Better Data with Learner Personas
Creating amazing learner personas is a great trick picked up from marketing experts. Top marketers create buyer personas. These are a hypothetical group of people who meet a specific demographic based on the brand’s target market. Entire marketing campaigns are built around these personas. It works because we all want to feel we’re important so when an advertisement seems like it’s speaking directly to us, we are more open to adopting its message. We can borrow many of the same techniques from marketing and use this same concept to create learning personas that vastly improve the learning experience. Let’s start by discussing the definition of a learner persona. Simply put, learner personas are hypothetical profiles that we create based on the individuals for whom we’re designing the learning program. This persona is based on demographics, training, individual goals, educational background, experience, attitude, skill level, etc. We put on our storytelling hat and use this information to create a fictional character. We describe their backstory, personality, likes, dislikes, and even give them a name. This process breathes life into this learner persona, thus defining the audience for whom we’re designing the learning course. Why is a Learner Persona so Important? Personas are just as powerful when creating a learning program as they are for marketing. They accomplish four essential goals. A learner persona sheds light on your learners’ habits. Understanding what makes a person tick will help you create content that delivers a personalized learning experience. You’ll gain insight into their needs, desires, decision-making skills, and questions. As we learn from marketing, people are more willing to adopt a message that’s directly addressed to them. Most important though, learner personas allows you to make better decisions. At every turn, you would ask “What would Aleeyah think”, with the name customized to your persona’s name. It’s a key tool to personalize the learner’s journey through the content of the course. Without a defined learner persona, you might accidently create content that appeals to your personal preference rather than the target learner. Being acquainted with the learner allows you to predict their reaction to the content. If an essential module is sure to bore them and there’s no way around it, then you can make sure to follow it with something that appeals to them. You’ll also know their preferred learning platform and can design content accordingly. A learning solution is more consistent when there is a clear understanding of its audience. Without a clear direction, different teams will instill their personal preferences in their content. This leads to inconsistency across the learning course. Rather than inconsistently jumping from one model to the next, having a clear path creates unity across the entire platform by ensuring that all teams are on the same page. Overall, learning programs that are catered to a specific audience are higher quality. With the right tracking in place, you can even enhance the persona as your learners grow. This fosters long-term development so the learning course doesn’t become stagnant. Create a Powerful Learner Persona in Just Three Steps Creating the right learner persona is the key to unlocking all the benefits we just discussed. Fortunately, there is a foolproof three-step process that is used to create a powerful learner persona. Step 1: Gather Intel There are two methods primarily used to gather data on a target audience. Luckily enough, marketing gurus have already mastered this process , so we don’t have to create it completely from scratch. The two forms of analysis used to define a learner persona are quantitative data and qualitative data. We can gather this by speaking directly to future learners and/or their supervisors. Gather quantitative data related to demographics, level of education, schedules, relationships, work environment, and ask them to identify their preferred learning platform. Once you have that information, gather qualitative data by asking about their needs, goals, personal motivations, frustrations, dislikes, and ambitions. Step 2: Analyze the Information It’s time to give context to all that raw data. Look for information that repeats from person-to-person and then add that to another list. Using this list, write a descriptive profile. This is your learner persona. Give it a name and then attach that list to this persona. Collaborate with your entire team when creating learner personas so you get a few fresh perspectives. Now use the same process to create a few personas based on employees. Step 3: Activate the Learner Persona Share these learner personas with your entire team so they have a clear picture of the learning platform’s target learner. Discuss these personas regularly so you can make slight adjustments. Follow up with the learners you interviewed earlier and ask them for feedback. Reap the Benefits of your Learner Personas By using learner personas that are rich in relevant details, you are building a foundation for a successful learning platform. Learner personas are a proven, efficient, and cost-effective way of improving the learning experience. Show workers that you care about their unique needs and desires. About the Author Danielle Wallace is the chief learning strategist at Beyond the Sky, a provider of custom learning solutions. She combines proven marketing techniques with adult learning principles to create learning that sticks. Previously, as a marketing executive with Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, she learned strategic marketing and advertising principles, which she applies to learning and development to create compelling breakthrough solutions. Her thought leadership and free infographics can be found at www.beyondthesky.ca
How To Embrace Change
