Tuesday, 21 November 2023

Maintaining lifelong learning

How can you keep learning in a micro agency? When you’re deliberately small and encouragingly busy?

My thirst for self-development remains unabated, even after nearly 30 years in this field. I’m always eager to learn new things, to explore different angles on the employer-employee relationship, to build my knowledge of emerging techniques. It enables me to keep growing and helps me strengthen my support for (and sharing of new tools with) the clients and partners I work with.

However, it’s not always easy to get to in-person learning events or attend day-long conferences. It can be difficult to commit in advance, given that client needs can change rapidly. And as a consultant, you are sometimes excluded anyway (I did register for one event, but was rejected the next day and told I was not welcome. In those exact terms!).

So kudos to the organisations hosting webinars to which everyone is invited. Some are sponsored by service providers, others are not. Some have an entrance fee, others are free. Many are available afterwards on-demand. The range of such opportunities is expanding and I’m setting aside a couple of hours every week for sessions directly related, or providing wider context, to my field of internal communication and employee engagement. Over the last month, for example, this has involved events from the IOD, IABC and CIPD.

Online learning will never replace in-person interaction, and I am hoping to get to more such events and meet more people in 2024. But there is an ever-growing range of online options in the meantime…

No comments:

Post a Comment