How to Get On-the-Job Training Without Overloading Yourself
You need balance in your life. Time for your job, family, and life can mean you don’t feel like you have time to learn. But learning is part of life - so make it a priority. But the question remains: How to improve your skills and chance for better raises and promotions on the job, but also manage your existing workload?
Learning on the job is beneficial. In fact, it is the cornerstone of professional growth. Balancing ongoing tasks while expanding your knowledge can be challenging, but with the right strategies, you can grow your skills while maintaining your current responsibilities.
70% of employee learning takes place during daily work activities.
The Benefits of On-the-Job Learning
Continuous Learning keeps your skills and mind fresh. It is also more fun than doing the same, repetitive work day after day. Because as you improve, your work should get smarter and more interesting. This makes you more valuable to the organization and job market. How does it do this?
Adaptability: The business environment is always changing. Learning helps you stay relevant and adapt to new challenges.
Career Advancement: Developing new skills can open new opportunities and promotions, fueling your ambition and driving your career forward.
47% say their extra training helped them advance within their current company.
Job Satisfaction: Learning can make your work more interesting and fulfilling.
Improved Performance: Enhancing your skills directly impacts the quality of your work. Performance helps you stand out in a competitive job market.
Business Savvy: Improving your business knowledge and acumen enables you to move up the ladder to more senior roles. Building deeper capabilities will keep you ready for your next opportunities where you are now or at your next job.
And a note to businesses and managers: Helping your employees learn on the job benefits businesses. It is cheaper to retain and train than to replace and rehire.
94% of employees would stay longer at a company that invests in their career development.
- LinkedIn Learning Study
What to Learn
Learning on the job is not one-size-fits-all. You need to tailor your learning based on the work you do, the industry you are in, and your experience level. So view these ideas and the related action plans as customizable to your situation.
Master the Basics of Your Role
First and foremost, ensure that you have a solid understanding of your current role. Mastering the basics of your job allows you to perform more efficiently and gives you a profound sense of achievement, freeing up time for further learning. Building your skills can help you in the job you have now and the job you want next. Mastery of your current job helps you with inline promotions and can help protect your position during cutbacks.
Example: Deepen your skills for the job you have. Everyone should learn skills such as organization, problem-solving, and people skills. If you're a project manager, ensure you're proficient in project planning, risk management, and communication.
Make an Action Plan to:
Identify Core Skills: List the key competencies required for your role. Check your job description or ask your manager for more clarification.
Ask questions: If you don't know the answer, ask. Avoid assumptions that can cause errors in work or judgment.
Check Your Skills: Use my Skill Assessment Matrix to test your current skills against your goal skills (see button below). Ask your supervisor or mentor to review the matrix with you and make a plan to close key gaps.
Embrace Your Current Situation
Recognize that your current role is not just a job but an excellent platform for learning. Every task and project is an opportunity to develop new skills. Instead of seeing your job as a barrier to learning, view it as a valuable resource and a stepping stone for your career growth. If you are more advanced, focus on challenging skills like solution design, critical thinking, and leadership skills.
Example: See every day as a chance to learn and improve. Get feedback. Create a task process checklist. Confirm it with your supervisor. Doing so will confirm the process and show you are trying to learn on the job.
Make an Action Plan to:
Understand Your Work as a Process: Create a checklist of work processes (if you already have one, review it and improve it if needed).
Seek Resources: Ask your supervisor about available online courses, books, or company training.
Build Your Leadership Skills: Leadership starts with managing yourself and learning to be a natural leader. This video will help you discover your leadership style and improve it.
Learn About the Company's Business and Products
Understanding the broader context of your work is not just insightful; it's a fundamental part of a senior role. If you are not already in a more senior role, learning about the business can show you want to improve and develop your knowledge. Focus on learning about your company's business model, products, and services. Build a deeper understanding of how your role contributes to the company's goals and what the industry and competition are doing.
Example: Ask if you can attend meetings beyond your immediate work scope. You may be able to learn from product development or marketing sessions. If not, ask a mentor to help you find resources to support business learning. Focus on how different departments contribute to the company's goals.
Make an Action Plan to:
Find a Mentor: Mentors at the company can help you learn the internals of the business. Finding someone in a related department can broaden your network and understanding.
Ask Questions: Learn the right time and place to ask questions to help you understand more about your company's work. Go to employee informational meetings.
Read Financial Summaries: Annual reports and similar data help you understand your business's economics and the strategy behind decisions. Learn more in this video.
Explore Roles Around Your Job
Gaining insights into roles adjacent to yours can enhance your understanding and improve collaboration. Learn what other team members do and how their work intersects with yours. Create flow charts or user journeys to understand how connected roles accomplish the goals for products or services at your company. Flowcharts and checklists are great ways to get your workload under control. These tools also help ensure you are doing value-added steps. Being organized can give you the time you need so you can learn more on the job.
A note about talking to others about their jobs:
Explain the reason you want to learn (such as you are interested in improving yourself).
Be positive and supportive in your communication style.
Be curious and a good listener. Most people like to talk about their work.