We’re always being told that change has to start from the top, so knowing this I’ve spent much of my time in the past trying to contact the top and telling them what a bad job they’re doing, you can imagine how that generally plays out. It’s just amazing how top leadership never gets excited about being told that they’re not doing a great job! One day I realised that I must be the top of something. So if change is going to start from the top, that must mean me. It’s really easy to learn about management and leadership theory and think someday I’ll take this knowledge and be a great leader. Remember that someday is right now, you are the top of your system, change your process, change your system and change your thinking. As soon as you modify your system you’re going to have an effect on the larger system, the way that you manage and lead every day! How you process the work that you’re doing. Now is the time to start practicing what you’re doing, don’t think “oh someday I’ll get this started, someday I’ll do this” That’s the big fallacy of people who go into leadership and management training. They think Oh when I get back to the office I’m going to do some of this, the stuff I’ve learned in class, sometimes I’ll hear people say, “well I’m in the middle of a project right now , once that’s finished I’ll start then, I’ll try some of this stuff then”. It’ll never happen, you’ll never start. So here’s an idea, start now and don’t stop! Start right now and think about how you mange things how you interact with your team, your peers, your managers, your customers to encourage the system to get a different result. Think about the way you transform the situation, are you thinking about what you can do and how you can apply what you’ve learned and how it can be applied? Not for the process of manipulation but so that you can form groups of people to think about what they can do different and how they can make things better. Remember you have a huge amount of power when you change the system. According to Deming your power comes from three sources. 1. Your position. 2. Your knowledge. 3. Your personality. As a team member when you walk into your boss’s office and tell them what a bad job they’re doing or that they’ve really messed up is not going to work out well for you! Second source of power is knowledge; third source of power is personality. You may have worked with people in the past who are extremely knowledgeable even brilliant but they have no personality. You can’t get anything done because nobody wants to work with them or hey he’s a great person to be around fun, loveable but just has no knowledge about what we need to do or fix. Perhaps you know someone in a formal position who has no knowledge or personality but they’ve loads of power, scary! Think about merging these three. If you want to manage change don’t use your formal position that’ll be the least effective. As a more junior team member your formal position is quite low but what you do have is knowledge or the ability to get it! You can use your personality to influence others and as a way to affect the situation that you find yourself in. Very quickly you’ll start to see the team that you work with will start to ask questions that aid their understanding and offering solutions that support you. Remember helping people to understand why can be just as important as the what and the how, oh and by the way it’ll make you a great leader! About the Author Andrew Stotter-Brooks Vice President Learning and Development Etihad Aviation Group (UAE)
How to Choose an Online Learning Platform
If you’ve been tasked with choosing and implementing an online learning platform for your team or organisation, there are some critical questions you’ll need to ask before being sold by the most convincing demo or salesperson. Moving your training online and choosing a learning platform to facilitate this transition is an exciting endeavour, especially if this is the first time your organisation is investing in learning technology, but the edtech industry can also be very overwhelming to navigate. Online learning platforms have adapted over the years as we have come to better understand online user behaviour, and as a consequence, the industry has exploded with different types of learning systems, each prioritising its own key features or different aspects of the learning process. Different learning platforms, software systems and tools serve different purposes when it comes to how learners interact with your course and with others, as well as how you track and manage their progress. It’s important to understand these differences so you can tailor your learning experience to your users, and launch it on a platform that best suits their and your needs. Here is where we recommend you take a step back and first focus on why you need a learning platform and then what you will need it to do, based on your business and learning goals, budget and various other considerations. The following questions will help you get to the ‘why’ of your learning experience, and subsequently, to how best to deliver it and via which technology. 1. What are our strategic objectives? What business problem are you aiming to solve by investing in a digital platform? This could be to scale your learning beyond classroom training, or to improve the tracking and measuring of your learning initiatives. Or perhaps you’re looking to monetise your training interventions, or to better track and manage individual learning journeys or to build learning communities. Whatever your strategic objectives are will determine the type of platform you choose and help you narrow down how you prioritise key functionality. Then, you’ll need to take a closer look at your user groups. 2. Who are our key stakeholders? Who will be using the platform? What are their digital literacy or platform management capabilities? If you’re early into your digital learning journey, you might not need a platform that has all the bells and whistles, or which will require additional support and resources to implement. If you’re upgrading your systems, you’ll need to consider what’s currently working and what is missing. Either way, spend some time with your end users, platform admins and support team to truly get a sense of their needs, and to communicate about the incoming change. Then, you’ll need to make sure you understand how a new platform will fit into your organisation’s digital strategy or existing systems architecture. 