To have a comprehensive understanding of the whole situation it is important to get the context here. All this exponential growth in the digital space is powered by tons and tons of data that has been collectively given the name of the Big Data. Whether it is a personalized recommendation in e-commerce space or contextual banking in finance, everything is backed by a massive amount of data. Naturally, with the surge in the digital space, data has taken a front row and the jobs in the data science and tech industry have been exponentially growing.

The demand for labor in the data industry has not been matched by the labor supply, the skills required to do the job is still lagging behind in the workforce. This has created a scenario of the digital skill gap. The future is all about AI and advanced technology, this requires the workforce to upgrade their skills to contribute to the digital transformation. If a business has to succeed in the era of this digital buzz, they need to plan a robust digital transformation strategy.

Bridging the skill gap

Now that we have an understanding of the digital skill gap challenge, let’s see how we should plan to bridge this digital skill gap that is hampering the growth of various organizations. The most prominent challenge is finding professionals who understand both the technical and business aspect of the organization.  It is crucial for organizations to link the training of their employees with the long term digital strategy of the organization. On the employee’s part, they should be aware of their strength and weaknesses in the digital arena and should up-skill themselves accordingly.

Learning the art of managing data is a must-have skill in the contemporary scenario. Employers should train the employees to be able to extract and analyze data because every industry is running on data in the digital sphere. One of the most important aspects of bridging the skill gap in the digital world is planning ahead for future requirements based on factual evidence and data.

Given the dynamic nature of the digital world, there is a constant need for businesses to train and hire new people with relevant skillset. Instead of hiring new talent or spending a huge amount of money on training programs Businesses can rely on contractual workers and freelancers who are equipped with the relevant skillset to perform the task. Given the paucity of skilled professionals in the digital arena, corporations can lure in the right talent through a good remuneration package and incentive.

Conclusion: 

The digital world has totally changed the game for businesses and workers. Corporations are facing the challenge of the digital skill gap and are missing out on the opportunity that the digital world has to offer. A robust digital workforce planning is a must-have to survive in the digital space, looking out of the usual pool to find relevant talent is a good option for the dynamic digital space.

In this era of technological advancements, cloud computing plays an important role in accessing and manipulating data. According to reports, the global market of cloud computing will reach up to $623.3 billion by 2023. This signifies the expansion of cloud computing over the years. Cloud offers various options that increase the ease of doing business. To stay on top in this competitive world, one has to use cloud computing in an effective way.

Let us see how cloud computing will help you to stay on top of the game. 

Benefits of cloud computing

• If you have a sound command over the cloud, then you can easily access data from the cloud which was uploaded from another location. This, in turn, increases portability, accessibility, and cross-platform connectivity. Cloud is a very good alternative for storage shortcomings, the device will not store data in its memory, it will upload it on cloud and from that cloud any authorized person can access that information.
• Cloud computing revives the culture of collaboration. People sitting apart from each other can share resources and data using the cloud. The work which has to be done can be shared with all the team members in one go, by uploading it on the cloud.
• RapidScale claims that around 94% of firms have found fewer security concerns after switching to cloud computing. An operational cloud has to be monitored regularly and is comparatively safer.
• Mobility and scalability of any particular firm increase after switching to cloud computing.
• Data loss and then its recovery is faster in cloud computing. From power cuts to malicious attacks, cloud computing has quick data recovery options for these scenarios.
• Cloud computing is also ethically good; it helps the environment to be clean and works in a sustainable manner. Sustainable development is the type of development in which resources are used in such a way so that it can be preserved for future generations too. If you are working manually using physical resources, you are likely to emit more greenhouse gases.

Cloud Computing – A growing sector

Recently the CEO of cognizant said that they are doubling the investment year after year for cloud computing as he sees a great future where services can be easily distributed for the required. You must have heard about the cloud tie-up between Microsoft and India’s Reliance. You can easily see how the big guns in the market are reacting towards cloud computing. Nowadays, companies are looking for skilled people who have knowledge of cloud computing.

You will always get an edge due to knowledge of cloud computing. You can increase your efficiency and accuracy through cloud computing. According to LinkedIn, cloud computing is ranked second in the list of hard skills needed most by companies in 2020.

You can see the craze of cloud computing and it has the capacity to grow even more if you have to remain on the top, then having a sound command over cloud computing will help you a lot. The computation power is even further increased through the use of APIs. API management is also done a lot nowadays to help the cloud run smoothly. There is a complete infrastructure of cloud located virtually on the server, to manage that infrastructure companies are looking for skilled persons.

Conclusion

Marc Benioff Founder & CEO of Salesforce once said, “The cloud services companies of all sizes, the cloud is for everyone”. This article highlighted the benefits of cloud computing and how you can enhance yourselves by getting into this field. I hope it helps!

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If you don’t evolve with time then you won’t last long, this school of thought applies to all levels. Corporations are first to adopt new and emerging technologies and trends, in order to survive in the business, you have to stay on top of your game.

Training and learning are an important part of corporate life, especially today when new technologies are emerging by the hour. People working at big corporations need to upskill themselves on a regular basis, gone are the days when one training session was all that you had to go through to do your job efficiently.

