Making Learning a Habit

Organisations have long spoken about creating a culture of learning. In all fairness it has not been lip service. Many companies have invested heavily in talent management, learning and technology tools. The benefits have also been visible in terms of creating internal leadership pipeline and grooming future leaders from within. A few companies namely Unilever, P&G and GE standout as leaders in this space.

However, can any company claim that it has truly created a culture of learning? I doubt it. Most of the successes in the area of talent management are driven by a huge push from the Leadership and the HR function. There isn’t an environment where learning has been democratised in most companies. Learning is controlled, as it is a cost centre or an investment. It is offered to the select people not to everyone. It is not freely available for people to leverage. If any free material is available it is mostly generic learning material that one could find on social media channels too.  

So the moot question is what is a culture of learning? A culture of learning in the contemporary world is where there is a democratic learning environment, which comprises of – freedom to choose, ready unlimited access, contextual content to both the individual and the Organisation, addresses both individual and Organisational aspirations, learning that is boundaryless, learning not governed by budgets but intangible value and last but not the least available in the hands of the learner.

Sounds too good to be true, isn’t it? Yes it is. Organisations have no choice but to accept that this is the future. If Organisations do not embrace this new reality, they will soon cease to exist. The best business case to a CEO to accept this future reality is “your company will cease to exist if your talent does not remain relevant”. It is not what percentage of the Organisational talent needs to be relevant? Every employee of the Organisation needs to be relevant, in terms of his/her skills and capabilities, for organisations to survive in this extremely fast changing world.

None of the large HRMS/LMS players have understood how to address this challenge. Their old school solutions on offer are well beyond its expiry date. The pgENTERPRISE one of its kind of solution from Planet Ganges that is designed to create a “culture of learning in organisations”, wherein employees are both motivated & inspired to learn on their own, build niche skills & capabilities and retain the urge to remain contemporary.

Traditional LMS’s have a user activity of 4-5% daily against a 74%+ daily on pgENTERPRISE. This has been made possible due to the use of machine learning and deep analytics, wherein the AvaTAQ algorithm (in pgENTERPRISE) engages with each employee’s needs/aspirations, without compromising the Organisational objectives. The algorithm is intelligent, efficient and dynamic, responding to changing needs of the employee and the business. 

pgENTERPRISE is one unique product that offers perpetual assessments on skills & behaviour alike, maps employees on the “S-curve” of capability, profiles them into Avatars with an AvaTAQ Score (a skill currency), allows them to flaunt their skill currency within the Organisational eco-system, offers gamified assessments & contests amongst employees, a whole host of social features, allows for upload/connect to learning & assessment content, the AvaTAQ algorithm connects employees to learning content that maps to their context/needs, encourages employees to grow their skills, compares them with their peers and tells them where they stand, and a lot more. Thereby creating a culture of learning in the Organisation.

From an administrator perspective, the leadership gets real-time information on skills & capabilities of its employees, can look beyond anecdotal & opinionated feedback of Managers & Leaders, assesses potential based on past & predicted future learnability of employees using multiple data sets, etc.

The future of HR is in Big Data. With the scarcity of good quality talent and need to train current talent to remain relevant, adopting an intelligent & disruptive HRTech solution is the only way HR leaders/managers can be successful in the future. Change is no longer a choice for HR. It is an imperative for HR to stay relevant. 

M. Anand Bhaskar

Founder & CEO, Planet Ganges

Website: www.planetganges.com | Email: ceo@planetganges.com

Note: Anand is an industry veteran with 27+ years of rich experience in HR & technology, all of which has gone in designing & developing this product.