Decoding S I M P L E (Social Learning)

This is in continuation to the blog that articulated Social Learning is S.I.M.P.L.E – “Social and Informal Model for Participative Learningand Engagement”.  Its a learning that occurs with and from other people. People share their knowledge with others who can then use this knowledge to improve their performance. People collaborate with other people to work on problems, innovate for solutions, brainstorm, etc.

Let’s break each crucial part of the acronym in greater detail:

Social:  involvement of individuals in groups that form social communities.

Informal: a casual conversation among the social communities that revolves around a focused topic resulting in sharing of information and/or new learning.  

Model: designed to explain a situation or behaviour, with the idea that it would eventually be able to predict that behaviour.

Participative Learning & Engagement: consider these three terms holistically, involving participation (active or passive) from all community members resulting in knowledge sharing, interaction and learning.

So, does it mean that SOCIAL learning is really so SIMPLE? I would say that the meaning of Social Learning is simple, but its implementation is as complicated as Human Behaviour! Live, in-person interactions between peers are an important and often untapped learning channel for employees. Enhance the potential of social learning to drive employee performance by understanding the different forms peer-based social learning takes, adding structure to existing peer groups, and focusing peer-based social learning on the best opportunities.In my next blog, we will relate Social Learning and Change Management  - as implementation of Social Learning involves in depth Change Management models. 

Social Learning: Not a Rocket Science

In last couple of years, “Social Learning” as a terminology has been highly discussed but loosely used in industry set-ups. This may be due to lack of understanding of the concept and its application within employee groups; resulting in failure in generating sustainable engagement. This failure in turn results in loss of faith in the theory and its usability in most organizations.

In one of my presentations to promote Social Learning, we discussed an interesting question – “Why does implementation of Social Learning seem like Rocket Science?” For example, in technology enabled social learning efforts, putting a technology in place is simple, may be matter of few days or weeks, depending on the complexities you want in your platform. However, make that technology “click” with people on a sustainable basis often fails.

In my next 4 blogs, we will discuss the Social Learning in depth, starting from the needs analysis of Social Learning to building traction and sustaining it.

For now, let’s clearly understand that Social Learning is not a Rocket Science, its just S.I.M.P.L.E – “Social and Informal Model for Participative Learning and Engagement”. 

Eliminate Fluff within HR

Starting with administration, comp&ben, talent acquisition, talent management, - to talent development and retention, and organizational development are all dealt by the HR function of an organization. HR is focused on internal matters like employee engagement, empowerment, diversity and managing cultural issues. Larger companies might have clear distinctive Heads working on each of these elements separately, while the smaller ones might have a single HR team performing all together.

While in the HR function, these tasks seem of high importance and relevance; however from a business perspective HR always tends to get hit upon with words like “misaligned” and “process-oriented generalists”. Rarely does HR consider itself as a sounding board and trusted partner to the business. Where does the gap lie?

Is it because of HR’s ignorance about its perceived “irrelevant existence”? No that’s not the case, because we all (who is reading this post) as HR executives/managers/leaders understand this irrelevance quite well and have felt the pinch in near past. Then what can the gap be? Where do we get disjointed with business?

A blog from CiteHR quoted about HR function getting extinct and HR-strategic partner role being too important to be left to someone with an HR background. Another interesting HBR blog noted that the few CHRO’s who have fared well in their roles by becoming partners of the business, have all once worked in line operation roles such as sales, services, or manufacturing—or in finance. Merely because they understand the business inside-out.

The answer lies in “eliminating fluff” that we usually get trapped in. By “fluff” I mean making the BAU (business as usual) tasks occupy more than 90-95% of our job roles. Limiting to administrative tasks, and losing focus from thinking strategies to align with the business. For example, an L&D team within HR can do wonders in employee development, if it understands the business and its pain-areas and customize solutions to fill gaps. Working like consulting partners with the business leaders, collaboratively taking decisions of employee learning will not only generate training programs that are relevant but also well aligned to business needs.