Let’s dive deeper into how corporate learning has evolved in the past few decades?  

Breaking down the learning evolution: 

It’s hard to imagine a time when big corporations used to build physical universities to train their workforce on multiple aspects like sales, computer engineering, customer services, etc. We are talking about the 1980s when the internet hadn’t exploded and computer systems were limited, corporate learning was facilitated by experts in the domain who taught the employees in person.

In early 2000, the internet exploded and this called for a technological up-gradation in almost every industry and the learning industry wasn’t immune to such technological advancement. This gave birth to the process of e-learning; the physical universities were being shut down and replaced using virtual universities. Corporations spend a huge sum on training and development programs, the adaption of the virtual universities was quick also due to the fact that it saved a lot on money in the recessionary phase for the companies.

The process of e-learning was tedious and monotonous given the lack of advancement during the time. Switching from face to face training to computer-based training was not easy to adopt for people working at corporations. E-learning needed a good amount of money to be spent on content creation and there were many technical glitches initially. As the market matured it was adopted widely by corporations and all big companies had their e-learning portals.

As the technology evolved further and new ideas came into existence in the form of YouTube; video content got widely popular and people wanted more of that because it was more like an upgraded version of in-person training. People didn’t want to switch pages on the e-learning portal and teach themselves, this disrupted the e-learning market to a great extent.

With the growth of digital media, life became fast; news didn’t have to come early in the morning, real-time experiences were valued more. With the proliferation of social media, people were more inclined towards instant gratification, they wanted things faster and this became a habit.

People started preferring short and crisp content that could help them immediately. They no longer wanted to know everything about the subject; they just wanted to pass the examination. This led to the birth of micro-video formats, these were short videos created to serve a specific learning purpose, and it had a very narrow perspective when it comes to imparting relevant knowledge. People at work wanted to spend more time doing the work than learning about how to do the work.

The idea of micro-videos was to provide contextual information, more easily discoverable and more readily consumed by the user. The next phase of the learning evolution was employee-centric; LinkedIn and some other companies were the harbinger of this learning evolution that was more user-centric. In the contemporary scenario, soft skills are more into the limelight, people have realized the importance of emotional intelligence and skills like problem-solving, leadership, and communication, etc. have taken a front seat in the skill hierarchy.

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Situational leadership is a form of leadership that is generally adaptable, where a manager or the leader of a company adjusts his leadership to suit a style that matches the goals of his team members. The concept was studied and adapted by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, who believe that leaders in the modern-day can no longer lead a team, based only on their positional influence.

The strategy of situational leadership aims to uphold how a leader is required to change his style of leadership based on the followers he is trying to influence, rather than them trying to adapt to his style. A leader is required to note and understand the development levels of his team members, consider the situation and then decide on a leadership style that meets their needs. Situational leadership, as a concept is flexible and a leader can change his management style based on his insights.

Most organizations around the world follow the situational leadership model and here’s what they aim for:

• To bring out the best in their teammates and establish a working relationship among all
• Enhance development skills in general
• Aim to uphold a common style of leadership in an organization, regardless of how big or small it may be

Breakdown of a situational leadership

Situational leadership involves a certain style which managers or leaders use to influence their teammates. Here is a breakdown of the same:

Coaching to influence

A common form of situational leadership, leaders often deploy the use of this method to arrive at a decision within the organization. The leader usually is completely involved in daily events within the organization, however, when it comes to making decisions, he consults with employees to make them feel more involved. Employees are still supervised by the leader who rather acts as a coach rather than a manager. This works well among less-experienced people in increasing their confidence.

Directing or telling

This style of situational leadership is often referred to as a micro-managed form of leadership. The leader is extremely involved in day-to-day happenings, and he is the person with whom all decisions of the organization solely rest. Employees are supervised at a personal level, they do as and what they are told, with the leader deciding the way forward for them and asking them to accordingly. This leadership style follows a more top to bottom approach.

Employee delegation

In this form of leadership, the leader is not involved in each decision in an organization. The employees are authorized and responsible for making their own decisions when it comes to responsibilities and tasks to fulfill. A leader is only involved at a more superficial level when the team seeks his approval on something, turns to him for direction or asks for general feedback. Even then his involvement in his team’s affairs is minimal. This style of leadership helps employees act as self-sufficient decision-makers.

 Support and equal participation

A leader, in this case, is someone who guides his teammates through a situation by providing feedback. This system is devoid of influencing or directing. While the leader merely suggests or helps with some direction, it is up to the employees to implement it or not. This style of situational leadership involves a lot of two-way participation and gives more power and responsibility to employees or teammates. They are usually confident and work with a lot of motivation no matter what the tasks at hand are.

According to the development level

The situational leadership style of a leader can be based on what the development level of his teammates or employees is. While certain inexperienced employees may need a more directing or telling style, someone who is experienced and has a lot of skills already may conform to the employee delegation style.

Conclusion

It is often difficult to decide on one leadership style since leadership is often situational and more subjective than objective. The whole idea revolves around choosing the right leadership for the right kind of followers, what their eligibility is, what their development levels are, and how competent they are. As long as the leader understands what style he needs to adopt for his people to adapt, situational leadership works great for most businesses.

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