Safety in the workplace is a critically important issue, particularly in industries such as construction, manufacturing, mining, and healthcare. According to the National Safety Council, every seven seconds, a worker is injured on the job, leading to loss of productivity, missed days at work, or even loss of life. Although it’s true that individuals must adhere to safety regulations and wear proper safety equipment, having a culture of safety will ensure that employees not only follow safety rules but also are fully committed to achieving safety in the workplace.

Building a culture of safety is a powerful way to ensure that every individual at every level in the organization takes personal accountability for the safety of each other, patients, and the general public. Here are four ways to build a culture of safety.

Create a Roadmap for Change

To fully achieve a culture of safety, you first need to understand your current reality. Surveys and focus groups are two ways to understand current employee attitudes about safety and to identify specific challenges and opportunities related to changing the culture. Creating a roadmap for culture change also requires a clearly articulated safety objective. Whether your goal is to become the industry leader for safety or to reduce illness and injury in the workplace by a specific amount, it will be important to clearly state the goal and the metrics you will use to chart progress. That way, everyone can recognize and celebrate success when you get there.

Ensure Leadership Support

Individuals on the front lines who are working directly with patients, hazardous materials, or heavy machinery are not the only ones responsible for ensuring safety in the workplace. In fact, leaders have a critical role to play in building a culture of safety, including:

• Championing safety as a critical aspect of ongoing company success through regular digital and in-person communication
• Dedicating sufficient resources to equip the workforce with the knowledge and skills they need to ensure safety
• Recognizing employees whose behaviors align with the company’s safety culture goals

Build Knowledge and Skills Through Training

To build a culture of safety, you need more than a traditional safety training program. Traditional training programs are great for providing instruction on how to use equipment or follow certain procedures, but they won’t bring about true culture transformation. To achieve a shift in culture, it’s necessary to provide employees with learning experiences that enable them to think differently about safety and take ownership of their role in creating a culture of safety. When employees attend training that focuses on building a safety mindset, they develop a strong conviction for promoting safety and learn how to:

• Adopt shared responsibility for safety in the workplace
• Take actions that ensure their safety and that of others
• Proactively suggest ways to improve safety through improvements to existing processes and protocols

Measure Results and Reinforce

Any culture change effort requires ongoing reinforcement to ensure individuals retain lessons learned in training and don’t fall back into old habits. Digital learning reinforcement, assessments, and coaching from company leaders will help to ensure the safety culture becomes further embedded in everyday employee activities. Reinforcement activities aren’t meant to teach new information or add more to employees’ workloads. Rather, they should be designed to reinforce what was taught in training, in bite-sized increments over time, so that individuals can incorporate those reinforced lessons into their workdays. In partnership with reinforcement activities, ongoing measurement of results based on clear metrics will help everyone recognize and measure progress.

Meeting your workplace safety goals can be a reality when employees and leaders work together to demonstrate their commitment to a culture of safety. With a roadmap to success, the support of leaders, and training that helps develop a new safety mindset, everyone in the organization will be equipped to improve safety in all areas.

A high performance culture is at the top of many companies’ wish lists, with good reason — when colleagues contribute fully to the best of their abilities (and even stretch those abilities to become better), the company benefits. Unfortunately, leaders are facing an uphill battle in implementing a high performance culture since, according to one survey, just 10 percent of employees define success at work through high performance.

Successfully implementing a high performance culture is most certainly a reason to rejoice, given the obstacles that are in the way when creating it. However, developing the culture isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise; to continually reap the benefits of a high performance culture, you must find ways to sustain this culture through all of your company’s ups and downs. Here are four keys to sustaining the high performance culture you’ve worked hard to put in place:

1. Leaders Must Model High Performance Behaviors

Sustaining a high performance culture starts with leaders. A company’s leaders should be the living embodiment of the company’s values, and how leaders act — and how often they show their faces outside the boardroom — has a tremendous impact on the behavior of their teams.  Researchers have even found that nonverbal cues from leaders (how they stand, how often they smile, whether they cross their arms, etc.) dictate whether their team members open up or shut down when approached.

While the leadership team may say they value honest feedback, their body language itself may tell employees something completely different. For a high performance culture that lasts, leaders must consciously embody the values and behaviors they hope to see in their own employees.

2. High Performance Culture Requires High Performance Training

A high performance culture supports the development of skills and knowledge through engaging, impactful training programs. Unfortunately, after we learn something, we all experience “learning decay” — we remember less and less of the lesson over time.

