Learning at work, is a lot like trying to adopt a more healthy lifestyle
Everyone knows they should do it, but it’s hard to build a sustainable habit without some help. It can feel like a mountain to climb, unless you break it down into small chunks that you can easily achieve. That’s one reason why top companies are moving away from formal training to more informal, bitesize learning.
How does that apply to learning?
Just like exercise and healthy eating, learning is more effective when you do it every day. Over time, small achievements build up and give you a sense of momentum. You start feeling like you’re making progress and that you can take on tougher challenges. But that takes effort, willpower and planning, which is why most people don’t do it.
It doesn’t take much will-power to turn up to a training course and do what you’re told for a day. But face to face training courses aren’t all that effective at changing behaviour over time. They give you a large portion of learning that wears off quickly, if you don’t follow up and embed it. It’s a bit like eating 35 portions of fruit and vegetables in one day, instead of spreading them out across the week. There’s a limit to what your body can absorb. Everything else is just a waste.
We hate waste.
We hate it when people spend money on our training that doesn’t transfer to a change in performance. That’s why we apply the “little and often” approach to learning. Our courses are made up of bite-size chunks, most of which only take five minutes to complete. Our courses help people build a habit of regular learning. But what happens when the course is over?
We want to help people keep on learning.
It doesn’t take that much effort to find five minutes for bitesize learning everyday, but it does take some effort to decide what to do with that time. We want to make it easier to keep learning everyday. So we had a think and we came up with an idea we think could work for everyone.
We’re making bitesize learning easier with take 5.
All you have to do is take 5 minutes each day for learning. We’ll provide interesting content, across a range of relevant topics for you to read and watch. We’ll tell you what it’s about, why it’s worth your time and ask you a question that will make you think about how you could use it. You can share them with your team, or your colleagues, if you think they might like it too.
How does it work?
Sign up to the Recruiting Gym for a free trial. It’s aimed at recruiters and recruitment leaders. You can leave after your free trial or you can stay to benefit from the wisdom of the gym.
Step1. Sign up
Step2. Open the emails that arrive each day from our latest post in the Recruiting Gym.
Step3. If you like the look of it, click on the link and check out the content we shared. If not delete it and wait for the next one.
Step4. Think about the question in the post.
Step5. Share it with anyone else who might benefit.
It’s pretty simple.
Take 5 is inspired by the work of Julie Wedgwood. She came up with the original idea and called it Find Fifteen. If you manage people, we highly recommend reading this full explanation of how you can use this approach to develop your team.
It doesn’t matter if you take 5, 15, or longer, just be sure to do something.