3. How will it integrate? Will your new platform need to integrate with any existing security or single sign on procedures? Will you be able to extract all learning data and report on it in your existing systems? If you’re replacing an existing system, what are you trying to replace or upgrade and why? Who will support the implementation and what organisational processes will need to change, if any? Having a broader understanding of your existing digital landscape will help you ensure that any new solutions you introduce can actually integrate, both from a technological and behavioural perspective. From here, you’ll need to determine what success looks like. 4. How will we measure success? Think about how your organisation measures success, what data you will need from the system to do so, and how your stakeholders will want to measure the return on investment. You’ll need to make sure there are no hidden costs or additional licensing or implementation fees, so ask your proposed vendors or suppliers to be very specific about what their pricing does and doesn’t include. Ultimately, the success of your investment will largely depend on whether you’ve moved the needle as far as your strategic objectives are concerned. The old saying, ‘what’s measured is managed’ is key here, so knowing what your overarching goals are will help you make better decisions when it comes to investing in new technology. Once you’ve spent some time understanding your strategic objectives, tech ecosystem, your stakeholders and success metrics, you can then look to potential technology partners. There are several approaches to take when deciding on how to deliver your learning experience, and whether you’re going to use an online learning platform specifically. Each option will result in varying and wide-ranging costs, required expertise and training, ownership and control considerations, as well as implications for budget and timelines. So, the process of first answering key questions will help you prioritise your needs, which means you’ll be able to better brief any vendors or suppliers you engage with. It’s important to disclaim as well that what we call different types of platforms is constantly evolving. How we define a traditional learning management platform in relation to a learning experience platform will depend on how you personally define digital learning, and the acronyms and features of each will also change over time as service providers evolve their products and services. As such, how the different learning delivery solutions have been delineated here is based more on their function in relation to your overarching objectives than how they specifically work or what they’re called in the market. Here are the different approaches you can take to learning technologies: 1. Install a traditional open-source learning management system with some custom development. Most learning management systems work on the premise of you installing cloud-based software that can be customised to some degree to meet your technological requirements. The traditional LMS functions primarily as a course management platform, emphasising tracking and managing learning activities. They generally have limited student interaction and engagement and are more suited to tracking student progress against learning objectives through individual assessments and completion tracking. Over time, the functionality of these types of systems have evolved to become more learner-centered, but their fundamental architecture is premised on an individual’s experience of learning content, followed by some sort of measurement of that experience. Examples of this type of platform are Moodle or OpenEdX, which are both free to download and install, but require some coding knowledge and much custom development to make it your own and to adapt the learning experience to your needs. Recent changes to the ways LMSs are deployed also sees vendors offering to implement these solutions as service offering,, which essentially means they install it for you and make any developments or provide support as you request it. 2. Implement an off-the-shelf, pay-per-user subscription-based platform. A more recent addition to the learning platform landscape is the LXP, which prioritises personalised learning experiences and tailors learning experiences to the user. It is a more social platform that provides the functionality for learning to happen in communities. This is where Software as a Service (SaaS) has really come into play in the learning technology landscape. Instead of paying a once-off installation or implementation fee for an open source instance of a learning platform, you’re paying a licence fee per user. This often works out as a more costly per-user fee per annum over time compared to a once off cost, but the longer term benefits are that you are not responsible for maintaining the software, and upgrades and new features are often included in the annual subscription. The Fosway Group releases an annual report on the potential and performance of various learning platforms of this nature, so it’s always worth reading through reports like theirs to understand the full extent of what’s currently performing well. 3. Upload content to an online plug-and-play course builder. A similar offering in principle, but better suited to delivering standalone courses, or a suite of similar courses, is through plug-and-play online course builders. These platforms in essence allow you to ‘rent space’ on their platform to market and sell your course offering. Platforms like LearnWorlds or Kajabi allow you to build your course within their online template. Depending on their subscription tiers and payment options, this means you can create what feels like an entire website for your learning products, with customised URLs and localised payment gateways, without the resource and budget implications of building your own website on top of deploying a learning platform. However, with some, you are limited to building content straight into the platform, which means they are not all compatible with external content authoring tools which are popular for creating interactive content. Platforms like Thinkific and Teachable are very popular, especially with individuals trying to sell their expertise as an online course, however, both do not support the integration of other types of online, interactive content (know as SCORM packages). This is a serious limitation because you’re restricted to their course builder templates. If you’re a subject matter expert looking to monetise your current training offer, or you want build and sell a single or a few courses without having to pay for the infrastructure of a full on platform, then this is a good option to start exploring, but make sure you’ve fully understood the limitations of the platform before committing to an annual licence fee of one. 4. Invest in a custom-designed and developed online learning platform. There is a reason why there are so many off-the-shelf learning platforms and integrations available in the market, and it’s because custom-designing and developing an online learning platform is an enormously costly and time-consuming undertaking. Typically, if you’re choosing to go this route it’s because the project scope is so unique, or the integration with existing systems is so complex, that only a custom-built system will be sufficient. Having said that, it’s not an impossible task, but because a custom build requires ongoing maintenance and development to keep up with the shifting demands of your stakeholders, going this route can often result in a product with limited functionality, frustrated users and a blown out budget. 