Keep learning effective by tracking business trends

The skills that organisations need for the future are not the same as the skills they need for today - this was one of the key messages that emerged from day one of Training and Development Asia, 2015.

In a keynote presentation to inaugurate this year's edition of Asia's most insightful T&D event, Manojit Sen, Royal Dutch Shell's head of HR for Lubes in APAC, pointed out that we need to acknowledge the many dimensions of learning to be effective in the future.

At Shell, it is a priority to continuously make sure that people are kept abreast on their competencies. To back this up, there is focus on tracking the emerging business trends, as well as enhancing people and organisation capability in alignment with that.

"Different parties come together to deliver L&D objectives - business leaders, HR and other senior leaders, as well as the individuals who are learning. They have to work together for the L&D agenda to be delivered effectively," said Sen.

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Cultural differences, he pointed out, make a big difference to how learning programmes are delivered, for example in the language.

"Another example is that in Asia, you don’t see a lot of questions being asked, but in other parts of the world, you tend to see many questions being asked."

"We recognise that different things work in different parts of the world and we don’t implement something that doesn’t work in that region," he affirmed.

On the other hand, managing rising costs is an issue everywhere in the world, for which Sen explained the company has a dedicated HR shared services team to service the needs of clients both on the language and learning side.

"We do a tremendous amount by way of the leaders speaking to the learners and sharing what they have seen from their experience," he added.

Image: Training & Development Asia, 2015