To ensure you’re fostering a high performance culture, invest in high performance training strategies that improve the likelihood that the training will stick. For example, experiential learning, where training participants take an active role in a training experience (instead of listening to a lecturer or reading a manual) greatly minimizes learning decay in comparison to more traditional training programs, like “show and tell” presentations which require minimal engagement. High performance training exercises that simulate the real-world workplace scenarios that participants often encounter make it far easier for participants to remember and apply the training lessons in their day-to-day work lives.

3. Confidence, Not Perfection is the Goal

In a culture of high performance, teams still make mistakes — the difference is how quickly they bounce back from those mistakes and continue to move forward. Colleagues in a high-performance culture will analyze what went wrong and make adjustments, rather than abandoning a plan completely in a fit of passion (or embarrassment). Plus, a hallmark of a high performance culture is a focus on collaboration: if one colleague makes a mistake, another is there to pick up the slack and keep a project moving. Empower your colleagues to collaborate, not compete, and to tackle problems (even problems of their own making) with confidence, not a sense a failure.

4. High Performers Focus on Building Strengths, Not Eliminating Weaknesses

Continually focusing on what colleagues are doing wrong results in a culture of demoralization — it’s hard to keep your head up and perform to your fullest potential when you’re constantly being berated! Instead, the focus should be on identifying and further developing strengths. In fact, a study found that when individuals are able to use their strengths on the job every day, they’re six times as likely to be engaged in their work than those who do not — and you cannot sustain a high performance culture without sustained engagement as well.

Inevitably, over time a pillar of your high performance culture may show signs of cracking. What strategies have you implemented to avoid crumbling and continue to sustain an engaged, high performance culture at your company?

When you think of organizational development, you might imagine a team of high-level managers gathering a few times a year to create and implement a strategy that includes training programs, benchmarks, and reporting systems. While this is certainly a valuable approach, it’s not the only one. Many organizations are discovering that employee development can—and should—be driven not only by leadership, but also by the employees themselves.

Employee-driven development is beneficial to organizations of all sizes. When individuals define their own paths at an organization, they tend to stay longer because they know where they are headed and that their destination is in line with their career aspirations. Employees also stay more engaged when they are active participants in their own development. A recent study showed that almost half of employees in the U.S. are not engaged at work, primarily because they wanted to learn something new. If that need isn’t met in your organization, chances are employees will find it elsewhere.

If you’re not already factoring individual goals into your organizational development plan, it might be time to introduce employee-driven development. Here’s how to get started.

Let Employees Lead the Way

Collaborate with individuals as they set their own goals for career development. When managers set goals for employees, it can lead to missed opportunities because they don’t necessarily know what employees want or what their capabilities are. On the other hand, when employees are given the latitude to define their own paths, the result is a higher level of engagement and more people in the right roles doing what they enjoy.

Of course, the majority of these individual goals must also benefit the organization and support the business objectives. Start by clearly stating the organization’s goals and asking the employees to set their goals to support these.

Provide the Necessary Resources

After defining individual goals, the organization should offer support by providing access to the necessary resources. These might include:

• Funds for outside training
• Internal training programs
• Membership in professional organizations
• Mentoring and coaching
• Recommended resources
• Peer discussion groups

Knowing how to provide meaningful feedback and accepting honest evaluations from others are essential skills for employee-driven development. Providing training for these fundamental competencies will give individuals a strong foundation for participating in their own development.

Maintain a Dialogue

Employee development is not a single training event or feedback provided during an annual review. The plan should consist of short- and long-term goals with realistic, achievable milestones. Ongoing communication is also essential for the success of any type of development program. Even when employees are leading the charge by setting their own career goals and being proactive about accessing resources, they need coaching and feedback from their managers about their progress.

It’s important for the organization to have a two-way communication process that allows both employees and managers to voice their desires and concerns. It’s not enough to assume that employees will speak up when they have ideas or criticisms. Open communication has to be built into the company culture and employees must be provided with mechanisms (surveys, 360 evaluations, and so forth) for providing feedback.

Build it into Your Hiring Process

Before an employee is even hired, you have the opportunity to set expectations about learning and development. If self-learning is an important company value, that should be communicated to candidates during the interview process. This approach brings self-starters to the forefront because they will be seeking opportunities for growth. Employee-driven development will help you attract and retain the high-potential individuals who want knowledge and a level of control over the future of their careers.

Of course, employee development is not a one-sided equation. Leadership still needs to guide the overall strategy so that any development programs align with and support business goals. Striking the right balance between what each employee wants and what the organization needs is crucial.

