By Prachi Chandra, Anil Mammen, and Radhika Pange
Every year, over 12 million young Indians join the workforce, brimming with ambition. However, many of them are under-prepared for the rapidly shifting demands of industry. As India strives to become a global economic powerhouse, organizations face a critical question: How can they harness this vast pool of early-career professionals to drive innovation and growth?
There are no clear-cut answers. That said, transforming traditional workplace training into dynamic, continuous learning interventions can at least ensure they remain adaptive and resilient and are much better prepared for the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world.
In the era of emerging new technologies, organizations need to create, develop, and retain their workforces, especially early-career professionals, to match the growing demands of their customers. These early-career professionals have either recently graduated or are still in the early stages of their careers. Organizations that can upskill/reskill them in line with the industry trends enjoy a strong competitive advantage.
Only by investing in multiple learning and development initiatives that focus on continuous learning, reskilling, and providing challenging (at the same time, supporting) environments of early-career professionals can organizations build a future-ready workforce. The idea is to create an intentional workplace learning mindset among employees, who are ready to adapt to different challenges and opportunities and can contribute to the organization’s growth.
Challenges
Transforming potential into performance is no small feat. If you are in a high-growth industry, you face two critical challenges:
- Scalability: The sheer scale and speed of change in high-growth organizations demand that employees quickly acquire new skill sets, embrace curiosity, and adapt seamlessly to different kinds of work, tasks, tools, and technologies. For this to happen, organizations need to invest significantly in the continuous reskilling and upskilling of employees.
- Replaceability: Early-career professionals often leave the organization within two or three years (sometimes sooner), citing a lack of guidance, unclear roles, or feeling disconnected from the latest market trends. To stem the tide, enterprises need to consider implementing robust mentorship, transparent career paths, and learning environments that empower these professionals, so they see a promising future within the organization.
From training to continuous learning
The journey of professional growth should not stop with a handful of induction programs or initial training sessions. If organizations need to go beyond the training “event” approach, they need to consider integrating real-time problem-solving, collaborative approaches, and everyday challenges into workplace learning. In fact, most professional development happens through everyday experiences and interactions on the job. The key is to approach these situations with an intentional learning mindset. This means believing in early-career professionals’ ability to learn and grow (self-efficacy), and encouraging two key mindsets: a growth mindset and a curiosity mindset. With a growth mindset, employees can see challenges as opportunities to develop their skills. And a curiosity mindset helps employees to ask questions, seek new information, and stay engaged in the learning process.
Having employees with an intentional learner mindset is essential for both the employees and the employer. From the employee’s perspective, it helps in their career growth, higher job satisfaction & productivity and staying up to date with latest market trends. From an employer’s perspective, it makes the organization more agile and ready to traverse through any challenge since the workforce is dynamic, and it helps in building a stronger collaborative environment.
Practical learning interventions
Some of the key pointers that organizations can focus on to build early-career professionals and help them reskill are:
- Create Co-Learning Space: Creating a co-learning space is extremely important at the workplace, especially when the organization’s goal is to scale globally. Employees need to be aware and should be encouraged to take part in different learning activities, both formally and informally. Leadership teams should promote a culture of learning within the organization. At times, their push and motivation become a crucial factor in driving these kinds of initiatives. The employers should provide on-the-job learning, internships, mentorship and for early-career professionals.
- Adoption of Tools/Technology: Staying up to date with the new technology and tools is always beneficial for the workforce and organizations to invest in it to ensure their early-career professionals are ready to take up the new opportunities.
- Develop Executive Presence: Being aware of their self and their surroundings is important to ensure that the early-career professionals are open and accepting to the change.
- Performance Appraisal & Feedback Cycles: Performance appraisal cycles & continuous feedback enable early-career professionals to become self-aware of the work they do and what they bring to the table.
- Reward & Recognition Platforms: R&R platforms should motivate employees to incorporate the intentional learning mindset and keep themselves skilled as per the changing industry trends.
- Company’s Goals & Vision: Leaders should ensure the teams are aligned with the company’s goals and vision. They should be able to showcase the big picture to all employees and should share best practices (from industry and organization), case scenarios, and how they align with the company’s principles.
- Train the Trainer (TTT): TTT programs should be run, where employees are trained to become Subject matter experts for their function/ domain, thereby creating a pool of trainers within the organization who can further train more employees, thereby creating stronger knowledge management resources.
Creating a culture of learning and an intentional learning mindset is not only the responsibility of the organization but also of the employee, and both have to work together to understand the changing landscapes of the industry trends to ensure they always have an upper edge over their competitors.
By thoughtfully combining these practical interventions, organizations can not only improve capability but also build a vibrant culture where learning is continuous, collaborative, and aligned with a rapidly changing world. And this is how enterprises turn early-career talent into a decisive competitive advantage for tomorrow.
Image credit: VectorMine
