After significant changes on the global business stage over the last couple of years, the world of work has significantly changed. It’s vital that businesses acknowledge that to enable growth in their workforce – it is important to look to implement changes that help train and help retain staff, whilst building up their career aspirations and goals. In this blog piece we recall all the learning development/training trends we’ve looked at over the last year and key insights you can implement in your own business.
New ways of working
After the recent announcement that the UK has started the world’s largest trial of the four-day working week, it’s clear this trend is going to remain a key element of potential business transformation; at least for now. Whether or not your business choses to embrace this, it’s important to remain open to exploring the ever-changing ways of working for your team to help support with retaining staff and attracting new highly sort-after talent.
A key way to do this is by listening to your employees and ensuring you listen to what works best for them and your business. This can be achieved through regular questionnaires or regular catch-up sessions with your staff.
Gen Z is here for interview
Your potential new recruits are changing in age and preferences. There are around 60 million Gen Z-ers (those born after the mid 1990s) ready to enter the workplace and your business needs to show it is somewhere near their expectations, to ensure you are attracting the latest talent and ideas to help your business stay relevant and competitive. In our blog – ‘simple steps for hiring young talent‘ we looked at the growing importance of health care and modern technology in attracting the next star worker into your office.
Gen Z is here to stay
And it’s not just the interview that your business will need to take care of, to make the most of Gen Z you’ll need to change the way you think about business management, strategy and future learning and development. In our blog ‘5 steps for new learning and development frameworks’ we looked at the different approaches to learning and development that your business can implement to help reduce turnover and upskill your staff so they perform at their highest-level.
There is business strength in diversity
With the recent ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and breakthrough statistics around the positive impact that a diverse management board can have on your business, the world is finally beginning to wake up to the realisation that diversity is good for business and the world.
Your business can embrace this in a number of ways – improving your recruitment process or working with your talent pools is one of them. By working closer with agencies or educational institutes that have a high number of minority ethnic graduates (such as Birmingham City University) is just one of the ways. Alternatively you can look to raise greater awareness in your business through promoting days of celebration and recognition such as women in science day.
There is help and support for your business to change
And finally, it’s worth noting that with all of these changes businesses today need to look at addressing, there is external support and assistance available out there. One of these programmes is BCU Advantage’s very own Higher Level Skills Match that matches you with a dedicated Account Manager to help address and identify skills gaps and recruitment needs in your business. Our Account Managers then work to match you with this support to address it your needs. You can find out more about Higher Level Skills Match by clicking on the link below.