The relentless pace of change in the corporate world today requires teams to collaborate and innovate. Therefore, company culture must overcome silos and support effective, cross-functional interaction between teams. When teams break out of their silos, the organization has a better chance for long-term success. In a survey of global operations managers, 61 percent cited cross-functional collaboration as being the key to helping the company reach strategic goals. Here are six strategies that can help break down silos and foster greater cross-functional collaboration across the entire organization:

Communicate a Unified Vision

Often, organizational silos form because individual or departmental goals have become such a priority that they become all-important, causing employees to lose sight of broader company goals and purpose. A unified vision that is broadly communicated among employees helps individuals to understand that individual and team goals are secondary to organizational vision.

For organizations that have grown accustomed to operating in silos, the vision will need to be communicated often and across different mediums so that it remains top of mind. When people see the bigger picture, they can begin to understand their unique place in the organization, as well as that of others. In time, a focus on self and team will expand to include other individuals and teams that are also part of the company vision.

Create Shared Accountabilities

Once a unifying vision has been established and communicated, it needs to translate into the everyday behaviors of teams and individuals to take hold. Teams can benefit from having shared goals that pull them together rather than divide them. For example, an organization might align the IT department’s goals with those of other departments to ensure more efficient use of internal IT systems. To further break down organizational silos, it can also be helpful to have two or more teams work together on a task force that ends with a joint presentation to senior management.

Bring Teams Together

Breaking down organizational silos and increasing cross-team collaboration doesn’t happen on its own, but will be more likely when individuals have opportunities to interact and work together. Joint meetings, focus groups, and chat sessions can provide employees with opportunities to get to know people from other teams, who does what, and how they can help each other to achieve company goals. Other activities that bring teams together include combining similar teams under co-heads, or co-locating teams that can benefit from being in close physical proximity, as in the case of companies that sit sales and marketing teams together. Organizing a corporate events can also promote collaboration, build trust, and encourage relationships between teams.

Get Leaders On Board

People on different teams will be unlikely to collaborate and will remain in silos unless they see leaders modeling collaborative behavior. Company leaders need to set the example to demonstrate that they expect cross-functional teamwork and information sharing from their employees. Leaders can support greater collaboration in the following ways:

• Talk about shared goals between teams
• Assign a team member or two to keep another team in the loop on a key project
• Regularly communicate and spend time with leaders of other teams
• Recognize and reward individuals who demonstrate collaboration with other teams

Incorporate Collaboration Tools

In the digital age, there is a range of workplace collaboration tools that can bring teams together in the cloud, making it easier to share ideas and information. Digital collaboration tools can be particularly helpful in unifying remote teams and individuals. Some examples include:

• Project management platforms with chat and virtual whiteboard capabilities
• Shared documents that allow multiple teams to access and collaborate
  on presentations, proposals, and project plans
• Data management tools that incorporate data from other platforms—for example, a CRM that integrates with company dashboards used by various teams

Shift Mindsets and Behavior with Training

A great way to help employees break free from silos is to train them to engage in behaviors that support more teamwork and collaboration. With the help of accountability, communication, and leadership training to name a few, employees can learn more about the dangers of silos, see the benefits of collaboration, and practice useful techniques for breaking down silos back on the job.

Organizational silos stand in the way of innovation and growth. They also limit the success of individuals, preventing them from realizing the positive benefits of teamwork and collaboration. By using strategies that encourage individuals to think of themselves as part of the broader organizational team, more cross-functional collaboration can become a reality.

In 2013, media firm Thomson Reuters took a big risk; they decided to stop driving growth through acquisition and start driving growth through innovation. While acquisitions had been the company’s main source of growth for years, they were proving to be too costly. Instead, Thomson Reuters decided to tap into a huge source of growth potential: its own employees.

The firm developed something called the Catalyst Fund, which gave employees a platform to present their ideas in front of a panel of company executives (and secure funding to explore them), including the CEO himself. The results from their Shark Tank-esq program was the ability to tap into a bank of creativity that was at their fingertips the whole time. Employees began creating new products and innovating in the realm of organization, saving the company time and money with innovative process improvements. This wasn’t just good news for the company; employees became more engaged, as their voices were heard, helping lead the company to new heights.

Thomson Reuters transformed their company culture to enhance innovation. Unfortunately, not many organizations see the same benefit of transforming their culture to embrace innovation.

According to a report from the National Science Foundation, just 14 percent of U.S. companies are considered product or process innovators. While this low number isn’t exactly inspiring, it’s not surprising either, achieving true innovation takes hard work. There are plenty of hurdles that companies face when they try to innovate, time constraints and budget issues among them.

