To a lot of people in the workplace, training is a four-letter word and most of the time it is associated with compliance training (those fun videos obviously made in the 80s and 90s that you are required to sit through every year). I will admit, learning and development has been slow to keep up. The problem with that in a workplace is, you can’t keep offering the same solutions when the problems aren’t even remotely the same and expect to come out on top. No one wants to (or has time to) sit through a ten hour class on workplace safety. No one wants to watch a 45-minute video on how to do their job. The incoming workforce is used to the world at their fingertips. Information on literally anything is available whenever they want it and however they want it. (For goodness sake, I learned how to change my tire on YouTube!)
So, what should we do? Well, we could continue with the status quo on training. We could watch the same videos that we have always watched, and do the same “throw you in the water and see if you swim” on-the-job training—and we would probably get by. Our team members would turn out fine. But, at Mittera Group we know that fine isn’t good enough. We strive for excellence, working harder and smarter in everything we do, and training is no different. This means training must change. And the first change is shifting the focus from training to learning.
Below are some of the ways that we are planning on doing this:
- Update safety videos to include our people and our equipment
- Provide training that ensures associates are successful in their current and future roles with Mittera Group.
- Create a Leadership Development Program that fosters growth and recognizes leadership skills at every level of the company.
- Empower our associates to “get in the driver’s seat” of their own development path by providing mentorship and apprenticeship programs tailored to match their career goals.
- Develop an internal university that offers employees bite-size learning that they can take at their own pace to learn and grow.
- Encourage social learning groups, not just formal: Rather than simply watching an instructor, people will learn by doing and by sharing their experiences with others. An abundance of digital resources will be available that allow people to experience this social connection with others, including Cornerstone, the new training system that will launch at the beginning of next year.
- Change from prescription-based to user-choice training: One-size-fits-all training courses are no longer useful. Not only do employees work in different ways, but they learn in different ways, too. We will provide many different methods of training in multiple languages so that associates can take the training that suits them.
Over the next couple of years, many members of the Mittera Group family will be involved in making these changes happen—some of you already have been! Excellence in anything starts with having the right people and based on what I have seen so far in my short 8½ months here, I know we have a solid foundation on which to build the future Mittera University.
-Allissa Magill, Director of Training and Development | MITTERA
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