Too Much to Learn, Too Little Time

Have you experienced this as a manager? You ask a team member to prepare a deliverable. The initial draft misses the mark so you provide feedback via email and then wait for the colleague’s next try. The second iteration still falls short and you, as the manager, are short on time and concerned that the team member will never be deliverable to where you need so you take over and redo it yourself. In the end, the deliverable is completed but it leaves both you and the team mate frustrated and demoralized. Neither had the opportunity to develop better skills than before. 

This is a familiar decision because of the tension between a manager’s dual responsibilities to deliver results and to develop people. We often prioritize the deliverables and delay the learning opportunity, telling ourselves that “I can help them learn this, but right now is not the right time.” However, over time, these missed opportunities stack up. The costs manifest in team members’ professional development, performance and the organization’s capability and culture. 

Managers say that there is simply too much to learn and not enough time for formal training. 

As companies emerge from the pandemic, there’s mounting pressure to deliver results and to develop its people, with more than 80 percent of companies reporting that they face critical gaps in the skills needed to build resilience amid ongoing uncertainty. However, methods like self-paced online videos that put the onus on the worker fail to deliver with only 5-15% of learners completing courses. It’s no wonder that only 42 percent of employees are taking up employer-supported reskilling and upskilling opportunities. And as remote work increases, teams are becoming more diverse and geographically distributed and that is making it even harder for managers to address skills gaps.

‍Eskwelabs is a pioneer in building live cohort learning experiences and communities that reskill employees with work-like projects. Rooted in coaching and empathy, our mentor-driven way of learning improves capabilities, learning, and culture in the workplace. And with manager-directed company projects, employees receive relevant upskilling in the flow of work and just in time for what they need right now.

We worked with managers at Nestlé to improve their marketing team’s performance by integrating a work-like project and coaching through a learning sprint which also helped to build team culture and collaboration for their hybrid team. 

The challenge that managers faced was that marketing teams generated reports which explained what happened but lacked insights, and actionable recommendations. The managers were confident about their teams’ reporting skills but wanted to give them the skill sets of data analysts to leverage PowerBI and SQL so they don’t need to rely on a centralized data team sitting elsewhere in the organization. We integrated the manager’s pain points and use case using project based learning to create a reskilling opportunity for the employees. 

‍

Post the collaborating learning experience, we work with the managers and use the industry-standard Kirk-Patrick model of training evaluation to review the return of investment of the learning. 

‍

‍

At its core, we believe that learning at work is going from content-driven learning to a relationship-driven learning model. Whether it’s learning directly from the manager or learning from peers through a structured learning experience, it is hands-on practice which gets us to mastery and relationship building which gets us to connection and meaning. 

‍Book a discovery call with us and we’ll help you set-up a learning experience to build your team’s capabilities and culture.