Helping Your Employees to Self-Learn (Part 1)

Two young employees
Originally uploaded by N A Y E E M

The following is the first of a 3-part series.

Let's begin!

Your employees can help you, if you're smart enough to realize the wealth of knowledge they bring to your organization.

Let me repeat...

Your employees can help you, if you're smart enough, to realize the wealth of knowledge they bring to your organization.

This knowledge and know-how is not just work-related, but what they have learned and/or are learning from their interests and passions in other spheres of their life - outside of work.

E.g. Many employees wish to study to improve their chances of upward mobility in your organization and/or to change career paths.

Why should you allow a great employee to leave your organization, because you cannot accommodate his/her desire for upward mobility?

Your organization needs to be constantly evolving to meet customers' ever-changing needs...

This involves having multi-skilled employees, who are eager to work on cross-functional projects to hone new skills they've learned.

So, if it's possible for your organization to partially, or fully fund your employees' education... you should!

Why?

Because this newly-educated employee is an asset to you!

...As he/she would have met persons from other companies (in your industry or in related industries) who may have been going through similar problems that you are presently undergoing and have found solutions either through course project-work or just every-day interaction in a course.

Knowledge and know-how, that they can bring back, to benefit your organization.

This educational funding, however, should come at a cost to your employee.

Please allow me to explain:

For your employee to be funded, he/she must attain a certain grade point average (GPA).

The higher their GPA, the greater should be the assistance given.

So if they just pass...they get no funding from you...barely passing frankly shows a lack of commitment to their school work, which you should be very wary of encouraging.

So depending on their GPA, you could give them a 1/3rd - full reimbursement of money they'd have paid initially.

E.g.:

1. A "B" average would qualify them for the reimbursement of one third (1/3) of tuition fees


2. A "B+" average would qualify them for the reimbursement of two-thirds (2/3) of tuition fees


3. An "A" average would qualify them for full reimbursement of tuition fees.

You should also bond the employee to your company, for the time equal to his/her course/degree.

The above must be clearly written into all educational-grant contracts given by your organization to employees.

You should also investigate if educational funding, qualifies for tax deductions in your country and make full use of this benefit.

If however, you cannot afford to fund your employees' education, you can assist them in self-learning.

...Self-learning is informal education on their own time.

There are magazines, specific to your industry and related industries, that your employees should be reading.

...And not just those employees in managerial positions, but those in other specialist areas, too.

The more widely-read your employees, the better they are able to find novel solutions to your business problems.

Solutions that can give you sustained competitive advantage.

Employees no longer have to go to the store to buy these magazines, however...they can subscribe to these magazines and download them online.

One such company that facilities this, is Zinio.

They have a wide range of magazines available in all industries ranging from gardening, to high technology.

Once your employee subscribes, he/she can download new issues, monthly.

Additionally, for the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) sector and other sectors, there are free magazines available online.

One such telecommunications magazine is Network World.

Your employees should also be encouraged to subscribe to free industry magazines, online, thus honing their Internet research skills.

...Which is another asset for you!

==========

...Please stay tuned to our next post in the series, where I'll teach you how to tap in to your employees' social networks...to benefit your organization!

(I would like to thank:

1) NAYEEM for the use of his Flickr inset photo, above

2) StanfordEdTech for the use of their photo, entitled, "Jamie and Jackie comparing XML docs).

Gillian