How technology drives the self-developing organisation

A self-developing organisation requires a unified approach and some smart technology to enable employees to seamlessly follow their growth paths.

Organisations need meticulous efforts to remain sustainable and self-developing in this VUCA world. An organisation that empowers its people to take control of their own development and career paths is a self-developing organisation in the true sense. However, this is easier said than done: it requires a unified approach and smart technology to enable employees to easily find and progress along their paths for growth.

With the present-day workforce comprising mostly millennials, who value learning opportunities, it becomes more important for firms to adopt the practices of the self-developing organisation. It just requires organisations to create an open environment where learning and empowerment opportunities are easily available to anyone.

Only by leveraging an efficient technology solution can employers provide staff the right kind of environment to learn and grow independently. To create a self-developing organisation, firms must help employees understand their current capabilities as well as the skills required for future advancement. This means companies need to provide actionable information to workers through accessible platforms, so that staffs are aware of what they need to accomplish and what skills and capabilities they need to build to successfully meet their goals.

Having said that, it is crucial that organisations ensure their learning and talent management efforts and technologies are all connected for ease of access and application. In addition, leaders of self-developing organisations focus on how to keep teams engaged, productive and collaborative. They make time and effort to groom people on all the skills necessary for advancement, including professional and technical know-how as well as soft skills.

In that context, the strong combination of skilled employees, leadership talent and learning tools brings out the benefits of a self-developing organisation, enabling leaders to boost employee performance.

Technology provides organisations the ability to manage talent and deliver learning in various innovative ways. Moreover, with predictive and cognitive analytics-based decisions for talent mobility, organisations are seeing a more engaged and productive workforce as compared to the past. In addition, gamification, AI and virtual reality-enabled platforms are also providing employees more immersive learning experiences.

Learning and talent analytics can provide insights that help organisations create personalized learning and growth plans for all their people—individual contributors and leaders alike. A strong reward system can go a long way in encouraging independent learning. Employees should be periodically rewarded for self-development and helping others in their career growth. In this arena, organisations can rely on technology to keep track of the rewards and outputs for a calculated approach to boosting self-development.

Integrating the different tools to create a unified experience for employees is critical. Like any other ingredient for organisational success and growth, the tools that enable a self-developing organization cannot be effective in silos. Be it talent management, learning and development, on-boarding or performance management, the tools and technologies need to come together to create a cohesive foundation for a self-developing organisation.

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