Many major Australian employers have moved to a hybrid working model allowing employees to split their time between their home office and the corporate office – but how can businesses progress their employee development ideas and programs in a hybrid environment?

Help employees grow with a hybrid approach

Employees are looking for development programs and want to improve in their roles – whether they’re working from home or not. (RMIT Online and Deloitte conducted research with 1000 Australian workers and found that a majority preferred employer funded training to employer funded free meals or a $50 a week pay rise.) For an organisation, building new people development skills and capability by introducing a mix of formal training and informal training can offer practical advantages to employees and organisations. Formal training can be completed off-site (via webinars and short online courses) or onsite, while informal training happens while conducting everyday work activities (onsite or offsite).

Employee improvement programs that consider how to foster skills development in the workplace – wherever that workplace ‘is’ – are more likely to deliver sustainable results and lifts in capability. And if employees can cover their daily tasks while working flexibly, there’s no reason that they can’t continue their people development! Keep the momentum going with a flexible approach.

Lack of visibility is a challenge

Some organisations and employees might find a hybrid work environment challenging. Team members can feel isolated and miss social connections while team leaders may have concerns around a lack of oversight and ability to manage productivity.

But these concerns are not a reason to let employee improvement plans stagnate. These tensions can be addressed by developing good communication lines, setting up clear expectations and fostering healthy relationships between team leaders and their teams. In fact, employee coaching is one employee development idea that can be particularly useful when working in a hybrid environment as it encourages focused conversations between managers and their people. Regular coaching can help your people and team leaders keep that social connection too.

Additionally, software tools like YakTrak can further help alleviate tensions by providing oversight of development activities and encouraging important development and performance conversations.

What are some development areas for employees?

Employee coaching conversations can form the basis for a range of skills development approaches. People develop their skills in all types of ways, so make sure that you’re utilising everything in the toolkit to keep your people engaged. Let’s explore some development areas and opportunities:

1. Formal training, such as conferences, webinars and workshops: these are still an important factor of people development, and in hybrid working environments, can provide employees with opportunities to build social connections and take a break from the day-to-day. However, remember that to truly develop skills the behaviours need to be applied on-the-job.
2. Working on special projects: there’s no reason that your employees can’t work on other projects and for other teams while they’re working from home. Build strong organisational connections and skills capability through cross-team development.
3. Mentoring programs: mentoring is a powerful tool that can provide focused targeted results. Employees can find mentoring a great way to achieve career focused goals. Make sure your organisation keeps up these programs.
4. Employee coaching: ongoing coaching that happens while people are conducting their day-to-day responsibilities keeps the focus on the behaviours that you want to see. Focused conversations can drive skills development forward while keeping managers and their people engaged and communicating.

What can you do for employee development in your organisation?

1. Support your people today: work with them to name their career goals and make sure they’re aligned with organisational goals.
2. Map the supporting actions that will set your employees up for success (whether that’s ongoing coaching conversations, formal training or finding other opportunities to learn new skills).
3. Set up a regular program of coaching to track progress to goals.

Deliver with YakTrak

Use YakTrak to:

• Establish a coaching rhythm to embed development into the daily routine
• Inspire teams by setting goals and tracking progress
• Give team leaders visibility over coaching conversations and outputs
• Improve visibility with powerful dashboard and reporting functionality

Get in touch with us today to find out how YakTrak can help.

Image by Pat Whelan via Unsplash.