A Question of Timing: When Do We Learn?

There’s no debating that learning and development is more important than ever. While no one would deny learning is essential, it’s also critical to pinpoint how and when people learn. There’s a time investment. In an increasingly busy world, a lot of this investment happens outside working hours. At BeNext, therefore, we feel compelled to inspire and engage learners, to make the journey worth it and reach higher than before. In both structure and content, BeNext Cohort certifications are human-centric, personalised and - most importantly - spur questions that guide learners to be the answer. Find out more below!?

Quickfire Interview with Alok Dharpure, Founding President, ShARE DSE

Every fortnight we feature a top, highly-engaged BeNext learner for a quickfire interview on their experience of their program. Here, we speak to Alok Dharpure, Founding President, ShARE DSE, who took part in the BeNext HR for Start-Ups: Building a Winning Team Program?

What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today????

Managing a hybrid workforce is going to be the biggest challenge. I think this challenge will remain for a long time as organizations themselves will try to find their organizational fit — what works best for them. If leadership has a notion that they would ask teams to return to offices completely after completing the vaccination drives, this might become more of a disaster. The COVID period has been a very different journey for everyone, where few have found time to enjoy what they love or to try something new that they always wanted to do. On the other hand, there are so many among our colleagues who are broken from having lost their loved ones. A few factors that make it more difficult to manage a hybrid workforce is the uncertainty as we work in global teams. Different countries have different rules, and we are still in the phase where governments are planning on a daily basis. These unlock plans are temporary and again new restrictions may come. In this scenario, asking an already fatigued employee to work completely from the office would be a difficult move. Taking care of human capital and being compassionate is key as we go ahead in this journey.

2. What is one book, article or podcast on leadership or the world of work you’ve enjoyed recently????

I am reading ‘Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’ by Daniel Pink. It is a must-read to understand human behavior demonstrating scientific examples on motivation and how our mind works. This book helps to understand oneself better, it gives us a lens to connect with the work and actions of the people around us.

3. How has your experience of the BeNext certification program empowered you? ??

I want to thank the People Matters BeNext team for creating this wonderful cohort-based learning program. I learnt the crucial aspects of employer branding and building psychological safety within teams. We also discussed various challenges in building a founding team to growth stage with the peer learning group, which was so powerful. This program has given me a powerful network of HR leaders for a lifetime.

4. What have you enjoyed most about the learning journey??

I wanted to dive deep into this as this has been an important factor in why the learning journey was so much fun for everyone in ‘HR for Startups Building a winning team’. Our course instructor, Ankur Warikoo, has given us an opportunity to keep asking questions, share articles with him and all the other participants. So, from day one, we were more of a team who had a motive of “learning together, achieving together”. That feeling of growing together and moving forward became the biggest contributor of satisfaction over the course.

5. What is one innovation that you believe will transform the way we work????

The maturity of artificial intelligence in our work will bring major transformation at a new scale every day. It has the potential to change the way we execute as well as behave and interact at work. Imagine a time when robots will better understand human emotions for building a culture of innovation and providing insights on work.

6. What is the best advice you’ve ever received???

My best advice keeps updating, so I would like to share a couple of thoughts on this. A recent best piece of advice I got is on building trust; in the program, Ankur Warikoo shared with us: “The simplest way of building trust is to do what you say every single time!” Another piece of advice that has helped me over the years is, “Don’t be serious — be sincere, be responsible”, by Chetan Bhagat.

Thank you for talking to us! You can connect with Alok on LinkedIn here .?

What we're doing…

Over the coming weeks, People Matters BeNext is offering a whole suite of Cohort-based certification programs designed to set your skilling strategy on a new trajectory:

Diversity & Inclusion: Overcoming Unconscious Bias - Enroll here?

Building a Culture of Empathy for Productivity & Innovation - Enroll here?

Design Thinking & Agile for HR Team - Enroll here?

Webcast:?

Ahead of the Building a Culture of Empathy for Productivity & Innovation program, our CEO & Editor-in-Chief, spoke with Michael Jenkins, CEO of Expert Humans. Here, Ester and Michael discuss the business imperatives for driving a more human-centric working culture and developing a more empathetic leadership style:

What we're reading…

Find out more about how cohort-based courses are the perfect format for overcoming bias and driving D&I initiatives.?

Why is there a latent need for more women in leadership roles? Though we’ve come a long way, there’s a rocky road ahead. Hear from our expert speakers on how to accelerate our empowerment journey.?

Hear from one of our top learners, Sagar Radhi, about the learnings taken from the Performance Management for Hybrid Teams program, coming back in October 2021!??