One of the biggest hurdles to innovation, however, the organization’s attitude toward innovation; the tendency to kill ideas before they even get the chance to develop into something worth pursuing. And it’s a more pervasive issue than most companies even realize.

But before we dive into what’s flatlining your organization’s ability to innovate, let’s take a closer look at what we mean when we say “innovation.”

What Is Innovation?

There’s a common misconception about innovation: Innovation is not just about coming up with new ideas, that’s called ideation; and while it’s an important part of innovation, it’s just that: one part. Think of innovation as a process, where you start by identifying the issue and then move on to coming up with ideas, creating and implementing an action plan, and finally achieving, and measuring results. In sum, the process of innovation involves:

• Defining the issue
• Ideation
• Action
• Results

Innovation is all about making something better by doing it in a new or different way. The first step is ideation, or coming up with new ideas’ you’ll never see the results stage if you don’t start at ideation. getting new or different results.

There are two sides to supporting innovation, and it is important to evaluate which side your team falls on. There are innovation killers: they name everything that’s wrong with an idea, without acknowledging an idea’s benefits or offering alternatives.  And there are innovation enhancers: who will acknowledge the merit of the idea and then encourage the team to brainstorm ways to make it work. Which side does your team fall on? Check out the common tactics of innovation killers and innovation enhancers and see which sounds like the more familiar refrain in your company.

Stifling Ideation: Common Innovation Killers

“It’s too expensive”

The team has been brainstorming new ideas that give some team members sticker shock. An innovation killer will dismiss the idea based on the price tag alone.

“You don’t know all the facts”

Sharing ideas with a team puts the idea sharer in a vulnerable place—at a company full of innovation killers, it’s an invitation for scrutiny and judgment. An innovation killer creates an atmosphere in which team members feel uncomfortable sharing, out of fear of ridicule. An innovation killer is all around negative about any new idea or change, even when it comes down to body language and tone of voice. The result: Ideation halts altogether. What’s more, the innovation killer doesn’t just object to new ideas—they make their objections personal, focusing on what’s wrong with the idea sharer, rather than the idea itself. That’s destructive for true innovation.

“I like it in theory, but it’s not very practical”

An innovation killer expects an idea to be fully formed when shared with the group. This, of course, is an unrealistic expectation—and a dangerous one at that. When colleagues feel that they can’t share their ideas until they’ve addressed every angle (like practicality), the ideation process will move at a snail’s pace.

“That’ll rock the boat”

An innovation killer, essentially, is scared. Scared to make a splash, take a risk, and possibly face criticism for it. An innovation killer doesn’t want to rock the boat—not realizing that that’s exactly what leads to real, life-changing innovation. They are chained to old ways, unsure of how to (or unwilling to) break free.

“Just to play devil’s advocate…”

Playing devil’s advocate may seem like a way to examine an idea from another perspective. But if someone on the team is playing devil’s advocate “just because,” it’s a diversion tactic, not an authentic effort to improve upon an idea. An innovation killer only looks at the negatives of an idea, doing so to the point that playing devil’s advocate becomes a game of wasting time.

Fostering Creativity: Innovation Enhancers

“How do we make it work?”

Every new idea can and will be met with some type of objection. To move forward in the innovation process, though, you must turn an objection into exploration. Saying that an idea is “too expensive,” for example, shouldn’t be the end of the idea but rather the beginning. Either finesse the idea until it overcomes objections or set aside the idea only after your team has determined there’s no way around the objection (and that the objection is a deal breaker).

“Building on that idea…”

An innovation enhancer is encouraging while still acknowledging—respectfully—that an idea needs work. For example, it’s very possible that someone may share an idea without knowing all the facts (that’s why working in teams is a smart approach in the first place). Rather than attack the team member for “daring” to speak up, an innovation enhancer will add their knowledge to the idea, positively steering the ideation session in the right direction while sharing vital information in the process.

“What about reshaping it?”

An innovation enhancer knows that truly great ideas hardly ever start out that way—they undergo lots of massaging, revisions, and input from the group to finally become great. That’s precisely why brainstorming sessions and team meetings exist: to help move good ideas from the realm of “theory” to practical, action-oriented ideas that get results. To get there, an innovation enhancer will encourage the team to look at a seed of an idea with fresh eyes and different perspectives to determine if that seed can truly grow into something more.

