Reskilling and upskilling are critical in helping people adapt to the changing workplace. But how does that translate to the role of a manager? In the third episode of the “On Aon Insights” podcast series, series host Sheena Singh, senior vice president in Aon’s healthcare industry vertical, explores the evolving needs of the workforce and how managers must manage people differently than before.
Charlotte Schaller, partner and head of assessment in the UK for Aon’s Talent Solutions, offers insights into the role a manager plays while adapting to remote and hybrid work, tactics for navigating current workforce trends and advice for how managers can support employees on a daily basis.
Additional Resources:
How Reskilling and Upskilling Can Help Close Future Skills Gaps
The Great Resignation? Retaining Talent in a Job-Hopping World
Aon Insights: Workforce Resilience
On Aon Insights Ep 1: Workforce Resilience as a Concept
On Aon Insights Ep 2: Reskilling and Upskilling Talent
Tweetables:
Sheena Singh:
Welcome to the On Aon Insights podcast, where we explore the hot topics surrounding the issues that matter to you. Today our world is more volatile than ever, overloaded by data and compounded by complexity and uncertainty. Important decisions are often being made without the right information, the right insight and more importantly, the right advice. This is where we come in. From traditional areas like managing volatility, retirement and health to new challenges like environmental, social and governance factors, technological and digital disruption. We'll bring together Aon thought leaders, industry subject matter experts and senior business professionals to give you the clarity and confidence to make better decisions. I'm Sheena Singh, senior vice president in our healthcare industry vertical, and it's great to be with you for this, the first season of On Aon Insights where we take a deep dive into the issues that matter to the world's business leaders. This season, we're exploring workforce resilience with episodes featuring insights from Aon experts about the new world of work and what steps organizations can take to create an empowering work culture.
In our last episode, we explored reskilling and upskilling for employees. By helping people adapt to the changing workplace and new skills in demand, organizations can build workforce resilience. But what about managers? The rise of remote and hybrid work means people must manage differently. Recent workforce trends like the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, have put pressure on managers to engage and retain their teams while AI and other technology are changing how they approach their jobs on a daily basis. All this means the role of managers has become much more complex. Charlotte Schaller, partner and head of Aon assessment in the UK, says this new environment is demanding that managers engage with and help their employees more.
Charlotte Schaller:
It's a responsibility now for managers to actually ask the people that work for them, how are they? I mean, we take it for granted. With the pandemic, we're sort of forced to say, oh, what you're doing at home? Who are you looking after? How's the school run? Well, there's no school run, but how's it going looking after your mother? Sort of, it forced people that may not naturally have had that duty of care or had that inclination to ask. And the more that managers can empathize and understand that, the more support they can offer and more productive their team can become.
Sheena Singh:
The new demands on managers may mean developing new skills and updating old patterns. Soft skills, those linked to behaviors and working styles are critical now and in the future. Managers are being asked to model an inclusive mindset, promote wellbeing, champion teamwork and perhaps most important of all, empower their employees. This, as Charlotte explains, may be the key to finding and keeping talent and creating a truly resilient workforce.
Charlotte Schaller:
There's been this shift in terms of directing others versus instructing others. The manager's role is more around being a champion of learning versus instructing others. And we've really started to see some evidence, if you get this right, you're more likely to retain that talent. Get this wrong, and it has a huge impact on attrition.
Sheena Singh:
This all makes great sense, but as with many deep changes in an organization, one of the biggest challenges in reskilling and upskilling managers is resistance. For some managers, the new skills they're being asked to build may feel unfamiliar, awkward, even risky. It may feel overwhelming to fit this training and development into already squeezed schedules. There are more challenges, of course, like costs, choosing the right learning tools and measuring success. Charlotte says approaching this task of reskilling and upskilling in a personalized way will help solve many of these challenges.
Charlotte Schaller:
So, it's really important that organizations embrace a personalized learning journey for each person where possible. We've got quite a cool manager development tool that puts the learning into the hands of the manager so that they can do it in their own time. They get bite-sized pieces of learning as they go through. It's like a modular process, and that strategy seems to work quite nicely. They take from it what they want, they park the stuff that they don't value. And it's this personalized learning journey that links to all the investment the organization may have already put into creating a learning platform.
Sheena Singh:
While starting on a reskilling and upskilling project for managers may seem overwhelming, a good place to start is data. Data can reveal why people are leaving or staying, what existing feedback says about managers, the diversity among managers and much more. Starting at the top is also a critical first step. When managers see their own leaders adapting their management style and creating safe spaces to learn and grow, they're more likely to look at learning as an exciting opportunity. Ultimately, what works best is a learning approach that helps managers understand their strengths and identify the best roles for them. Charlotte describes a new way to look at careers for managers and employees.
Charlotte Schaller:
If you could picture a ladder, there's no longer that straight ladder anymore. It's branches of trees. There's so many different directions you can take your career, and the best advice we give to our clients now is just try and map that out for people, and there should be individual career pathways. Maybe it's too difficult for a large organization to have it completely bespoke per person, but options and that you don't just progress in a straight linear way anymore and that learning and development and how you invest in people's growth is going to be different.
Sheena Singh:
What have we learned about reskilling and upskilling managers? The new reality of hybrid work and expanding tech means managers will need new skills for the future. Prioritizing these new skills can help organizations retain their talent. A personalized learning approach will help ease any resistance as well as make learning more powerful. Data will help an organization determine the best place to start. And finally, promoting a culture of learning starts at the top and is a continuing process that will be part of work now and in the future. Thanks for joining us at “On Aon Insights,” and thanks to Aon's Charlotte Schaller for her expert take on the topic. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode exploring workforce resilience. Remember to check our show notes for recommended reading and places to learn more, and don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. Until next time.