A picture of a fly. The option to donate to charity. Smaller plates. A cup of hot coffee. What do all these things have in common?
It’s all about changing the context, said People Matters CEO Pushkaraj Bidwai in his welcome address at L&D Conference in Mumbai. And there are hundreds of examples proving it, he pointed out. A tiny picture of a fly in a urinal – leads to cost savings and a cleaner environment. The option to donate saved costs – leads to large decreases in carbon emissions. Smaller plates at a buffet – leads to improved workforce health because employees eat less unhealthy food.
“Can we apply all of that to how we nurture learning in our organisations?” he said. “Small wins? Can we do that when we are building transformational exercises in our organisations? Because big wins are very hard to come by and they take time.”
Less complexity, more socialisation, more CX
Getting people to learn is notoriously difficult, but the customer experience approach, using small nudges, can be an incredibly easy way to increase the effectiveness of a L&D model. Pushkar highlighted two principles behind such an approach:
Simplicity: making things easier to remember by making them interesting, leveraging the power of design to embody a concept in an actionable and engaging way.
“We don’t like complicated things,” observed the People Matters CEO. “If we give five instructions to a person, the probability is that person will only remember two of them after the first week and only one after a month. So can we make it easy instead? Make it fun? Make it attractive, make it engaging?”
Sociability: utilising the power of social interactions, social competition, or social pressure to get people to voluntarily and happily change their behaviour.
“Having healthier friends influences you to be healthy, and the proximity of that friend is also equally important. If that healthy friend lives about one and a half kilometres from you, the chance of you also living a healthier life increases by about 30%.”
Undo, redo, outdo
The theme of People Matters L&D Conference 2024 is about surpassing yourself: undoing and unlearning what doesn’t work any more and breaking free of past baggage.
From ‘undoing’ comes the opportunity to ‘redo’: taking the cleared canvas and using it to create transformation and change.
And from ‘redoing’ comes the opportunity to ‘outdo’, not just the competition but ourselves: challenging the status quo, making an impact, becoming the answer.
Finally, and most importantly, we must remember who we are undoing, redoing, and outdoing for, said the People Matters CEO. And that is people – humans.
“Today, the boundaries of our view on business, B2B and B2C, no longer exist. It’s humans whom we are doing business with. We are in the H business, and the human part is what we all are custodians of. So I urge all of you, please fight for that humanness in everything that you build in your organisations. We are in the era of creating a cohesive ecosystem for building humans and impacting human lives. The more we drive and build on human scope in our businesses, the more we can go back to purpose, driving creativity, creating engagement.”