Keep in mind, though, that someone who encourages and validates every single idea shared in the group may seem like an innovation enhancer—but that’s really not the case. It’s crucial that ideas are examined carefully before being pursued further. But even “bad” ideas can inspire new ones, which is why an innovation enhancer shifts the ideation conversation, rather than just shutting it down altogether.

“How can we get senior management on board?”

An innovation enhancer knows taking risks when it comes to dreaming up big ideas is necessary—but they are also realistic about the pushback that a risky idea may attract. That’s when an innovation enhancer switches to “strategy” mode. For example, if an idea doesn’t seem like it will pass muster with senior management, an innovation enhancer will work with the team to figure out how to frame the idea so that it’s appealing from management’s perspective, like illustrating how the idea is linked to business goals. Not to mention, senior management at a company with a high-performing, innovative culture won’t be afraid of a little “boat rocking” from time to time. Innovative leaders know that taking risks is a part of the innovation game—as long as their teams fail early and learn from their unsuccessful risks.

“Let’s come up with more good ideas like this one”

An innovation enhancer understands that good ideas tend to snowball—once a team gets on an idea streak, the good ideas can keep flowing. Creativity begets creativity. Going through the process of coming up with an idea activates your brain; the more you work on ideation, the more active your brain becomes. Pointing out every little thing that’s wrong with an idea just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate can throw off the whole group’s ideation groove, halting the creative process. If a group seems like it’s on a roll, an innovation enhancer will encourage the team members to keep on rolling, aware that they can submit their best ideas to greater scrutiny at a later time.

Innovation killers may be more subtle—and more pervasive—than just a single team member who’s resistant to innovation. Seemingly high-performing employees may have a block when it comes to innovation. Often, innovation killers even come from the top, particularly in workplace cultures that unwittingly discourage innovation. Luckily, innovation can be taught, and organizational cultures can be transformed when innovation is linked directly to results.

The overarching goal for healthcare organizations is to deliver patient care that heals and saves lives. With advances in technology and a highly skilled workforce to deliver exceptional patient care, healthcare organizations also need a highly engaged workforce that is productive and committed, in order to reduce turnover and gain a higher patient satisfaction. In fact, in a study conducted by Gallup of 200 hospitals, it was found that the engagement level of nurses was the number one variable correlating to reduced patient mortality, even more important than the number of nurses per patient. In other words, patient outcomes improve when employees in healthcare are engaged with their job.

While it can be challenging to tackle employee engagement in healthcare, it is a realistic and achievable goal. The key is to focus not on engaging those that are disengaged, but to focus any efforts on improving the engagement of those who already are engaged. There are three ways you can begin to increase employee engagement in your organization:

1. Deploy Employee Engagement Assessments and Use the Data to Make Changes
2. Provide Training for Leaders
3. Create Opportunities for Mentorship and Coaching for New Employees

Now, let’s discuss these in more detail.

1. Deploy Employee Engagement Assessments and Use the Data to Make Changes

The data and results these assessments show have the potential to identify and execute improvements related to employee engagement. However, the issue is often too much measurement with too little action. To highlight this point, 80% of executives say high engagement (the employee experience) is critical to their organization, yet only 22% have a plan on how to improve it. If healthcare employees are to feel that their opinions are valued and it was not a waste of their time, actionable steps must be taken.

2. Provide Leadership Training

According to a study conducted by Gallup, leaders account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement. So while the importance of technical skill programs is not to be underestimated, a great deal of the patient and employee engagement has a human element involved. By training leaders with people skills, such as communication, conflict management, and collaboration, they are more likely to be successful for their employees and patients. These skills are also important so healthcare leaders can work through any challenging situations and provide the best customer service to their patients.

3. Create Opportunities for Mentorship and Coaching for New Employees

The most engaged nurses have only been on the job less than six months. In those months they are enrolled in a carefully crafted onboarding program and are just beginning to familiarize themselves with the culture and the job. When this time comes to an end, engagement begins to fall.

Counteract this with a program that gives them coaching, networking, and mentoring opportunities. When employees in healthcare are paired with people that have a track record of success, they can learn valuable lessons about the nuances of the job and the organization they are just beginning to work for. Mentorship also allows for further on-the-job observation and in-the-moment coaching so questions or challenges can be handled effectively and efficiently.

Conclusion

For healthcare employees, excessive or unpredictable overtime, a stressful workload, and lack of workplace flexibility can all contribute to low engagement. Though you can increase employee engagement in healthcare, improve retention rates, and improve patient outcomes, by starting with these three things.

