Self-education back in vogue

The market downturn due to the global financial crisis had impacted the job market as badly as the equity markets. With massive layoffs being announced in the financial and real estate industries, people are now faced with challenge of continued employment.

Given this context, the subject of continuous self-education is back in vogue. Most companies do offer standard training programmes or grants to allow their employees to undertake professional qualifications to enhance their marketability. However, employees seldom take training seriously and most look at it as a welcome break from work.

The continued frustration of HR and training managers has revolved around how to encourage employee participation in training and channelling the benefits of the training in day to day work. Absenteeism and poor assessment results end up delaying training schedules.

Benefits

Here comes the need then for self-initiated continuous education. It simply implies that the learning is initiated by employees on an individual basis and is largely driven by their urge to learn new skills. This can be facilitated through the organisation in the form of incentives and reimbursements, but is largely self-governed.

Typical self-education qualifications, like project management professional, chartered financial analyst, certified public accountant among others, aim at providing participants with tools and techniques that allow them to do their jobs better. This improves their efficiency and competencies.

There is a distinction between self-education and executive education. While the former is a self-driven initiative by individuals at their own desks and timeframes, the latter typically requires participants to visit classrooms and get trained by external education providers.

Unlike executive education, self-education courses do not necessarily require the participants to leave their workplace to attend courses at educational institutes. They can be pursued remotely and at one's own pace and timeline.

Choosing courses

Since self-education is driven by the participants themselves, it is important that they choose an area of knowledge in which they have a personal interest. The course of study also needs to contribute to their careers within their organisations. The course also needs to be adjustable with the time schedules of participants.

To guide the employees, organisations may publish a list of courses which are recommended for each level of staff. Sharing experiences by employees who have already completed the course is another good communication medium for sharing information on courses.

Self-education requires discipline and tracking one's progress on a regular basis. The participants need to set interim deadlines and ensure they achieve the same. A good way of ensuring progress is by working with a 'study buddy' who can be another participant doing a similar course. The study buddy can then help participant keep a tab on performance against plan which motivates the participant to complete their course.

- Sanjiv Anand is the Managing Director and Abhishek V.S. is an Engagement Manager at Cedar Management Consulting International.