Share what you learn with others freely. This helps you build your natural leadership at work.
Show appreciation when people offer information or insights.
Don't judge others, their jobs, or their processes. Don't be a know-it-all.
Do use information to consider how you can do better in your job and in working with others.
Example: If you manage a customer service team, spend time with the product developers, QA testers, or order desk staff to better understand their workflows. Ask how to improve your tasks that integrate or 'flow' into theirs.
Make an Action Plan to:
Connect to Others: Use social learning by following thought leaders in your industry or expertise area on LinkedIn.
Request Informational Interviews: Have lunchtime chats with other teams or colleagues to discuss their jobs and make the connection to how it relates to the work as a whole.
Engage in Cross-Training: Find out if cross-training opportunities are possible at your company. Flowcharting can allow you to share what you have learned. See examples of how to create flowcharts in my upcoming articles and videos.
Become Certified
Additional education and certifications can increase your ability to move up your pay grade and open completely new doors. Many companies have certification programs internally that include certifications. These can be added to LinkedIn and your Resume (CV) to ensure your learning is qualified. This can be helpful when looking for a raise or a new job.
Example: Project Managers may want to seek a PMI, Professional Project Manager certification. Developers may want Scrum or Google design certifications.
Make an Action Plan to:
Sign up for Internal Training: Check with your manager and sign up for training at least annually. Ask about online learning, such as Coursera or Udemy.
Make a Learning Journal: Track your success over time. This can keep you motivated and ensure your LinkedIn account and CV reflect the new skills you have developed.
Assess Certifications: Find out which certification is right for your job. Ask your manager if the company supports external certification programs. Learn more about Certification programs and organizations here.
How to Learn
Everyone learns differently. You may already know how you prefer to take in new information. Some people read, others like to learn by doing, and others learn by watching tutorial videos. You may like all of these ways depending on the topic. But understanding how to learn is helpful when learning. You can guide the person teaching you by helping them know the way you like to take in knowledge. Or you can make notes during training in a way that works for you.
My Top Learning Tips:
Read the Instructions - If you read to understand, then try reading the manual or documentation before training starts. That way, you already have the foundational information and can ask good follow-up questions.
Make Handwritten Notes - This has been proven to enhance memory and learning. You can also summarize and customize content based on the key facts you need to focus on.
Make a Chart or Drawing - This can help you understand relationships in processes and information.
Record Yourself - Talking through what you have learned or making a video of yourself doing it can be helpful. Self-made 1-minute videos can be organized on your phone albums to quickly access key information.
Get more insights into how to learn as an individual or team in this article.
When to Make Time for Learning
Making time to learn can be overwhelming, especially if you are already swamped with work on the day-to-day. But consider that training can help you become faster, more effective, or more efficient with your current duties. Starting some of the above actions, such as a process flow or checklist, can improve what you do and how you do it. Look for new things to start and old tasks to stop or improve.
Sometimes, work has been institutionalized and no longer serves its initial purpose. In these cases, updating the process checklist and agreeing with your supervisor to eliminate non-value work steps can free up time. This will allow you to focus on continuous learning and self-improvement. This creates a virtuous cycle at work. You can increase productivity for you and your department.
Here's my suggestion: If you are new to a job, do it as you are trained. As you become more familiar with the work, question the tasks that don't have clear benefits. Not sure if this could apply to your job? Let me share a personal experience.
As the Director of Accounting for a Silicon Valley company in the 1990s, I managed departments that had good people but the need to improve processes. Let me give you two examples.
Kill the busy work. When I took over the accounts payable department, I saw team members sitting on the floor with staplers and staple pullers. When I asked why, I was told they were reorganizing last month's payment packet documentation: pulling all staples and putting one back in. Then, the staff had to refile all the documents. While it made things neater, it did not focus on our core work. Our job was to pay suppliers on time. The staple swap was 'busy work.' A non-value-added task that increased document storage slightly but reduced overtime costs dramatically. It also improved the team's morale. Nobody likes to do unproductive, repetitive, low-level tasks (or sit on the office floor for hours).
Automate everything. When I took over the Cost Accounting department, I found the team spent hundreds of hours a month doing manual reconciliation on paper. We did have computers, so I hired a very tech-savvy person. She wanted to automate every possible manual task. I agreed. Once we understood the process as a group, she worked to automate it. Working as a team and with our IT department took time and effort. Even when my boss questioned the cost of this action, I just showed the ROI of our business case. Plus the bonus was the happier staff. Squinting tiny rows of numbers on large green sheets of paper is bad for the eyes and mind. And future employees did not have to learn the more complex, less effective ways of working.
In almost every job, improvements can be made. Check out this article on how to get your learning or automation business case approved
Learning on the job is not only possible but also incredibly beneficial. Master your current role, understand the broader business, and explore adjacent roles. Doing so can significantly enhance your skills and career. Continuous learning can improve your current salary and lifelong earning goals. Not sure what that is? Then read this article to learn more - see, you are already learning!
Remember, every challenge and task is an opportunity to grow. Embrace it and keep learning. Please let me know if you have questions or if there is something you think I should learn from.