Time to make learning fun again?

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I am just back from a gathering with my oldest friends. Every November we rent the same house in the Cotswolds and eat, drink and talk nonstop. Spending time with people who knew you before you hit puberty 😳 — let alone before you got a job, had kids etc — becomes almost familial, but without the complex dynamics. (We know each other’s foibles 👀.)

Friends are important in the good times, but in tougher periods these deep connections become vital. I’ll always remember a Working It podcast episode about surviving bad bosses, actual narcissists — or anyone who makes us doubt ourselves. The experts’ advice? Spend plenty of time with the people who really know and accept us. They keep us anchored to reality.

Read on for some tips on how to get your workforce learning — and sticking with it — from chief learning officers. (What do CLOs do for their own learning? I am intrigued and asked about it). And in Office Therapy I reassure someone who feels guilty about saying no to a colleague’s request for help.

Is it time to do learning differently? 🎓

Everyone, it seems, is talking about the need to train, upskill, reskill (insert your choice of dynamic-sounding verb) their workforces. The arrival of generative artificial intelligence has galvanised the work of chief learning officers — and ought to make that role a central strategic one for every business.

Is that happening at the moment? Not enough, according to an in-depth report from Emeritus, a global online learning company. Its CLO Strategy Report 2024 is a gold mine of data from 500 CLOs worldwide and in-depth interviews with 20 named people. Not least the opening finding: “While almost all CLOs in our research said it was ‘very important’ to be connected to their CEOs strategic direction, 45 per cent of CLOs said they felt ‘somewhat connected’ or even ‘very disconnected’ from business strategy.”

Surely it’s “Learning 101” to align employees’ training and skills with the wider strategy of the business? Yet in many cases, it apparently isn’t happening. One of the encouraging findings of the Emeritus report, though, is that many CLOs (67 per cent in this report) are choosing to measure their department’s success against their business’s key performance indicators instead of traditional L&D measures. So even if the CEO is distant, the outcomes need not be.

What can we all learn from the most effective CLOs about introducing AI training and skills? I asked Amelie Villeneuve, global head of learning at Standard Chartered Bank. It has launched an AI Learning Hub for its 90,000 employees and it’s on the foundation stage at the moment — next year, Amelie says, those who’ve been certified in the basics will move to “our sandbox learning, where they will have a chance to experiment in a number of safe contexts in how to implement AI to drive growth and productivity”.

Where, I wondered, do CLOs go to do their own learning? Amelie says, “the last course I really loved was a Pixar storytelling course and I’m now hooked on a few courses from HarvardX”. More surprisingly, “I’m a little obsessive about non-traditional learning: in my spare time, I have a farm, I compete and produce horses 🐎 for showjumping and dressage, which teaches me a lot about personal leadership and performance.” (Side note: I’d love to hear from other readers — CLOs or not — about any other “non-traditional learning” you do.)

Amelie says that the bank is “ruthless” in cutting courses that staff fail to complete. In general, a high number of us fail to complete digital courses at work. Amelie says that’s because the content is overlong, generic — or badly designed in terms of how long we are expected to spend on the learning. “Consumers of learning are pretty sophisticated now — they demand a seamless, practical and integrated experience. Anything less than the quality that they’d get from a consumer digital interaction is not workable.”

The FT reported last month that EY fired “dozens of staff” in the US who had attended more than one digital training class at a time during its “EY Ignite Learning Week” in May. Regardless of the ethics of doing that (Anjli Raval has written an interesting article on employees being terminated for minor misdemeanours), the case perhaps signals something wider: there’s still some way to go in terms of making all online training wholly engaging.

In a nutshell: CLOs are tasked with nothing less than rolling out the future of work 🔮, in the shape of AI and other skills. But they haven’t yet got the ear of enough CEOs — and some of the courses still aren’t good enough.

Want more? Watch our FT Working It film about the future of executive learning, online and in-person. (Featuring Global Alumni’s innovative “green screen” studio for interactive online learning that I think is a game-changer.)

