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What is the Best Way to Encourage/Empower Employees Through Reading?

What is the best way to encourage/empower employees through reading?

Career Management Series

By Laura Lee Rose

Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of TimePeace: Making peace with time – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable and have time to enjoy life even if they don’t have time to learn new technology or train their staff. I have a knack for taking big ideas and converting them into smart, sound, and actionable ideas.

At the end of the day, I transform the way you run your business into a business you love to run.

This question came from a busy professional:

What is the best way to encourage/empower employees through reading?

I believe that the company I work for may benefit from employees reading books/articles on subjects like time management, health, industry studies, etc. Should our company invest in actual books similar to a library? Kindle memberships, Barnes and Noble gift cards possibly? Is anyone currently part of a similar program?

I agree that everyone benefits in continuous learning.

On the other hand – Companies are in the business of making money. It’s not really the company’s responsibility to invest in employee education – for education sake. There really should be a company-reason to spend company funds.

Most companies allow employees to listen to audio books and study training materials on their own. Depending upon their role or type of work environment, employees can listen to both technical and self-improvement audios during parts of their day; read during lunch and breaks, etc. The responsibility doesn’t have to be on the company to provide these resources.

But if you wanted the company to provide it –

One recommendation is to tie your education to specific problems or pain points for the company.

For instance:

· If the company/management wants to improve meeting management – they can require everyone read/listen/watch a recommended "meeting management" training video/audio/article on that topic. Then, as a team, put those techniques immediately into practice.

· If your company needs to be HIPAA Compliant or some other industry standard, recommend everyone to read/study a specific industry recommendation. Then, as a team, put those techniques immediately into practice.

· If there are processes that need to be streamlined to save money, or become more effective, etc — then recommend specific video/training on time management, project management, critical path analysis, risk management, etc Then, as a team, put those techniques immediately into practice.

For the training to be effective for the company, your group needs to have an explicit need and immediately put the learnings into practice for the benefit of the group.
For the company to take responsibility for it — have a company-related reason/goal for the employee education, then followed up with practical and immediate use of the material. If you do the follow-through, it will be more successful.

Taking ownership

On the other hand – if you wanted to spearhead this movement yourself (without company funds):

· initiate Brown-Bag-Lunch series on your own

· give presentations or invite guest presenters to provide information on the topics you are interested in sharing with your departments and co-workers

· encourage others to share their knowledge on interesting topics regarding time management, health, industry studies, etc.

· start a Brown-Bag-Lunch Book Club

· start a ‘book-nook’ — where you encourage your co-workers to lend-a-book and borrow-a-book.

I’ve done all of these things in the corporate environment. I even created an on-line list of all my books and people would request to borrow and return.

The bottom line is:

When you feel strongly about something, it doesn’t have to be "someone else’s" responsibility.

I know your unique situation is different. If interested, please setup a complimentary one-on-one discovery call, so that I can learn more about your circumstances and supply a more customized recommendation.

For additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info

I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