5. Optimise a traditional website experience for learning. An increasingly popular approach to designing learning experiences and delivering online courses is to create a digital experience that is learning focused (as opposed to designing a learning experience that is digital). This allows organisations to share resources and design an interactive learning experience through an existing website or digital tool. Depending on how your website has been built, this option has proven popular with organisations who offer resources, content or knowledge freely, but are looking to improve the user experience and level of interactivity or engagement with their content. It is here that we’re seeing learning science and user interface design and user experience principles converge. 6. Embed learning experiences into your existing technology stack. Finally, and perhaps what learning professionals are grappling with the most at the moment, is that if we want to truly embed learning into your current digital experience, we can’t separate where learning takes place from one’s daily activities. You can be sure that unless your employees are working in the digital learning team, they’re not spending most of their day on your learning platform, and so packaging learning into neatly defined online courses and placing them on a separate learning platform to where users interact with each other and their work tasks removes the learning from reality. It adds another barrier to implementing new skills, competencies or information in real time because the ‘what’ is removed from the ‘how’, making it that much more challenging to either bring learners to the learning, or putting the learning experience in the day to day. One way to overcome this is to move away from the idea of having a separate learning platform altogether and start understanding how learning happens informally – between individuals, in meetings or via emails, through on-the-job mentoring or coaching or even in unprompted conversations. When we shift towards this mentality that learning is always happening, we can begin to see that technology facilitates learning rather than driving it. So if you’re aiming to meet users where they are, then perhaps a learning platform isn’t what you’re after at all. Obviously this approach makes quantifying the return on learning investment difficult to measure, and takes this article on a bit of a tangent from what a reader might have originally sought answers to, but it’s an important discussion to be had, and one that perhaps needs to be had across the human resources and organisational technology functions entirely. As with all technology, one platform is never going to be able to meet all of the needs of all of its users. A platform that prioritises communication and engagement among users will function very differently to one that emphasises personalised, curated learning journeys or assessments. Similarly, a learning experience developed and delivered for public consumption will have unique objectives to one designed for an internal organisation or closed collection of people. Finding the right platform takes time, so make sure you do as much research as you can – both on your own and your users’ needs, as well as on the different platforms out there. Then cross reference with others in similar organisations and with comparable issues and needs. Remember, not all organisations face the same challenges, so a learning platform that works for you, may not work for someone else, and vice versa. This is why it’s important to understand what your objectives are and who your audience is before investing in any system, platform or technology project. About the Author Kira Koopman Head of Digital Learning Momentum Metropolitan
The Magic Key to Unlock Excel
There is one magic key on your keyboard which will make you whiz around your spreadsheets in record speed. This key will unlock your efficiency in Excel and beyond, and once you unlock it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it! You’ll feel like such a keyboard person that you almost don’t need your mouse at all. Come and discover one of Excel’s best-kept secrets in this short practical demo video… About the Author Dan Stillerman Founder Excel Academy, Excel Academy Trainers and Actuaries (Pty) Ltd (trading as Excel Academy)
Adding “A P” to the Marketing Mix
One would think that running a business is easy – just maximise revenue and minimise costs! However, this simple formula is incomplete without the essence of what makes your business unique – it’s not just about the product, but also about the price, the place and the positioning. These “4 P’s” were coined by Neil Borden in 1964 as he illustrated how companies can use marketing and advertising to generate revenues. We add two more letters to this – “Analytics” and “People”. Holistically, this new mix now centres around customer experience, ensuring that any activity of the business is firmly centred around the customer and underpinned by data and analytics. Product and Customer Experience Products (or solutions in a B2B context) can be thought of as solutions to a problem. Do you know what problems your customers face? Is your solution the right fit to solve that problem? By solving a problem, you not only meet a basic need but also open up avenues to prevent the problem from recurring in the future -this value-enhancing activity attracts and keeps customers to your brand. This is where most data scientists spend their time – building models that predict customer take-up rates and churn rates. A question I will leave