How do you capture the stars?
It’s an age-old question and one with particular relevance to the world of corporate learning and talent development. Corporate learning professionals are constantly being pressed to discover high-potential candidates who can make meaningful contributions to the organization and perhaps fill leadership roles in the future. In fact, according to the Association for Talent Development’s 2022 State of the Industry Report, the average organization spent $1,280 USD per employee on workplace learning last year trying to do exactly that.
The key challenge: How do you develop an effective, reliable, and repeatable system that can assess potential, pinpoint strengths and gaps, measure against defined benchmarks and standards, recommend any necessary remediation, and grow with your personnel as they develop and advance through your organization?
In short, how will you know when your next superstar enters the room?
Use audience engagement techniques to surface ‘people potential.’
At Credspark, we believe that the world of media and entertainment and the world of education and training have a lot to learn from each other. In our work with 100s of brands, we leverage our experience in assessment and learning and infuse it with powerful audience engagement techniques often leveraged in media, gaming, and entertainment. These techniques capture and hold attention, create deep, immersive learning experiences, and engage learners so they want to come back for more.
Assessing knowledge and aptitude is obviously the core of any successful training and development program. However, the audience engagement piece is often overlooked. A program built around proven engagement techniques can make the difference between a program your team members have to participate in and one they want to participate in.
The 5 Elements of Building Talent Development Programs That Yield Meaningful Outcomes
In CredSpark’s work with corporate learning clients and with our learning integration partners like Degreed and Watershed, we’ve established a few key elements in creating talent development programs that not only provide you with the data and insights you need for informed decision making, but also with the engagement and employee buy in that takes a program from “useful” to “an essential part of your organization’s culture.”
1. Know what you want to measure at the start.
“Measure Everything” is not a strategy; it’s a lesson in futility. It’s important to be judicious in what you measure. What knowledge is essential for you to assess? What key factors are crucial to surfacing potential leadership candidates? What skills most move the needle for your organization? Focus on what matters most and create benchmarks around those factors.
2. You’ll see better with 4 “i’s”.
Develop your talent development program with CredSpark’s 4 i’s in mind: Make it intuitive, interactive, immersive, and inspiring.
Your candidates should intuitively understand what’s being measured and how their performance data will be used in decisions on their careers. Make them feel like they’re an essential part of the process, not a potential victim of it. Provide clarity.
Assessment programs don’t have to be one-way broadcasts either. Leverage a key principle of game development: Take them on a journey of discovery. Take a conversational approach and create interactions that gradually immerse them into your training or assessment content. You’ll get deeper engagement that will yield richer insights into knowledge, skills, potential, psychographics, and more.
And don’t forget the inspirational element. Corporate training and career development doesn’t have to elicit eye rolls. Participants should feel like the process is beneficial to them, not a judgment of them. Look for places within your interactions for positive reinforcement and reminders of how their individual personal and professional development is critical to your organization’s success.
3. Learning and growth never stop; neither should your program.
Stars form over time. Make your training and talent development programs progressive over the course of your candidates’ careers. Many organizations take an academy type of approach where candidates are put through “a one-and-done” program or are assessed annually. However, learning and development are gradual; skills are built day in, and day out.
You can develop a progressive approach and make talent and career development a regular part of the work experience, measuring progress over time with shorter, more targeted interactions. Candidates often feel this approach is more manageable, less onerous, and talent development eventually becomes just part of the organization’s culture and modus operandi.
4. Don’t just assess gaps; provide remediation in a single experience.
Highlighting areas for improvement is crucial. It’s equally crucial to pair that information with the opportunities to remediate those issues. When compared to benchmarks, people naturally have the desire to improve their performance. Take advantage of that ambition right when it happens. Provide access to remediation content and advice right next to your candidates’ performance metrics. You’ll see a greater “take rate” than you would if you provided a separate experience later.
5. Create personalized, adaptive paths to surface potential superstars.
Putting everyone through the same experience is important to establishing benchmarks and comparative standards. However, you don’t have to stop there. You can create specialized paths for high-potential candidates that are personalized and adaptive based on their responses. It’s an opportunity to provide additional training and foster more growth and development for future leadership candidates.
Ready to light up the sky at your organization and find your next set of superstars?
Apply the principles of audience engagement to your talent development program and make workplace learning an integral part of your organization’s culture. Interested in learning more about how innovative companies use CredSpark’s engagement engine in their workplace learning programs? Reach out and we’ll take you through a few examples. After all, your next superstar may be waiting to burst onto the scene.
