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Soldiering on!
13 / 07 / 09
WHOLE LIFE LEARNING
The British Army has been on our minds a lot recently in the UK as we suffer more losses in Afghanistan. But we should be truly proud of our forces for more reasons than their courage.
When it comes to personal development, they’ve just come up with a cracking idea; an idea so good I’m going to steal it. They call it Whole Life Learning and the premise is that personal development can be broken into three categories: Category 1 contains deficits or needs which affect what the soldier must be able to do in his or her current job. Category 2 are those needs that will affect eligibility for future jobs and Category 3 concerns development activities that are driven by personal motivation - they lie beyond the boundaries of immediate and future jobs.
Now as a development specialist, I’m always on the lookout for good ideas and this one reminded me of something I was designing and promoting with my clients several years ago, that I called Holistic Development. But the problem then was that I could never get taken seriously by senior human resource professionals, mostly they argued because they couldn’t see the impact on the bottom line. But lets be honest, the word holistic did sound a bit new age too and probably put some of them off.
However, not only has the British Army embraced Whole Life Learning, but it has discovered that category 3 is the one soldiers value the most. Furthermore, (and this is the really interesting finding), although it is designed to give them skills they can use once they leave the army, the more category 3 development they’re given, the longer they stay! So the whole life development principle not only builds loyalty, it improves retention and develops outstanding men and women who don’t want to leave. Given a continuing talent shortage, that sounds like bottom line impact if you ask me.