Many B2B organizations recognize the importance of focusing on customer experience in order to drive results and growth—being customer centric is simply good for business. Despite this, most companies are not quite there yet. According to Forrester, only 23 percent of B2B companies have embraced a customer centric approach to their organizational structures. Becoming a customer centric organization may seem like an overwhelming challenge, but making the investment in this culture shift is worth it. When striving to become a more customer-centric company, consider the following strategies to ensure success.

Create Corporate Clarity

Building a culture of customer centricity requires a clear vision and set of values to create a shared foundation. These ideals must be reflected in the actions, behaviors, and thoughts of both leaders and employees when making decisions. The message of customer centricity should be distributed clearly and consistently throughout the organization via meetings, everyday conversations, emails, and company message boards over a sustained period of time. Throughout the transformation to a customer centric culture, reiterate the vision in multiple ways and make it part of the company’s DNA to keep people motivated and engaged.

It’s also important to recognize that just spreading the vision of customer centricity is not enough to create lasting change. It’s essential that every person sees their part in the vision and knows what individual changes they need to make in order for it to become reality.

Employee development is a high priority for many organizations because it helps increase engagement, build loyalty, and achieve organizational goals. The types of training available to companies as part of an employee development strategy are countless, from self-directed online courses to immersive multi-day experiences. Using multiple training approaches helps ensure that you reach all types of learners and allows you to maximize your training budget.

Including experiential learning in your development program offers several important benefits, such as:

• Driving conviction to change behaviors
• Connecting conceptual ideas to actual situations in the workplace
• Delivering a fun and engaging training experience for employees
• Producing measurable results and the ability to track progress
• Providing a training framework that can be used in multiple areas

Let’s dig deeper into each of these benefits so you can see how experiential training can support your professional development strategy.

Drives Conviction

The main objective of any training initiative is to change behaviors in order to achieve a specific outcome. If participants are not aware of that outcome or not invested in accomplishing it, they are less likely to change their behaviors.

Experiential learning starts by building conviction so that participants learn not only how to do something in a new way, but also why it matters. They see the positive effects of using their new skills in the training environment and become motivated to test them in the real world because they have both the confidence that it will make a difference and the conviction to make the effort that will lead to change.

Connects Concepts to the Workplace

Many training formats effectively teach new concepts, but do not provide a safe environment to practice applying those concepts. For example, a classroom-based lecture about leadership skills can enhance the knowledge of participants, but that doesn’t mean they will know how to apply new skills in the real world.

Experiential learning is different because participants not only learn new concepts and skills, they also have the opportunity to try them in a scenario that indirectly mimics their reality. Because the scenarios are metaphors, many people don’t realize they are learning new work skills until the debrief at the end of the training. At this point, a facilitator guides a discussion that prompts participants to make strong connections between the lessons they learned in the activity and similar scenarios on the job.

Participants Have Fun

Employee development is serious business, but that doesn’t mean training has to be dry or boring. The importance of engaging participants during training cannot be understated. If they are not paying attention, they simply will not learn what you need them to.

Experiential learning fully immerses participants, making the full length of training fun and engaging. They aren’t interested in checking their phones because they want to solve the next challenge or see if they can improve their team’s results in the next round. Being fully engaged means that participants are more likely to absorb the information being presented to them, and because they are doing something that has immediate consequences, the experience is much more meaningful.

Provides Measurable Results

Training ROI is a high priority for anybody working with an employee development budget. Collecting feedback surveys or testing participants after a seminar is one way to gauge training results, but these methods do not guarantee long-term behavior change.

Experiential learning provides some of the best results of any type of training program because participants retain more information when they learn by doing. The learning decay curve shows that most people forget up to 70 percent of what they learned within the first week of learning it. Experiential learning, especially when combined with a retention strategy, helps overcome learning decay by instilling conviction, connecting the training concepts to actual behaviors in the workplace, and giving participants a common experience to reference.

Can Be Applied across a Wide Variety of Topics

Some training methods are better than others for certain topics or types of learners. For example, learning new software should include hands-on training. Similarly, digital training platforms are not always effective for people who are not comfortable using new technology without assistance.

Experiential learning can be used to teach to a broad spectrum of skills and competencies. Whether you want to teach time management to every employee or leadership skills to rising stars, experiential learning will produce results. Participants of every age and experience level benefit from this type of training. Programs can be customized to your organization, and even specific teams, so that they incorporate the company culture and internal language that will resonate with participants.