you with: if all companies are building these models, what’s next? Price and Customer Experience Pricing is tricky – it’s moved away from the cold mathematics of finding the optimal monetary amount where your revenue exceeds your cost as customers want to get value from what they purchase. Prices are simply the intersection of supply and demand and unfortunately can have an extreme impact on perceived value. For example, a bottle of water at either R1 or R100 would raise eyebrows (for different reasons), indicative that people intuitively place a value on the goods and services that they purchase. Value is also driven by quality – one would expect to pay a higher price for a higher quality product or service. At the very least, you should be able to price your products and services at the point where you have a positive margin, while still maintaining a competitive edge. However, the business that will succeed combines this optimisation with what the customer expects and perceives. Do customers feel that they get value for money after purchasing from you? This value doesn’t only have to be in the price – a simple “thank you” or confirmation of the good purchase decision or tips on how to use the product or service effectively goes a long way in creating value. Data drawn from research generate valuable insights into “segmenting” your customers into smaller, more tangible groups, after which you can apply different treatment strategies to ensure that each group is at its optimal. Place and Customer Experience As we have learnt with lockdown, businesses limited by geographical location face dire consequences if their clientele cannot reach them. This was actually an opportunity to innovate, by assessing whether your products and services can generate the same appeal virtually. Naturally, this is a trial and error experiment with many as some customers may simply not be digitally inclined whereas some products can “never” be sold online. This rise in digitalisation of businesses also generated significantly more data for use. The use of digital and geographic data is currently on the rise, as more businesses see the value of placement in offering enhanced interactions with their customers. Imagine a world where your route in the mall is “laid out” for you based on your previous purchase history, hobbies and interests Promotion and Customer Experience Marketing, in a post POPIA world, is no longer about spamming potential customers. It’s about gaining trust with your existing customers by only communicating what is relevant and timely. For prospective customers, your brand and corresponding advertising also need to be targeted at who you wish to attract. To determine your existing and potential clientele, it helps to not only segment your customers but also combine their psychographic data (values, needs, wants, aspirations) with their interactions and purchasing history. People and Customer Experience It is naturally important to focus on delivering on what the customer wants, but an often overlooked factor is ensuring that you have the right people to execute on that promise. Irrespective of the size of your business, your business is unique – it has a DNA, a culture, values and principles that differ from any other. Finding others who are aligned to this experience is critical to ensure success – it never ends well to hire a salesperson who hates talking to people! How do you know you have the right people? While interviews and personality traits can inform you of who to choose, you as the entrepreneur must know what your business’s DNA looks like. Getting these 5P’s is by itself not a winning recipe. However, by focusing on putting your customers (and employees) first, it can certainly get you into the competition. How far you progress through it depends on how capable and changeable you are. About the Author Professor Yudhvir Seetharam Head of Analytics: Insights and Research FNB
Discover how to Design, Deliver & Manage Impactful Corporate Training
Initiated by the global pandemic, the shift to remote working has impacted all areas of business, and workplace learning and development is no exception. L&D Managers now face new challenges in accelerating digital transformation to deliver effective and engaging learning and training experiences to employees while we are physically distanced. Innovative eLearning technology can address these challenges and presents new opportunities to connect with learners. By implementing the right technology solution for their organisations, L&D Managers can deliver cost-effective and efficient corporate training and development initiatives. Today’s integrated technology solutions can make it easier to work through the stages of developing and delivering virtual training” says Jeremy Matthews CEO of Dax Data. The Africa-based value-added software solutions distributor has a dedicated business unit focused on Adobe’s eLearning content and delivery solutions. Matthews suggests that when investing in eLearning tools, L&D managers should consider technology providers that deliver on ‘The eLearning Tringle’ for creating content, managing and administrating the learning process, and delivering interactive learning experiences. This typically includes a virtual classroom platform, content creation tool and a Learning Management System (LMS). Matthews believes that a holistic solution that seamlessly and effortlessly enables design, delivery and tracking of an online curriculum enables businesses to harness the full potential of eLearning to deliver ROI. Modern LMS technology that leverages Artificial Intelligence to translate granular data on learner interactions into actionable insights, can improve the quality of L&D programs, improve the learning experience in real-time, and provide invaluable feedback for trainers and L&D managers. These advanced LMS solutions enable personalised learning at scale – tailoring the learning experience so that it is more efficient and effective for both employees and organisations. Solutions that take the learner experience to the next level and break the barriers of distance through immersive and interactive learning experiences are the future of eLearning and training. By incorporating these solutions into corporate training and skills development initiatives, organisations can equip employees with the tools necessary to drive corporate growth and development.
