Supercharge career mobility with Action Learning

Read chapters 1 and chapter 2 on Action Learning

Action learning supercharges career mobility. This approach to employee development has just as much benefit to each of your individual workers as it does to your overall organization. 

It keeps each team member engaged and eager to grow at your own company, rather than looking elsewhere for more fulfilling or lucrative work. At the same time, it helps your organization grow at the same rate as each member of your staff. Isn’t that what business is all about?

So how do you ensure action learning powers your employees’ career mobility? Just as importantly, how do you provide paths for them to grow within your own organization rather than look for alternative employment? The answer is simple: let your employees take action and help them learn along the way.

What today’s employees want

Your employees crave growth and opportunities in their career paths. If they can’t find it within your organization, it’s only logical for them to look elsewhere. 

Does that mean you give every employee a promotion every year to keep them interested? While that may be ideal, this business model would be unsustainable for almost any organization. Not to mention, it would likely not provide the true growth employees are looking for. They’d be more likely to receive an on-paper title change rather than a substantive boost in skill acquisition and leadership ability.

Career mobility in today’s world isn’t entirely about moving up the ladder or gaining a new position anyway. It’s just as much about skills, coaching, and building a culture of learning for your employees and organization that keeps people engaged and growing. Action learning is uniquely suited to each of these things.

What today’s businesses need

There has been a rapid increase in the skills organizations require to succeed, and this is only likely to increase. By helping your employees solve tangible problems with action learning, you equip them to grow with your company at the same time they help you grow the company itself. In other words, not only does this process help your business solve immediate problems, it also has compounding returns for all your team members and your organization as a whole.

Your people’s expectations are changing too, with a growing focus on personal development and a desire for purpose-driven work. Managers are becoming coaches, team members are filling the coaching role as well, and all aspects of work are seen as development opportunities. Action learning fits well within this modern mindset. 

The best way to support personal and team development is to empower your team to solve problems with purpose. Done well, action learning breaks down traditional hierarchical boundaries and makes learners more active participants in their own learning journeys. 

The need for action learning

Workers who do not have visibility into internal career growth opportunities are 61% more likely to quit or find alternative positions at other companies. That means if your workers feel disengaged or taken-for-granted at work, there’s more than a one in two chance you’ll lose them. 

Luckily, you don’t have to bet on those odds. With action learning, you help each staff member feel like an essential part of the company. Rather than whisk them away to yet another employee training, you use these initiatives to sit them down and say, “I trust you to solve our problems and take us to new heights as an organization.”

While promotions and perks are essential to attract and retain talent, action learning is a way to keep engagement going each and every day. It shows your employees you’re willing to invest in their career growth—and yes, mobility. The good news is the more you treat your employees like partners in the business, the more likely they’ll want to be upwardly mobile with your organization than someone else’s.

Supercharging career mobility for employees

Action learning gives employees an ability to cut their teeth on new technical or performance-oriented problems in a hands-on way. It helps each team member learn new hard and soft skills essential to their personal development. It also just so happens to double as a boon for your business as well. 

Rather than telling team members how you would like them to solve a problem for your company, you empower them to do so themselves. In doing so, you build up confidence in their own abilities. At the same time, you help pave the way for them to move up and take on new roles in your company.

Action learning is all about skill development for individual and organizational benefit. These projects allow team members to discuss vital issues for your business. Through questioning, discussion and reflection with a coach, they take tangible steps to executing appropriate actions. Regardless of the topic, this process develops individuals’ problem-solving skills. As your team members become more sophisticated problem-solvers, they’ll have an easier time moving into more senior roles as well. 

How the Totara Talent Experience Platform can help

A learning management system is an essential part of skill development and career growth. Action learning brings the skills learned from coursework in an LMS into the real world. They’re two sides of the same coin, creating learning retention, application, and tangible outcomes. 

Totara Learn will provide your employees with expansive streams of educational content to meet and exceed individual development goals. Your company will have a customizable platform capable of meeting their every need as they ideate and execute on the initiatives you assign them. 

With Totara Engage, you’ll be able to connect these action learning teams with each other, as well as with their coaches. It’s a place where collaboration can flourish, especially in today’s hybrid and digitized work environments. This platform also helps action learning coaches track team engagement.

Totara Perform allows you to assess action learning on both ends of the process. Up front, it can help you see where employees can improve. This allows you to bring together teams who might benefit from joint action learning initiatives on related issues. On the back end, it gives you an incisive look into how well the learning process boosted their abilities. 

Interested in leveling up your own team with these sorts of exciting action learning initiatives? See how you can support this pragmatic process with Totara’s suite of products by signing up for a Community account!