Next Steps: Adding Experiential Training to Your Development Initiatives

Experiential training has quickly become a favorite among HR and training professionals, as well as employees, because it creates conviction, connects the training experience to the real world, and delivers measurable results. Not to mention it’s fun and engaging, and can used to train a variety of topics, including leadership, customer centricity, and sales effectiveness. As you design your employee development initiatives, incorporate multiple types of learning methodologies, and be sure to include experiential training.

All types of industries and professions have trade networks and peer groups, and human resources is no exception. Joining HR network groups is an excellent way to share ideas, learn about new tools and methods, and meet people who have similar experience. By interacting with people in similar roles outside your own organization, you can gain insights about common challenges and learn from the successes and failures of others. Read on to learn more about the types of networks you can join, the benefits of joining them, and some specific groups to consider.

Types of HR Network Groups

There is a wide variety of peer groups and trade networks for HR professionals, including those that require membership fees or dues and free options. Some groups have a narrow focus such as healthcare, training, or compensation, while others cover a broader range of topics. Some of the types of HR networks you might join include:

• Professional accreditation organizations
• Local chapters of national networks
• Social networks for HR professionals
• LinkedIn, Facebook, or other online groups

You can join as many networks as your budget allows to gain access to the many resources and benefits they offer.

Benefits of Joining HR Network Groups

The main purpose of joining a human resources network is to gain benefits such as learning something new, tapping into the crowd for more information, and networking.

Learn New Ideas

HR professionals are involved in many aspects of the business, including skills training, benefit administration, software selection, vendor selection, and much more. Participating in a network gives you the opportunity to learn about new ways to improve processes, training approaches that are more effective, and software solutions that can help you be more efficient.

Crowdsource Knowledge

Although internet searches are useful for learning some new information, the best way to get answers to important HR questions is to ask people with experience. Having a group of knowledgeable professionals at your fingertips allows you to hear different perspectives about the challenges you face every day and to find tested solutions that could work for you.

Network with Peers

The only people who truly understand what you do are the others who do the same jobs. You might have access to only a few people in similar roles at your own organization, but an HR group gives you countless opportunities to network with your peers both in person and digitally. Whether you are trying to solve a problem or just venting about your day, being able to do it with like-minded individuals can make your job easier.

10 HR Network Groups to Consider

If you are exploring HR networks to join, start with this list:

1. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) – As the world’s largest HR professional society with 285,000 members in more than 165 countries, this organization offers learning opportunities, professional certification, events, and resources.
2. Professionals in Human Resources Association (PIHRA) – With more than 4,000 individual members in Southern California, this organization is the largest affiliate of the SHRM.
3. HR Training & Development (LinkedIn) – With almost 35,000 members, this subgroup of HR.com has been developed specifically for HR training and development specialists to network and share information.
4. Human Resources (HR) Professionals (LinkedIn) – This informal networking group of more than 200,000 HR professionals discusses trends and issues such as talent management, employee development, and compensation and benefits.
5. Human Resources Management & Executive Network (LinkedIn) – More than 70,000 HR leaders in management-level roles connect with peers to discuss HR trends and initiatives that can help foster or inspire your own career growth in your organization.
6. HR Jobs and Ideas (LinkedIn) – This human resources, talent management, and hiring networking group with more than 200,000 members is dedicated to sharing the latest information about HR ideas, jobs, and technology.
7. National Association of African Americans in HR (NAAAHR) – This association has over 25 chapters and a social media community of over 15,000 members who benefit from shared learning, professional development, and personal growth opportunities.
8. Human Resources Management Association of Chicago (HRMAC) – A group that began with seven people in 1915 has blossomed into a network of nearly 750 Chicago-area organizations and over 7,000 professionals focused on the HR strategies that support business success.
9. HR Professionals – CANADA Chapter (LinkedIn) – This group of over 4,000 professionals discusses recruitment, training and development, performance evaluation, competence assessment, and succession management.
10. HealthCare HR (LinkedIn) – Over 10,000 HR professionals in the healthcare industry participate in discussions aimed at solving common challenges.

No matter what type of industry you are in or what challenges you face, chances are there is an HR network group that is a good fit. Choose one (or more) of these 10, or do some research to find and join networks in your area and take professional development into your own hands.

One of the leaders’ top priorities – whether they manage a small team or an entire organization – is to find ways to improve performance. Technology upgrades and improved processes certainly lead to productivity and quality improvements. However, we cannot underestimate the value of simple and easy-to-implement leadership activities that bring the team together and teach important and necessary skills in the workplace.

Use these three leadership activities to improve performance.

