Hello my name is Natalia Alvarado, and I am People and happiness Lead for Mexico and the US, I have more than 7 years of experience in HR issues, for me, human resources is something that I am passionate about and everything associated with it. I feel very fulfilled helping people and I see how my job is 100% linked to the professional growth of people.  

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Here at Tribal Credit, part of my daily duties is to review general topics regarding global Learning and Development, this has been a journey, starting from scratch and looking for the best way to embrace our core value "learn and grow proactively". In this post I'll help you with my top 5 tips, to help you in your learning and development journey.

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1. Your company needs: Before starting your company learning tool, try to identify your specific company needs, not all companies have the same pains. You can send out a short survey about what your people want to focus their learning on. In that survey you can include questions such as:

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• Rate a specific set of abilities where 4 is “master” and 1 is “I need help with”:
  

• For your role, is there any specific hard skill or certification that you need to learn in order to succeed in it?

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Try to collect the more insights you can, so that you can start building a company strategy.

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2. Make finance your ally: After collecting all the data, start building a budget that covers all the needs for resources, learning platforms, external consultants, books or conferences. Also build a ROI (Return on Investment) strategy, create ways to evaluate all the learning efforts you are building. My favorite is Kirkpatrick's 4-level evaluation model, where you can measure in stages the impact of the training programs you implemented in your company.

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With this structure they can help make this program a success.

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3. Make your learning tool your best friend: If you are starting to build your learning and development culture, find an LMS system that fits your company's needs before you hire a super large platform with learning contents where create learning paths can be very hard to track. In our case we have a super cool tool called Workramp, where we have develop some specific trainings in topics like compliance security and well being, but all the content is super focused on our specific needs.

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4. You are just a guide: Remember that you are only a guide and you will only provide the resources and elements necessary for your team to succeed. You have to create a path where your employees are the owners of their growth and learning program, for this it is necessary to have an individual development plan (IDP), where they will synchronize with their manager and establish specific career goals to be achieved. With this analysis it is necessary to create a format where they can track their soft and hard skills to be developed and the progress of their training.

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5. Don't make learning an obligation: Nobody likes when they have to do something by obligation, this will no longer be enjoyable. Instead, create the habit in your collaborators by launching campaigns to block their learning hour and create a little recognition on the people that complete the most training hours, this could be on your company town halls or in a special emailing. This will be seen as a company challenge.

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Learning and development is a very important key in every organization, so your continuous growth and learning progress is essential. I highly recommend the book: The upskilling imperative, from Patricia Witkin, where you will find super useful insights about learning and development for companies who are in an agile environment.

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I hope this information is super useful for you and you achieve all your goals and help your company to succeed.