Competence development by using digital learning methods

Interested in knowledge sharing and competence development with modern tools and inspired by cross-team cooperation while both experimenting with, and implementing new ideas? Sharing (knowledge) is caring! Learn about the steps we took and start creating a plan of your own.

From dreams to action

In 2018 we carried out a project at Sympa called Dreamcloud. The purpose of the project was to build strategical competence development by asking our employees to share their professional dreams. What we learned was that in addition to having a wide skillset and continuous development of our own professionalism, the culture and working environment are equally important. Knowledge sharing and communication were the most often mentioned elements in our dream organisation.

In the Dreamcloud project we also asked our employees what they wanted to learn as a group in the future and which competences they would deem necessary. The competences our employees appreciated the most were creativity and continuous learning.

And in our case, our people naturally want to know more about HR! Our customers are HR professionals in various organisations spread out over different countries. We want to provide our customers the best possible customer experience. In order to do that, we need to understand HR people’s everyday life and provide them with the solutions that will help and support them in their tasks. This is what we want to be really good at: supporting our customers by adding value to their organisations.

Adding business value by learning more about HR

People are the most important and profitable part of any organisation. With a suitable set of HR tools, good people skills, business understanding and common objectives, HR supports business and creates sustainable profit.

To make this more visible in our company and to add more value in our business, we created a digital learning environment called the HR Academy. With this learning tool, we want to provide brief and sharp HR knowledge to all of our employees. This will help us understand the customer’s everyday life better and help our dear customers to bring added value to their own organisations.

Take a sneak peak in our HR Academy and learn how we have summarised HR in 3 minutes.

Our 3 Steps to knowledge sharing and competence development

1. Shine by letting others shine!

The HR Academy was built in close cooperation with my creative and talented Business Development colleagues Jaakko Mattila and Björn Lorentzon. Shared knowledge, shared wisdom. Knowledge and competence sharing between colleagues adds value to the whole organisation.

It is worth taking full advantage of the wisdom and diversity around us, and benefit from different skill sets, backgrounds and experiences. Combining these things will take us all to the next level when it comes to sharing our knowledge.

2. Make it brief and simple

How would you define things such as HR, people analytics or employment in 3 minutes? Crystallising the key message is not the easiest thing to do. It is important to not only be brief, but also bring new information that pays attention and creates interest, and to provide information that will also be valid a couple of years from now.

We all know that nowadays information has to be brief, high quality, fast, understandable, interesting, clear and customised in order to pass our constant information overload. Therefore, we chose (high quality) videos as our learning method. The videos used in our HR Academy are easy to access at any place and time and are quick to watch, easy to follow and easy to grasp.

3. Be brave and step up the game with new ideas

Trying and doing something new is always exciting. Creating something that does not yet exist, collecting information from different places, and taking the process further step by step. Not knowing the end result or feedback beforehand requires – in addition to consistent work – also courage. In the end, the target group defines the future and practicality of the process. But the process itself brings value in any case: what have we learned and what wisdom and understanding have we gained?

Our journey with knowledge sharing and competence development continues. So far, the feedback from our fellow Sympaticans has been very positive. Hopefully this just the beginning of our new approach to (care and) share knowledge!