Communication: coaching of builders

Effective communication is essential to maintain high productivity and generate results that meet expectations. Executive leaders, supervisors and employees can benefit from better communication skills. This exercise highlights the importance of listening to and using succinct and clear language to avoid misunderstandings and errors. Follow these steps:

1. Divide participants into groups of 4 to 7 people. Offer each group two sets that have at least 10 mounting blocks (Lego, for example). Before the exercise, you must assemble a simple object (such as a house) with one of the sets of blocks.
2. Assign a leader, a dwellee, a builder, and a person responsible for taking notes. The latter should observe and document how people behaved during the activity, what seemed to work and when participants made mistakes.
3. Give the leader the item you’ve assembled, taking care that only he can see the object. Mark 10 minutes on the clock. When the activity begins, the leader will pass instructions to the delegante on how the constructor should mount an exact replica of the object. Remember that the delegante should not see the object and the constructor should not hear this conversation.
4. The delegante hears what has been said and then goes to the builder and repeats the leader’s instructions. The delegante can return to talk to the leader as many times as he deems necessary during the 10-minute period.
5. The constructor uses the other block sets to construct exactly the same object that the leader can see, using only the delegante statements as guidance. The delegante should not see the object during construction.
6. After 10 minutes, compare the leader object with the constructor’s to confirm that they look alike. Discuss what was frustrating or easy during the process and discuss what each person would do differently to get better results next time.

Accountability: clarity on objectives and expectations

When expectations and deadlines are not met, we sometimes attribute these results to lack of accountability. Often, however, this is not because the individual responsible for the task did not try hard enough, but because the expectations of this individual were unclear. If team members start work without actually understanding the purpose or objectives of a task and also the desired outcome, they will make mistakes that can be costly and cause delays.

This leadership activity teaches employees how important it is to clarify the issues before starting a task to increase accountability. Here are some scenarios in which this activity can be useful:

• Meeting with managers organized by an executive.
• Daily quick meetings conducted by supervisors with their direct subordinates.
• Teambuilding session with all employees.

Here’s what to do:

At the beginning of the meeting, tell the group, “You are sitting the wrong way for today’s meeting. You have 60 seconds to improve this organization.” If team members ask for more information, repeat the instructions. Perhaps some of them will keep insisting, while the others will already start moving the seats. Note what they do, but don’t give other information, feedback, or instructions. After a minute, ask them to stop and ask these questions:

1. “Have you achieved the goals? How do you get it?” Talk about how the team might not have achieved the goals because they weren’t clear.
2. “Who asked for an explanation? How did you feel when I refused to give you more details?” Explain that when participants do not ask for an explanation and when the person responsible for the project does not clarify the doubts, everyone runs the risk of making mistakes and not being able to complete the task.
3. “How has the pressure of time changed your behavior?” Tell them that when people are stressed or under pressure, they usually start work in a hurry, without confirming if they understand what was requested, which often causes problems.

Finally, this activity will show how employees should handle a task that generates questions. It will also show the leader how to set clearer expectations and create a culture in which communication is clear and accountability is the rule.

Ability to solve problems: team collaboration

When facing a new challenge or dealing with an idea or project, teams need to know whether to organize on their own, create an action plan, solve problems, and work together to achieve a common goal. With this exercise, you’ll encourage participants to test their creativity and ability to solve a team problem:

1. Offer a variety of materials such as paper, cardboard, wooden blocks, pencils, paper clips, canudos, and more.
2. Divide participants into teams of four to eight members. If the group is smaller, teams of two or three members are sufficient.
3. Explain that the goal is to build the tallest tower in 20 minutes using any of the materials offered.
4. Then talk about each group’s strategy and ask:

○ Who planned before it started and who started the task in a hurry? What were the results of these two approaches?

○ How did the groups define who would do what?

○ Was there a leader? Or did everyone do their part?

○ What was the hardest part of the task? And the easiest?

○ How can you apply these learnings to the projects you are currently participating in?

Depending on the type of group that participated in the activity, the following questions may be different. For instance:

• For individuals of any hierarchical level: based on this activity, which communication strategies of the leader were most useful?
• For supervisors: in this activity, when did communication failures occur? How have they harmed the creation process?
• For executives: As a builder, what would you need to receive from the leader but didn’t? As a leader, have your instructions been followed accurately? How could you improve accuracy and understanding?

These three activities help develop some of the most important leadership skills: communication, accountability and problem solving skills. They are important for individuals of any hierarchical level in the organization, from the executive team to the employees. With each exercise, they learn to work more efficiently,both individually and as a team. With this, the performances improve throughout the organization.