The Wellbeing Equation
An insightful blog written by VSLS Head of Strategy, Barry Vorster, intimated that managing performance should have less to do with measuring it on a rating scale, but rather pivoting towards recognising our people to enhance performance. By shifting to recognition and development, rather than rating your people to drive performance, you are making a direct contribution to the engagement and resilience of your workforce. There is a significant difference between satisfied employees and engaged employees. Steve Jobs said: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do” Many organisations see job satisfaction and employee engagement as the same thing. It’s not – Satisfaction indicates how happy employees are at work but does not automatically correlate to performance. Satisfied employees could potentially be unproductive and may not contribute to the purpose or goal of the organisation. Employee engagement is an emotional connection between the organisation, its purpose and that of the employee. In our organisation, we have noticed that team members who are proud of the work they deliver tend to be immensely disappointed if they deliver anything that is less than incredible (getting that A+). That’s how we experience engagement! Engagement and wellbeing programmes are by no means new concepts in organisations. They do, however, have a direct impact on resilience and performance. The question remains: how serious are we about it – or is it still seen as “fluff?” Focusing on wellbeing is often misperceived as an exercise regime, a massage or “feel goods”. Ongoing behavioural data analysis by Neurozone ® indicates that since the Covid pandemic, exercise took the top two spots out of 65 different scientifically validated predictors for resilience. Our primal instinct is driving the behaviour to do something active when we are threatened on a physical level. Our mind’s main objective is to keep us alive and not necessarily thrive, and we unconsciously tap into the brain’s Survival Operating System (SOS). Often, we lean on wellbeing reactively as a band-aid to the wound, rather than a preventative measure to combat burnout and illness. Physical exercise is only one of the building blocks of holistic wellbeing. We also need to proactively support our people on an emotional, mental, and spiritual (belief systems) level. If we apply a holistic wellbeing approach, we can move into an optimal performance zone where we feel inspired, creative and innovative. Innovation and creativity make us as humans vital in business in comparison to machines. So, if you were still under the impression that wellbeing is just a nice-to-have, think again. It is a fundamental cornerstone in achieving individual relevance, your organisation’s purpose and performance goals. Wellbeing → Engagement = Creativity + Innovation + Aspiration (the parts machines do not have) = Purpose & Sustainability About the Author Nadia Leonard is a seasoned management consultant with extensive local and international experience in product architecture & solution design in the digital transformation space. She is the Chief Operations Officer and leads the VSLS Learning Solutions and Workforce Transformation teams that specialise in learning advisory, content experience design and technology implementations.
Performance Management for a Future Workforce – Elegant, Fair, and Durable
I was pleasantly surprised to see a chapter on performance management in Daniel Kahneman’s recent book Noise (2021). If anything, it is a major contributor to organisational noise. He points out that the relationship between performance ratings and actual performance is tenuous at best. With all the effort invested into performance management processes, it rarely engenders performance as such. It may have been comical had it not been so sad. Why? David Rock et al., in their article, Kill Your Performance Ratings (2014), fittingly indicate that numerically labelling people inevitably generates a fight or flight “response that impairs good judgment“. Sadly, only one group seems to benefit from the performance management process – senior executives. They seem to intrinsically be rewarded by “the feelings of status, certainty and autonomy that occur when one is presiding over a forced ranking system”. This is neither desirable nor good enough. Simultaneously, driven by the 4th industrial revolution and accelerated by the COVID pandemic, we are speeding into a technology-driven, disruptive, but human first era. As Dave Snowden (1999) points out, in this exciting new world, “knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted”. The same holds true for performance, caring and trust. As HR professionals and as custodians of this process, it is incumbent on us to fix it for the people and organisations we serve. We have a unique opportunity amidst and post the pandemic, and it would be a travesty to squander it. The opportunity of a new, hybrid and hopefully changed workplace, but in lockstep a fundamentally changed performance management approach. Not scrapping it but changing it. We need to address performance management as a core and systemic tenet of the HR new normal. A noise muffler, not an amplifier. To do so may require a shift away from the overuse of words, concepts, and terms such as performance, productivity, utilisation and sales targets as core beliefs in the performance management process. Instead, it may be more useful to consider contributions from teams rather than individuals as a starting point and fiercely focus on the concepts of recognition and the development of people. We need to seek approaches that sensibly address the important neuroscience factors that impact people the world over, namely Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness (Rock et al., 2014). We are to build a framework that negates the negative overtones of performance management and strives to find a positive foundation to engage on an emotional and rational level. Wouldn’t it be great if we could at least say that the process was fair and did not undermine the autonomy of the people we work with? Alvin Toffler is often quoted for stating that unlearning and relearning to be as important as learning itself. I think it is time to unbelieve some of our performance management myths and convictions. A time to create a process conducive to guiding authentic performance and behaviour. As core tenets, it needs to be elegant in form and philosophy, fair at all costs and a durable process supported by the people it is aimed to serve. Wouldn’t it be great to experience a fair, team-driven, perhaps highly personalised performance management process through consumer-grade technology? About the Author Barry Vorster is a human resource and consulting leader with a track record in strategic talent management, future of work and culture transformation applications. He is the Chief Strategy Officer, leads the VSLS Enablement Technologies and Workforce Transformation teams that specialise in strategic advisory, content experience design and technology enablement to unlock the true potential of organisations. He has more than twenty-five years of consulting experience and has been enmeshed in helping organisations within the ambit of human resources, organisational culture, HR technology, learning, and the future of work.
