While it may sound like something you’d be told in a meditation class, in order to find the talent you seek, it’s much easier to look within. By that we mean, investing in the staff you already have and expanding on their skills.

But what exactly makes building talent within your own organisation worth the investment versus just hiring someone who already has the skills you need?

And if you do go down the path of building the talent from within your organisation, what steps can you take to ensure that you’re able to maximise your results?

Someone might be considered a current industry expert, but they quickly become a less sustainable option for the organisation if they struggle to learn new skills, whether that be due to ability or motivation.

In other words, it’s not just about having the skills. It’s the ability to acquire new ones that’s important in this changing world where people must adapt all the time.

Creating opportunities and encouraging employees to pursue them has personal benefits to the employees including an increase in overall confidence at work which often means employees are happier too.

If you, as a workplace leader, notice an employee has gained a new skill or improved on one they already had, speak up about it. Let them know that you’ve noticed the improvement.

It’s not just employees that should be learning new skills, workplace leaders should be as well. Telling your employees how great additional learning at work is, is one thing but when they’re able to see it in action from someone higher up in the organisation, it’s much easier for employees to get excited about it.

The first thing that likely comes to mind when thinking about accessibility at work is making accommodations for those that are affected by disabilities. Some ways to do this can include closed captioning for those with hearing impairments, or the ability to increase text size for those with a visual impairment.

There are also other ways that workplaces can make their learning more accessible. For those that don’t have a lot of time on their hands, introduce them to micro-learning style courses. For those that prefer to learn on the go, show them how they can access the learning materials on multiple devices.

Making workplace learning more accessible encourages all members of the workplace to grow their talent. When more people can easily use the workplace learning tools, organisations are much more likely to uncover hidden gems of talent they may not even have known they had.

By encouraging different methods of learning, we’re more likely to reach a broader audience and increase the number of engaged learners. Some of the ways to do this include offering involvement in on-the-job projects and taskforces as well as encouraging participation as presenters for a variety of training programs.

However appealing it may seem to just hire someone that already has the skills your organisation is looking for to fill a new role, by taking the opportunity to build the talent from within the organisation, workplace leaders are eliminating the need to train someone brand new on internal workplace policies. Not only that, but it also provides peace of mind to current employees who can see there’s room for growth within the organisation. 

Go1 summary

Go1 is a unique, learning ecosystem helping workforces thrive through access to the most comprehensive learning and development library. Featuring hundreds of thousands of learning resources, from the world’s best providers. Go1 simplifies the solution to unique learning and development needs.