ABILITY TO LEARN NEW THINGS AND
organizational design, and much more. Ideally, an organization would offer learning and development programs to help HR professionals adapt to these changes. The same is true for any other employee in any function. Things change and we need to be able to adapt. Learning and development helps make sure that we continue to grow as individuals. This also keeps us from getting bored, opens up new challenges and opportunities, helps us feel more successful, and adds more color to our professional and our personal lives. Learning is also more than just something we want. It's a biological imperative that keeps our brains and thus our bodies healthy.
Qlik is a business intelligence–visualization software company with over 2,500 employees. Lisa Carraway, director, internal communications, shared some of the fun and interesting things it is doing. When conducting its internal employee survey, it found that team members were not only seeking more opportunities for development (beyond just classes or
programs) but also time to actually take advantage of new offerings. As part of its investment in learning and development, it launched the global 24‐
For‐U program in the first quarter of 2016 for all Qlik team members to encourage nontraditional learning and development experiences. This program provides an additional day off per year for education—whether it benefits personally or professionally—including training programs, time with a subject matter expert, shadowing someone for the day, and so on.
Everyone is encouraged to keep 24‐For‐U in mind when creating his or her annual individual development plans. From Qlik's perspective, if a person is learning and growing, he or she is going to be happier and more engaged.
Employees have used this new initiative in some pretty creative and engaging ways.
A Qlik team member in the Radnor, PA, office is currently enrolled in an MBA program and used his 24‐For‐U day during his immersion program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He shared that his 24‐For‐U day included meeting the mayor of Pilar (a province in Buenos Aires) in the morning, attending an afternoon working session on doing business in Argentina by PwC's head of strategy, meeting with the managing partner of Cleary Gottlieb to discuss Argentine financial markets in the evening, and ending the day by attending a Dinner & Tango Show.
Another team member combined his 24‐For‐U day with his corporate social responsibility day and vacation time to travel to an orphanage in Peru.
Together with two Qlik colleagues, he helped install a computer lab in the orphanage's learning center. In this case, the benefit of 24‐For‐U goes far beyond the development the Qlik team experienced and extends to the children at the orphanage. The technology will be key to improving their lives by enhancing communications and technical skills and preparing them for their future of work. Other team members supported the cause with donations, and Qlik promptly doubled those donations.
An analyst in the Vancouver office is currently preparing for a financial and valuation modeling boot camp that will provide her with financial skills to complement her market and competitive intelligence expertise. This will help her grow in her current position. She used her 24‐For‐U day to work on the accounting prerequisites with an online preparation program called Wall Street Prep.
Lisa used her 24‐For‐U day to learn more about the documentary
filmmaking process to support a veterans' program called Grand Canyon Warriors—an annual trip on the Colorado River to help wounded vets with their recovery. She thought a short documentary would be a great way to raise awareness and funds. However, she had worked only on corporate videos and had no experience or budget to create a film. So, she took an online course on how to draft a film treatment and met with corporate video contacts for their counsel. As an executive producer Lisa developed
communications and leadership skills and applied professional experience to a charitable effort. Most important, she was able to contribute to the Grand Canyon Warriors in a much greater way than she could ever have imagined—this was priceless! Her team is in the middle stages of
production but is very much looking forward to having this film contribute to making a difference in the lives of wounded veterans.
Qlik is a great example of an organization that takes a more unconventional approach toward learning and development. Its 24‐For‐U initiative not only helps develop team members but also does so in an engaging way that makes people actually want to take advantage of the effort. So many organizations struggle with getting employees to actually participate in development programs. Why not try something unique like Qlik did?
Perhaps no other organization in the world takes learning as seriously as Accenture, a global professional services company with over 350,000
employees around the world. I spoke with both its chief learning officer, Rahul Varma, and its chief leadership and HR officer, Ellyn Shook. Last year alone Accenture spent upwards of $841 million dollars on learning, which is one of the world's largest budgets devoted to this category. It is currently on the path to create over 100 digital employee classrooms at its various locations around the world. Its approach is instead of taking
learners to great learning, it should be taking great learning to its learners.
This means you can be anywhere in the world and get access to a top‐notch learning infrastructure.
Accenture has six pillars that are a part of its learning delivery strategy, which are regional, local, virtual, on demand, on the job, and communities.
These are essentially the six ways that employees can leverage learning.
This plethora of options means that employees can teach others, access face‐to‐face instruction, join virtual classrooms, or even get access to content such as HarvardX, which are free online courses Harvard University offers.