Skills & Learning

Katia Walsh discusses how Levi Strauss is upskilling and motivating employees to help drive its digital transformation.

Work that permits autonomy and demands problem-solving can bolster employees’ cognitive skills and ongoing learning.

Northeastern University’s Curtis Odom shares ways to develop coaching, mentoring, and sponsorship in today’s workplace.

Businesses can boost retention when they help employees align their work to their sense of purpose.

Cognitive budgeting can help employees at all levels be more intentional about where they direct their mental energy.

Day Two of MIT SMR’s Work/22 symposium included discussions of workplace culture, good jobs, and employee development.

World-changing innovations are grounded in a culture of optimism and team learning.

Contractors hired to tackle core management tasks often succeed because of their outsider status.

Leaders need to recognize workplace hierarchies to create an effective learning environment for employees.

Companies must retrain their employees to fill the roles most closely aligned with their revised strategic directions.

The Special Report in MIT SMR‘s Summer 2021 issue looks at how businesses can support a more inclusive workplace culture. Also in this issue: ways to communicate — and disagree — using candor and logic, business’s role in national emergencies, how volunteering helps workers’ skills, and changing the rules to suit turbulent times.

Good arguments at the core of great strategy, the risks of concurrent change initiatives, and the courage to be candid.

Help your team become more capable and productive by encouraging key behaviors and mitigating risks.

Identifying the right change strategy, boosting stagnated skills, and managing demand fluctuations.

As hiring begins to accelerate, companies may need to retrain workers whose skills stagnated while they were unemployed.

“Absorbing by observation” while working remotely, prospering in turbulent times with dynamic rules, and centering ESG in quarterly earnings calls.

New hires are at risk of losing the subtly communicated knowledge shared through in-person work.

Assessing effective frameworks, managing the risks of digital personas, and benefiting at work from volunteerism.

Employers should be transparent about volunteer programs aimed at helping employees develop skills while helping others.

Hiring with AI, creating learning organizations, and cultivating a high-purpose culture to support leadership at all levels.