Building a Future-Fit Culture to Attract, Retain and Upskill Talent
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This quote has been used and misquoted by management consultants and business “thinkers” so often that it has become a somewhat stale way of saying that your strategy won’t fix your people problems; unless one simultaneously addresses the root of the issue – your organisational culture and connected behaviours. Let’s look at how you can practically build a future-fit culture to ensure that you attract the right people to your team and keep them long enough to upskill them and send them out into the world of work with a more robust set of capabilities. How does organisational culture fit into the future of work? A lot has been said about the future of work as if it’s something to fear. It’s not. Especially if your culture is built to address the challenges that come with the inevitable workforce transformation. And unlocking the bests parts of your culture is the key to transforming at a pace that your peers cannot compete with. But having a future-fit culture does not happen by accident, and it certainly does not appear overnight. One of the critical aspects of a thriving culture is opening the conversation to everyone. When we co-create culture, we strengthen it through every interaction and drive adoption at every level. People tend to own what they create. What do successful organisations use to build culture? From our wide industry insights, we have isolated two foundational pillars that reinforce our strategic approach to culture: give more in value than you take in return, and keep humans exactly where they belong – at the centre of it all. We fundamentally believe that what you do is what you are. To keep all of this from disintegrating into a buzz-word fest, here’s what you can practically do to establish and enhance your organisational culture: Invest in your people: Establish initiatives that sustain your investment in people. This could range from practically pairing team members across disciplines to get hands-on, real-time interactions that build trust, to hosting training workshops to share skills and master the art of presentation. Prioritise time and space for your team members to experiment, learn and explore the entire workplace. Building multi-role proficiency in team members is critical, so encourage your people to absorb as much as possible from every other person in the team. By prioritising learning and development, you’ll keep the team engaged long after the novelty of remote work wears off. Curate interesting, actual learning resources and host group discussions about a specific relevant topic once a week. Don’t think of team members as resources Late into our annual strategic discussion, one of our senior partners raised his aversion to the habit of calling people resources. And while this idea is entrenched in the labour culture as we know it, we’ve been challenging ourselves to step away from the term ‘resource’. Take up this challenge and watch how it opens up a new approach to how you think about your people and relate to each other. We all need to train a reflex that considers people, their challenges and their lives outside of work. This simple mind shift will bring on a ripple effect of positive changes to your culture as you keep building it. Why are we making such a fuss about culture and the future of work? Apart from the effects that culture may have on the wellbeing of your people, and ultimately the bottom line, we believe that unlocking your unique organisational culture can bring you closer to a future of work reality, which you need to remain sustainable and successful. There’s no denying that 2020 was the onset of incredible change for most organisations all across the globe, but the change isn’t stopping here. A global pandemic was the catalyst, and we’re all feeling the shock waves of workforce transformation as we try to reach our “new normal”. We’re making such a fuss about culture and the future of work because culture is the difference between riding the wave or being swept away by it. Culture, in our world, isn’t simply what you believe; it’s what you do. And if you’re not actively building your culture to be agile, experimental and more risk-tolerant, you’re not going to end up without culture- you’re going to end up with something much worse- a weak, toxic culture. About the Author Chantelle is a communications specialist with extensive experience in relationship management, content development and project management for corporate clients. She manages employee engagement across all VSLS value propositions and provides direction as the Chief of Staff for Team VSLS.
How Real is the Loneliness in Your Team?
