Learning and Development for Startup Growth

Discover the root causes hindering startup growth, from skill gaps to leadership challenges. Learn effective strategies, including microlearning and resource optimization, to overcome these hurdles. Unlock your startup’s potential and hear those ‘Kachings’ more often. Plus, get a glimpse of India’s evolving job market in 2030 with a focus on upskilling and reskilling.”

How Learning and Development Can Help Startup Growth

Ever driven a car with no accelerator? Just thinking about that feels like stuck, isn’t it? When a startup is working fine, but the growth is stagnated.

Amongst other challenges, even funded startups face a crunch when it comes to good and continuously evolving talent. In that case, it becomes important to look for the root cause of the problem.

Let’s try to find some of these causes and discuss strategies to overcome them as well:

1. Skill Gaps & Learning Resistance

Darwin Said: “”It’s not the Strongest or the Smartest that Survives, but the most Adaptable””. Businesses start with the idea of making X and end up making a successful X’ after the series-B funding because of the iterations during the journey. This ability to adapt quickly is crucial. But slightly more experienced employees need motivation and personalised learning relating to their prior area of expertise to obtain the learning outcome.

On the other hand, young employees in startups are often unaware of the challenges that come with a larger scale. In that case, identifying those gaps and filling them with the required expertise becomes essential for growth.

2. Lack of Microlearning

Information is everywhere these days and it gets irrelevant in no time as well. ‘The capacity of the human mind’ and ‘Time’ are the only two constraints, hence investing time in the information selectively becomes a necessity. That’s where Microlearning can be a blessing for startups. To describe microlearning, it’s an educational strategy that breaks complex topics down into short-form, stand-alone units of study that can be viewed as many times as necessary, whenever and wherever the learner has the need. Microlearning helps ‘continuous learning’ make a part of the company culture.

3. Resource Constraints

Many times, we can’t afford more people in our companies just because of limited finances. To tackle this situation, Prioritization, Resource Allocation, Automation and Optimization are the essentials. Through this, we can get the maximum ‘outputs’ as well as ‘outcomes’ within that same budget.

4. Ineffective Leadership

“Great leaders don’t tell, they show”. This is one of the many qualities a good leader must possess. When people in leadership roles are not able to cultivate collaborations and foster a sense of purpose and direction, this results in employees feeling less motivated in turn loss of productivity. When people transition into managerial positions, people skills become more important for them than technical skills. Proper training before the transitions can solve many potential problems.

5. Leaving Employees

High Employee Turnover feels like an open wound, which is not getting healed and draining a lot of resources. There can be a lot of reasons why people leave a startup. Firstly, most people join startups because they want to learn. But once they feel that their growth in stagnated in these hyper-competitive changing times, they feel insecure and think of leaving the company. Other reasons can be Compensation, recognition and Culture. These things can be sorted out by conducting exit interviews and gaining insights about why people are leaving and implementing effective changes in the organization based on those insights.

Solution to Overcome the Challenges

You can address these challenges through efforts in the learning and development of employees. ‘Doing a proper diagnosis of the company’ and ‘Coming up with a customized outcome-oriented approach’ will help the company optimize for growth, which will help revitalize your startup’s trajectory and you can hear those ‘Kachings’ more often.

Lastly, we wish you find a perfect mechanic who can fix the accelerator in your car.”

A Glimpse of 2030

In the coming decade, there’s a growing recognition among employers that upskilling and reskilling their workforce will be crucial. They expect significant changes, both in retraining employees for their current positions and providing training for entirely new roles.

In India, nearly half of employers (49%) acknowledge the need to retrain their employees, ensuring they acquire the new skills required for their current jobs. However, an even higher percentage (52%) believes that substantial investments in training will be necessary to prepare employees for entirely new roles that may emerge.

Interestingly, while 43% of Indian companies plan to increase the number of existing roles in their workforce, around 30% of companies intend to phase out or eliminate entire departments. This shift indicates a changing landscape in the job market, with some roles becoming redundant and others gaining prominence.

To meet these challenges, employers are open to seeking external support from various services. These include assistance in identifying the right employees for training, developing relevant training content, and tracking the success of the upskilling and reskilling programs. A notable 63% of Indian employers actively engage in identifying suitable employees for training, and 57% diligently track the effectiveness of their training initiatives.

Moreover, many Indian companies (55%) are taking steps to make the enrollment process for these training programs more accessible by offering easy enrollment options through internal or external platforms. This approach aims to encourage more employees to participate and benefit from skill development opportunities.

Overall, the emphasis on upskilling and reskilling reflects the evolving nature of the job market, and employers are actively working to equip their workforce with the right skills to thrive in the years to come.