Dual-Purpose Work and Life Training

Dual-purpose learning is education that applies both to learners’ on-the-job lives and to their off-the-job lives. It has proven to be the quickest way to accomplish the organization’s most critical work objectives and the individual’s work-life balance objectives simultaneously.

We can view dual-purpose learning both as employee development and as a benefit. It is an issue for everyone in the organization, from executives to new hires. It is used in recruiting and for driving productivity. Because of this multifaceted HR and productivity training impact,senior executives at every level have initiated enterprise-wide work-life programs.Implementation of work-life balance training has been steered by vice presidents of HR and HR generalists, chief learning officers and trainers, work-life professionals, and benefits specialists.Human resource managers who implement successful work-life training programs throughout their management ranks accomplish two major bottom-line goals. First, they increase the retention, commitment, and productivity of the firm’s most valuable people asset, its managers and supervisors. Second, the managers and supervisors reflect a new tool set and language that produce a much more positive view of the organization at all levels. This more positive view has a cascading impact on the attitude, morale, productivity, and customer-service levels of all employees.

For the individual and organization to get the full benefit of developing these dual-purpose work and life skills, you need to make the learning of such skills a part of your organization’s stated strategy.Once you make the strategy commitment, implementation can be relatively easy. The HR professional can take the role of change-agent champion who secures commitment to the strategy.