TALENT DEVELOPMENT (TD) DIMENSIONS: March 17 2020
Top of the Day Learning Leaders,
Welcome to a new edition and format for TD Dimensions. Your Mercy Care Workforce Development Team presents this “care and share” opportunity to help you connect with the global TD professional community to help you develop your own talents and strategies.
New for 2020: Based upon your survey feedback, the TD newsletter is valued and you appreciate an abbreviated format focusing only on trends. Based upon your voice, we reveal the new, shortened format below.
Now Trending:
Spotlight on a TD industry trend to incorporate into your TD practice
- • What – Microlearning. A learning strategy that breaks content into small, brief informational chunks (or bites) that learners can easily access, digest and review on their own time in their workplace setting. Sometimes referred to as “snackable” learning.
- • What – Bench Strength and Training Diversification. These collaborative trends directly impact trainers/facilitators.
- • Why – Leading organizations realize the benefit of total-professional-development efforts for all of their colleagues. Developing individuals into the widest version of a professional they can be and in which they are interested, establishes a play bench of resources that can be utilized as needed. With “bench strength” organizations have succession plans, engagement, and longevity. Employees stay longest where they see the most opportunity. Supporting such broad development efforts required to produce bench strength, TD professionals need to consider diversifying their knowledge base, as explained below.
- • How – TD professionals are typically hired based upon specific information and facilitation expertise they possess. They are then often siloed into only facilitating those topics. However, in order to build bench strength through talent development, TD professionals need to focus on their own development through “training diversification” efforts. In addition to core concepts tied to the business needs of the organization, TD individuals need to consider additional ancillary topics that they can contribute. This is particularly true for TD professionals working in specialty fields, such as mental health, so that they don’t get locked into being seen as only a specialty (i.e. mental health) trainer. For instance, a clinical trainer may also choose to diversify into leadership training. Someone who trains quality management may also want to diversify into change management training. A cultural trainer may want to diversify into training the topics of negotiation and communication. Diversifying contributes to cross-functionality. Not only does training diversification build a TD professional’s value within the organization, but doing so also provides additional diversity to their training portfolio so that they keep in step with all TD professionals across all industries.
Current Quote: We leave you with a final thought and words of encouragement
“Development is a series of rebirths.” – Maria Montessori, Italian Physician and Educator
Interested in contributing to a future addition of TD Dimensions? Contact us at wfd@mercycareaz.org
