Recently we’ve been asked by a couple of organisations to come and work with the L&D team. What we’ve seen has been really encouraging. There is some awareness of ways to make learning ‘sticky’ – it just often is implemented at the surface level and could go much deeper. A solid understanding of what the neuroscientific literature is sharing with us gives teams confidence and flexibility to shape what they do.

What are some of the challenges?

A common challenge in bigger organisations is getting everything to align. This is where smaller and entrepreneurial companies appear to have the advantage. It is critical that things align within an organisation. The pay & rewards policies need to reward the behaviours we want and not indirectly encourage different behaviours. The recruiting methods and experience needs to set people up with the right expectations.

In an organisation where there is autonomy for the heads of departments to actually change how things are done this is relatively straightforward to sort out. Either way, the business case of why things need to align is easy to make.

In order to get certain results, you need certain behaviours. Most organisations confuse the brain in terms of the behaviours that are expected. There is no point in investing in fantastic training if behaviours will be shaped in a different way by other areas of the business.

Helping people understand how their brain works mean you have more people equipped to make sustainable changes.

Can you make a difference quickly & cheaply?

This approach is perfect for quick & cheap! The idea isn’t to have to do lots more things, rather instead to understand what things are most important and then create environments where people can do those things easily. Because many of the approaches are novel they can elicit a dopamine response within people activating their reward network and making them more likely to engage again.

What does the future hold?

We’re seeing some big organisations move towards fantastically integrated ways of developing and supporting people. These approaches are underpinned by relevant science and then are tested and tweaked. We believe this will become the expected norm. Anything less is inefficient.

Summary

Organisations have an opportunity to strategically align everything they are doing in order to both make life easier for employees and also subsequently get better results.

Do get in touch with us if you would like to start a conversation about some results you’d like to see in your place of work.

Questions

What type of culture will best help your people get the results you want?

Where are things out of alignment?