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At Digi, one big change that helped pave the way for online learning was the shift away from the mindset that learning only happens in classrooms or through courses. Rafey Majeed, Head of Talent, Learning and Rewards, talks about how employees are empowered to take responsibility of their learning, the key tools it invested in on this journey, and more.
As a digital company in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving industry, for Digi to ensure business sustainability and growth, constant organisational renewal and modernisation is crucial. This is only possible if its workforce continues to upskill and reskill itself to fulfil Digi’s talent needs.
“Moreover, with innovation ingrained in our way of work, learning is indeed a critical part of our employees’ development, and we invest significant resources into ensuring every employee has clear learning and development progress,” says Rafey Majeed, Head of Talent, Learning and Rewards, Digi.
With the underlying belief that employees know best of what, when and how to learn, Digi advocates and instils a ‘freedom to learn’ culture where people are empowered to take responsibility of their learning to advance their career.
While this applies to all forms of learning, working with digital learning platforms is a key in driving this culture.
“Even though online learning is considered a norm in Digi’s culture, the pandemic has opened up even more opportunities for us to move programmes to online or blended formats.”
One big change that helped pave the way for online learning at Digi was the shift away from the mindset that learning only happens in classrooms or through courses.
“In addition, having the right content, tools and platforms that provide a delightful user experience is also a key investment,” he adds.
This change in the learning culture took time, commitment, and perseverance. While there were early adopters, it took some effort to get everyone on board through building awareness, leadership role-modelling, and more.
An example of how Digi encouraged learning is through its 40-Hour Learning Challenge, whereby each employee is challenged to complete at least 40 hours of self-paced, permission-less learning, via digital platforms such as LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and Udacity.
“What has helped is also maintaining open communications with our people that allows us to listen to their feedback and stay connected to their interests, thus enabling us to adjust and keep our learning programmes relevant.”
Overall, employees welcomed the change as they felt more empowered when provided with a wealth of content to learn from, anytime and anywhere. There was also a positive impact on employee engagement.
Looking forward, online learning is here to stay as it provides a lot more possibilities when it comes to addressing an organisation’s talent and learning needs, Majeed says.
“At Digi, our goal is to provide more personalised learning experiences to employees and to decentralise content creation and curation by having a set-up that allows individuals to contribute seamlessly. This will mainly be driven through ongoing work on learning tools and technology, supported by our culture of self-learning.”
This interview first appeared as part of a feature in the May-June 2020 e-mag of Human Resources, Singapore, and the Q2 2020 edition of Human Resources, Malaysia. Read the case study in the e-mag, or the full feature here.
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