“Very Important To Customise & Contextualise Learning”

ROI Institute, with presence in over 70 countries, has helped more than 50,000 professionals and over 9,000 organisations by way of workshops, coaching, consulting, publications, research, benchmarking and other activities, since its establishment in 1992. Hormazd Mistry, CEO of ROI Institute India and a renowned expert with over two decades of experience in executive development programmes, describes how can learning programmes be successful both for the learner and the organisation, in an interview to BW People. Excerpts:

What are the factors that determine the success of a learning and development programme?

There are three key categories to be catered to - the learner, the business and the learning function in itself. When we are talking about an organisation, the learning programme needs to cater to very specific business needs. Why is the programme being conducted and what will be the impact of the programme, and what will happen if we don’t do this programme - these questions need to be answered. A programme that is clearly designed with specified learning objectives is successful. Just doing a learning programme for the sake of it will not get you results. Such learning programmes, done more as a check box activity, are then seen as a cost to the organisation and not an investment.

So, we have to see what’s the value that these programmes are bringing to the organisation and ask what these programmes are doing to the learners? Often, the training organisations fail to communicate this to the learner and to the supervisors.

Third is the learning function itself. You need excellent facilitators who engage the learners. The content needs to be interactive. Since different people learn in different ways, you have to devise the programme in such a way that each can learn effectively.

Post-Covid, what are the big changes that you observe in the focus areas of L&D programmes? Is there a thrust on more individualistic programmes?

If you are talking about learners’ perspective, during Covid, the focus shifted towards learner-centric activities. Post-Covid, we are seeing the learning trends shift back to what they were pre-Covid. Learners are now trying to learn in a group. Everyone is missing the human touch and the collective group study environment. So, while they want individual learning to happen, they also want group dynamics to be present. It is becoming very important for L&D professionals to customise and contextualise learning. We can no longer create a one-time solution. We have to include elements that give them the opportunity to learn in the way that’s best suited to them.

From learning point of view, the focus is on managing remote working needs and managing digital transformation. All of this is bringing more and more focus on micro learning, which has become the need of the hour. No one has the time to sit for long. Learning doesn’t happen that way anymore. There is learning in small nuggets.

Another aspect that has gained eye-balls is digital credentials because that helps showcase new skills you would have gained.

What are the skills (functional and soft skills) that you lay emphasis on?

Functional skills differ depending upon the role that an individual is playing in an organisation. But if you look at it from a very broad perspective, functional skills will also include leadership skills that a person has – it could be about managing sales, marketing or customers.

Talking about soft skills – it is about human skills beyond the workplace as well. How well are you able to communicate with others, how well can you build your network, how resilient are you and how easily can you come back from the setbacks in life, how easily can you adapt to situations and

what is your level of emotional intelligence – these are some of the important skills that come to my mind.

Based on your observations during these training programmes, what are the strengths of Indian workplaces, and areas where improvement is needed?

One of the biggest strengths is that we have a huge talent pool always available, and one which is very diverse. We have individuals with very broad range of skills, and they know multiple languages. Because of the large talent pool, labour is also cost-effective. That is why we see a lot of work coming to India.

And as I said, it’s also because we have a broad range of skills as well. Our education system gives you a broad range of learning opportunities. And these days you have a large number of skill development programmes. There is also the entrepreneurial mindset that Indians bring in. We are among the largest startup ecosystems in the world. And the employees also bring in that thought process while working on different projects.

The other advantage is the very strong work ethic that we bring in. As a nation we are very hard working. We don’t mind putting in extra hours to ensure that work gets completed on time – very often at the cost of work-life balance.

We also have resilience and adaptability. We are more adaptable to change than a lot of other work cultures that I have seen.

Talking about areas of improvement, we need work-life balance. There is a culture mindset change that needs to start from the top. There are areas of improvement where the role of government and society is required and those where organisations need to take the initiative. Education is one area where government has taken the initiative. But that is not enough. The changes need to be futuristic. Students need to be future-ready, not today-ready. That will bring a closure to the skill gap that you see today. And organisations need to build programmes to assist the government to make sure that the workforce is future-ready.

The other drawback that I see with organisations is that they do not have much focus on environment and sustainability. They need to do a lot more on this front.

Similarly, they need to focus a lot more on the mental health of their employees. As families are shrinking and screen time and remote work is increasing, our touch points are shrinking, leading to a lot of mental health challenges. While there are many organisations that are doing a lot for employees’ mental health, there are others that are doing it as a check box activity. There are many organisations who have a counsellor to help address mental health issues. But have we created a safe culture to enable employees to walk up to the counsellor for a conversation, and where employees will not be looked down upon if they seek help?

In terms of continuous development addressing the needs of various generations in an organisation, how can such a culture be developed?

It requires dedication and the right thought process in the organisation. A lot of organisations claim to have that culture because the KRAs have the criteria of so many hours of learning. But that is not the right approach. The organisation needs to be very clear what is the end goal they want to achieve and and how will the learning benefit the employee and the organisation. Very often what the employees want out of the learning programme may not be what the organisation is looking at. The organisations need to factor in the aspect of diversity, including of age groups. And even within a generation, different people learn in different ways. So, they need to be given different types of learning opportunities; and spaces where they can share their learnings. Also, organisations need to allocate specific time for learning, rather than vaguely stipulating it in KRA. Learning needs to be measured too, to assess how it has benefitted the individual and organisation. And the feedback received needs to go back into the system to help refine it.