I have been sharing with you a series of pieces designed to get you to critically examine your current place of employment to see if it is meeting your individual career development needs. When you think about your job, is it consistent with the life role you want to be playing? Are you deriving professional satisfaction from your work?
I have seen more than one survey lately that indicates that as soon as the economy improves and there are more job opportunities again many workers are going to bolt from their current job for greener pastures. It is yet another indicator that too many of you are misplaced in the job you have now.
As a result, I have been suggesting specific organizational characteristics that you should be looking for to see if you can pinpoint the source of angst or conversely what makes your job a keeper because it provides you with a means for developing your career.
Two practices that I have written about recently are onboarding and performance reviews. For this piece let us look at the commitment your employer makes to have the workplace be a learning organization.
As an employee, you should have a clear sense of how important it is for leadership to attract and retain knowledge capital, i.e., smart and talented people. It should come as no surprise that a great number of talented employees often leads to a greater chance of organizational success.
Management that sets the acquisition and retention of knowledge workers as a priority is something to look for and to value. They understand the concept that smart people always want to keep on learning. Therefore, having embedded learning initiatives at work that advance both the company’s and your professional interests indicates a positive climate for career development.
Of course, learning initiatives at work should be an expression of organizational strategy, but ask yourself if they also contribute to your career improvement strategy. A fit in this area is desired.
So, what do I mean by learning initiatives? To start with, they form the framework of making your workplace a learning organization. These initiatives can be typically judged by determining the quality of the training and development programs and the organization’s way of implementing knowledge management.
To be successful, there should be a high transfer of knowledge and competencies from those who know to those who do not. This can be accomplished explicitly through well designed manuals and structured practices or tacitly through the caliber of individual employees sharing and support. Superior training and development and knowledge management occurs when talented people are encouraged and rewarded for not only being the best, but by spreading their intelligence around. This must be evident at a cultural level. Organizations that encourage isolation and keeping effectiveness under lock and key, accessible only to a privileged few, will not do.
It is good if you are learning on the job while helping to address organizational strategy. For a true knowledge worker, gaining talent and competency while at work is an incentive to stay and grow. You feel more accomplished and experience greater satisfaction in your career.
However, none of this can be realized if you as an employee are not in sync with your employer’s business strategy. There should not be a big gap between this strategy and your career development. It is possible for the two to grow together.
Also, by having the attitude that capturing and sharing expertise is good for all involved, you contribute to making not just a learning organization, but a nice place to work.
What about your workplace? Are its learning and knowledge features enhancing your professional growth or not? If thinking becomes rigid and innovation discouraged career development will not occur. Know how your employer approaches this important topic.
