When I was working with McKinsey & Co., the most repeated piece of information in efficiency studies was that people can only really work productively in an office for about three hours each day. The rest of the time is spent doing tasks that don’t require human-as-human labor. As those tasks shrink–consider the assistant whose day used to be spent retyping, copying and paper filing–what would you like your employees to be doing with their time?
Humans are much better than computers at learning, and learning is the one redirect that can effectively refocus your employees once their initial “three hours” is up. At ATC, we suggest at least two hours per week per employee of professional development time to learn new software, keep up-to-date on industry innovation and improve skills. But we also suggest three hours per week of exploratory learning.
Were you to include exploratory learning as part of your office workers’ job requirements, what would that look like, what would it do, and what metric could you use to measure it?
“Old dog” employees, those who just want to run down the clock to retirement, are least likely to take advantage of exploratory learning. Also, unmotivated “users” will see exploratory learning as an opportunity to goof off. They see their employment as a transactional scam anyway. You take their time and they take your money, and they are always interested in giving up less time and getting more money.
But employees who believe in your company’s mission, who are able to envision growth in their job and eventual promotion, will use every second of exploratory learning becoming a better employee.
Exploratory learning is just that. It is not professional development, where, say, someone in accounting takes an IRS information course. It is when someone in accounting decides to learn 3D modelling or takes violin lessons.
What could this possibly do for your company? Humans have been building tools since the dawn of time. But the stick you use to hit an enemy is also useful as a lever, a walking aid and a probe. 3D modelling, for example, triggers connections between the concrete and conceptual structuring capacities of the brain. Musical notation is a value coordinate system of unsurpassed nuance. Study in either of these fields can lead to important breakthroughs in approaching problem solving in the office. Also, by telling employees that you want them to learn new tricks, they know you are investing in them. In very real terms, this leads to greater employee loyalty.
How do you measure it? Before implementing any digital transformation, ATC would recommend you take a baseline survey of your employees querying everything from productivity and workload estimates to happiness and quality of life evaluations. Once you have that baseline, introduce exploratory learning and regular professional development and see how they feel in six months.
We think you won’t have to take a survey. You’ll see the increased productivity on your P&L report.