Caroline Evans, business development adviser, Bespoke Training Solutions (BTS) says there are emotional costs of hidden identities in learning.
How do we begin to even appreciate what someone else is going through? The first stage in understanding diversity is awareness. A ‘neuro-typical’ person is someone who thinks, perceives, and behaves in ways that fall within the dominant societal standards of ‘normal’. But who is to say what ‘normal’ even is, especially when it comes to learning.
Don’t expect your employees to embrace your L&D opportunities just because they are ‘available’ – your efforts have to be genuine, and you need to be looking at your employee’s best interests when it comes to engaging L&D programmes. If your employees aren’t engaging with L&D opportunities, then maybe now is the time to ask why?
Is it apathy? Does it have something to do with difficulties engaging? Lack of time? Accessibility? Fear of failure?
Get to know your employees. Identify their challenges and then offer realistic solutions.
We are all aware of how demanding the endless hours of studying and CPD can be and when you work in financial services you are signing yourself up to this for the foreseeable! A blended learning approach to training and development can help you to support your staff and embrace the qualities that make them ‘different’.
People think and process data differently, you need to reflect these differences in the way you deliver your L&D.
All too often, we speak to candidates who feel the need to ‘hide’ who they are in order to ‘fit’. They end up having two identities – the visible one and the hidden one. Having a hidden identity forces us to be on guard at all times, attentive to what we say or don’t say, and overcompensating to adapt as much as possible to others, which in the end causes us to experience a sense of lack of authenticity or ‘imposter syndrome’.
A positive learning experience is one that allows individuals to explore their learner identity. This is why a ‘blended’ learning approach works well. It helps learners to find the modality that works best for them, it allows them to work in a different and flexible way and it takes away the pressure that they don’t have to aspire to ‘follow the same path’ as everyone else.
A ‘good’ training programme needs to accept that we are all different, that we don’t learn the same way, we certainly don’t think in the same way and, above all, that we do not aspire to the same things.
Aim to create and deliver inclusive learning programmes that suit everyone’s strengths and minimise obstacles.
A learning programme needs to actively promote a sense of satisfaction and pride. Knowing that you can and did do well is as important as to whether you passed or ‘deferred success’.
Why is this important? Because it helps to build better resilience and further successes in the future. The great feeling you experienced when you studied hard and learnt something new about your job, your strengths, a new way of doing something — that’s the feeling that will ultimately build your self-esteem and encourage you to repeat the process and continue to grow and develop.
Perhaps you don’t even know that you have neurodiverse employees in your workplace. After all, most of us do our best to blend into the work environment. But by implementing a flexible learning programme, they can engage with how, when and where they feel most comfortable learning.
If you are in charge of L&D you might ask yourself “how am I supposed to account for everyone”?
The answer, as in most cases, is that you can’t always make everyone happy. However, by diversifying your learning materials and resources it can and will help, by allowing your candidates to re-visit training materials as much as they want and for them to take the time to understand information without the pressure of keeping up with the rest of their colleagues.
A blended learning approach engages learners through a plethora of different material types. Such as digital activities, workshops, video, quizzes and visually enhanced presentations to capture the learners’ attention.
Using a variety of training content types also makes sure that all material is easily understood – something that is not always the case in the fast-paced and sometimes overly technical environment of financial services.
BTS digital academies are learner centric. We engage candidates with activities, quizzes, and different types of training content, providing regular opportunities for learners to stop, reflect and assess, before moving on.
Inclusion only has results if you provide everyone with equal opportunities.
Understand that each learner is different and not everyone will hire a brass band and throw confetti in the wind when they reach their goals. Some candidates get so focused on achieving the goal that they forget to acknowledge it when they do accomplish it!
A digital e-learning academy takes an individualised, strengths centred approach. Identifying what each person is good at, and acknowledging what works for them. It’s about identifying their strengths and how they learn best. Neurodiverse learners may benefit from additional support such as help with planning and creating frameworks, or how to approach the work in bite sized chunks. But it will also give them that ‘level playing field’ when it comes to learning.
With any training and development programme comes an expectation to measure its impact. After all, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. We have a staged approach which is easy to monitor, giving you a deep and wide understanding of employee learning during training. When the results of training are so great that they exceed the cost, then you’ve achieved a positive training ROI.
Conclusion – It’s about embracing difference and empowering people to come up with the answers that belong to them so they can achieve the success they deserve
We need organisations to replicate models of diversity and inclusivity when it comes to learning and development in the workplace, that are not all about the burden of conformity. We are defo not created to conform. The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the inherent strengths that neurodivergent brains possess and to look at how students can nurture and harness these to achieve their goals.
If you feel you would like some extra support with your L&D programme, then we there is a whole host of careers, employability, study resources and mental health advice in our Careers Zone.
No more hiding, our support is designed to help You be You.