We all know remote working has had a large impact on our mental health with loneliness being cited as the most common emotion being experienced by entrepreneurs, leaders, and employees. This can cause us to withdraw and be less committed, creative, collaborative, and attentive, and both the quality and quantity of our work can deteriorate. Loneliness has also been identified as a factor in workplace burnout. We often associate loneliness with being on our own or alone. Research has found that loneliness is related more to the quality than the quantity of our relationships. A lonely person feels that their relationships are not meaningful, that he or she is not understood by others, or perceives they are alone or are being shunned and isolated from other people. This can happen from working in a virtual or geographically distributed team, or from being in a team of one (think solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, consultants). It can have a detrimental effect on our performance and wellness. Our modern society and lifestyles also contribute to people feeling isolated and disconnected in their personal lives – think social media, the “in-crowd or cool kids”, dysfunctional and toxic relationships and marriages and the increasing amount of people suffering from depression or some form of mental health challenge. The only way to tackle and prevent loneliness in the workplace (and at home) is to build a culture of connection and community. It’s important to watch for changes in behavior and body language. If your most talkative and participative people start to go quiet, avoid interaction, or their performance suddenly dips, then this is a red flag. On the other end of the spectrum, some people might seek opportunities for more physical contact (think handshakes, hugs, opportunities, coffee meet-ups to talk) so don’t be misled by outward appearances of extroversion. Another area to pay attention to is listening to team members’ concerns – they may be more aware of what is going on in their colleague’s world or landscape than you are. Here are some insights and tools you can use to help build a culture of community and connection. Change Things Up A Bit Remote/virtual working has its pros and cons. For many, it’s the freedom from the daily commute and stress that comes with it. For others it’s the flexibility to be able to spend time with their children while for others, it’s the ability to be focused and productive in their own space. Remote/virtual working should be no different from being in the office, the key difference is just not physically being with each other. Working from home should have guidelines just as we do when we are in the office. We seem to have forgotten some of these basics such as official work (vs personal) hours and the expectation of always needing to be online. Other factors will need to be increased (think communication, strategy, output) and organisations and leaders play a key role in constantly encouraging and reinforcing (and adhering) these guidelines and factors themselves, as employees will follow their lead. Build a Team That Has a Shared Purpose It’s important to not slip into the “out of sight, out of mind” hole. Teams need to know what is going on and what they are working towards, individually and collectively. This may need to involve new and different ways of communicating updates, progress and feedback. Keeping it visual and alive keeps everyone focused and aligned, clarity on what is expected from each person, how they are being measured and where to collaborate. Understanding individual strengths and the team’s collective strengths can help to ensure you have the right people and competencies in place and are able to allocate tasks or projects that leverage their potential. Developing a growth mindset means you are always looking for ways to continually up-skill yourself and evolve to remain relevant in an ever-changing landscape. Encourage Good Relationships Just because everyone is online now doesn’t mean you won’t experience conflict or discord of some sort. It’s not as easy to manage conflict online as it is in person where you can hop into a meeting room and talk it out. It’s key to deal with conflict before it evolves into online spats, email trails or team channel fights. One simple tool you can use is having VUCA team sessions. Take an Interest in People’s Lives Your people won’t care until they know how much you care. Research has shown time and again that money is not the only motivator when it comes to keeping employees motivated. Kindness goes a long way and it is probably one of your most valuable currencies you can apply when it comes to investing in your relationships and a sure way to get to know your people. If this is a challenge for you, create a folder with key notes and personal reminders on each of your employees that you can refer to if need. Tackle Exhaustion Zoom fatigue and exhaustion is real. Tackling this is going to require a new leadership style – one that is holistic and empathetic. We are now seeing the whole of an employee and not just the 9-5 version when we were in the office. We are stepping into our employees very personal and sacred space – their homes, their safe place. This is the place where they could get away from work and the world at large and now we’re invading that space. It’s important to implement support policies that encourage wellbeing. If need, use technology to track wellness such as stress assessments or wellness offerings and service providers. Celebrate small victories By the time Friday comes around, we’ve had a long week and are usually running out of steam. Why not turn your Friday afternoons into an energiser for the week to come. Get everyone to hop on a video call and share their wins from the week. At the same time, all work and no play will result in work becoming a grudge purchase and place to be, soon killing creativity and productivity. Here are two resources where you can get to have some fun: The Rage Room – feeling frustrated and want to get rid of some of that pent-up energy? Then the Rage Room is where you need to go to smash things up a little. Fun for couples, friends, teams. Virtual Escape Room – online fun for teams or groups. It’s important to understand that workplace loneliness can be structural, not personal and people won’t solve it on their own. At the same time if you are looking to implement a hybrid working environment, don’t expect loneliness to disappear just because everyone is back in the office. Fostering a sense of belonging may be about getting the work done but, it’s also about relationships and cultivating a sense of community, belonging, and security through the designing of your work streams and teams. About the Author Paula Quinsee: Growth Mindset Catalyst specialising in creating healthy relationships at home and in the workplace to co-create a more human-connected world and positively impact people’s lives. Paula is also a passionate advocate for mental health and Gender-Based violence, an international and Tedx speaker, and author of two self-help guides: Embracing Conflict and Embracing No. More info: https://paulaquinsee.com/