Skills & Learning

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.

Companies committed to building workforce skills model learning and development best practices that others can follow.

Remote approaches to early-career talent development, tips for less-draining virtual meetings, and overlooked partners to help bridge employee skills gaps.

Research points to five ways organizations can better support early-career employees in a fully remote work environment.

Community partners can help companies create enduring skill strategies and training systems.

Post-pandemic work arrangements, linking inclusion and organizational learning, and smarter pricing.