The year 2020 was unique. Although mostly for all the wrong (pandemic)

reasons, we cannot deny that it was a year like no other and the one we hope never to repeat.

But even in a year with so much bad news and heartaches, we have learned new things- the importance of virtual platforms & the continuous learning process. There is no doubt that the Covid-19 has disrupted our traditional way of working and operating businesses.

Telecommuting became a trend. However, with this trend surging, we experienced a surge in the level of anxiety, stress, lack of communication, and so on. It is unarguable that both the employees and the employers need to overcome these barriers to work in harmony with one another. As a result, technological advancements came to the rescue. New options of virtual learning apps have increasingly pushed business organizations to change the way they offered learning and development opportunities to their employees.

The majority of the companies have shifted from "pushed" training to more employee-driven "pulled" learning. This shift has resulted in many advantages like- new skill development, skill up-gradation, better career prospects, and so on, from the employee’s perspective. For the employer, however, such shift has resulted in creating a balanced eco-system of learning, fine-tuning the employees, reducing employee turnover rates, etc. So, it is not wrong to state that the new-age learning program has resulted in a ''win-win" situation for both the companies and the employees.

The 'Learn and Earn" model

This model of learning and development paves the way to learn and earn at the same time. The learner here gets the opportunity to experience the real-life work scenario, which helps them to utilize their knowledge practically.

If seen from the employee's perspective, through this model they can learn and upgrade their skills to get better recognition and appraisal at their workplace, and earn better. This recognition and appraisal can act as intrinsic motivation to continue with the company and perform better, even while working from home. For the employers, as we have already mentioned, the learn and earn model enables to attract the skilled human resource, who are trained for the job purpose. Also, the culture of continuous learning can promote better communication, employee-employer engagement, and boost employee retention rate.

According to a recent survey, learning and earning programs can boost employee performance by almost 80%. Now, this is something refreshing!

A Win-Win Situation

"Let your employee get ahead"- with this motto WorkEd offers the scope to learn and earn to the youths of India. This is just an emerging example of the platforms promoting the "learn and earn" model.

Now the question may arise how a "learn and earn" model creates a "win-win" situation for firms and employees?

To answer this in simpler terms, we can say “a learned employee contributes not only towards his level of knowledge but also towards the company by performing better". So, learning proves to be a win for the employee as well as for the firm.

But if we break the above-stated sentence into smaller parts, it would read something like "Investing in employee learning can boost their morale, which in turn can intrinsically push them to remain fully engaged in their work, earn better and stay engaged with the organization. And a longer retention rate of skilled employees can promote the overall performance of the firm."

The final thought

With everything being said, promoting the scopes to adopt the "learn and earn" model can be fantastic for employees themselves and a huge boon to the firm. Employees can choose the skills that make them feel more valued. On the flip side, the firms can promote their overall productivity by fuelling its most important resource- the skilled and innovative human resource.