*Got an innovative idea for corporate learning? Are we doing it all wrong? Email me: [email protected]

This week on the Working It podcast

The UK and some other rich economies have a long-term sickness problem. And an increasing number of the people who are out of work and claiming benefits are young, and are often diagnosed with mental health conditions. What’s happening? And are there any solutions that employers, and managers, can use to help more people get back into paid employment — and stay there? In this week’s podcast episode, I talk to two FT colleagues who are experts in this area: our chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, and Camilla Cavendish, contributing editor and columnist.

Office Therapy

The problem: I recently had a heated conversation with a colleague (in a very quiet office). They had been asking me, repeatedly, to do something big as a favour which was out of character for them, but I felt it was a case of “it’s a you problem”. I am very busy and I refused.

I have since learned that this colleague is on reduced hours because of a serious family problem (none of this is public). I feel like a terrible person. We don’t know each other very well. How do I apologise/offer to carry some of their workload without mentioning the personal problem I am not meant to know about?

Isabel’s advice: There are two layers here: the surface “ask” (which you rejected) and the hidden reason for the ask (which you didn’t know about at the time). What would you like to happen if you were in your colleague’s position? The appropriate response will be personal to you, and to the (quiet) team dynamics of your office.

From my POV, I’d send a note or ask for a coffee meeting to say sorry, openly and sincerely, and that you regret the outburst, lack of co-operation etc. Over-sharing isn’t necessary. Being human is.

Take it as a lesson for the future: there are often good reasons for weird requests. And where is the manager🕵🏽‍♂️? They presumably know what’s happened to this colleague. Tell your boss, if you can, that it would have been helpful — and more professional — if they’d asked you to take on the extra work, saving you from the awkward interaction.

You were put in a difficult position because of management failure. Don’t agonise: you didn’t know the whole story, and everyone will have forgotten about this by next week 📆.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. No degree, no problem: US employers look beyond college credentials. Claire Bushey talks to members of the “new collar” workforce, people hired for their skillset, not where (or whether) they went to college.

2. No work phone? Companies tell staff to bring their own: Increasing numbers of staff don’t have a work phone, but that brings grey areas around regulation, security and etiquette, writes Ben Parr.

3. Why rudeness has no place at work: I agree with Emma Jacobs’ analysis — and she has the statistics to back it up. It’s no good for the person being rude, or for their team.

4. Lunch with the FT — British Museum chief Nicholas Cullinan: Jan Dalley has a fascinating interview with the man leading the rumoured £1bn reconstruction and reimagining of the 3,500-room museum — as well as the hunt for its 2,000 missing objects.

5. How to throw an unmissable party: Not strictly about work (but you might invite your colleagues . . .), Alice Lascelles gives the lowdown on the art of hosting a brilliant seasonal event.

One more thing

We don’t often admit to admiring the opposition, but I think that the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the world of work and management is excellent. One of its writers, Rachel Feintzeig, signed off from the careers and workplace beat this week, with a column called Eight Lessons from 11 Years of Writing About Work and Life. It’s exactly as smart and snappy as the headline suggests. Here’s a taster: “I believe in hard work, but I don’t think you get anywhere from simply grinding it out. Brag well, about yourself and others.”

A word from the Working It community

The newsletter on corporate giving to charity (or rather, the lack of it) a couple of weeks ago generated lots of post — and many ideas. I heard from innovative corporates doing great things, but also from frustrated charities, who find themselves under pressure to accept partnerships or projects that corporates want, even when those don’t match their own aims and long-term funding needs.

I’ll be returning to this topic. As a taster, here’s Alex Freeman from Impetus, a charity foundation backing organisations that improve education and employment outcomes for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds:

“We use a venture philanthropy model, providing the organisations in our portfolio with long-term, unrestricted funding, but also working closely with them to grow their impact and become stronger, more resilient organisations. A huge part of this model is pro-bono partnerships.

“Our pro-bono network allows charitable organisations access to the professional resources they lack. Through pro-bono projects and partnerships, finance and consulting firms in particular can support charities in a transformational way by providing the business expertise they need to expand their reach and impact — without the huge price tags associated with corporate giving.”