If anyone knows about Training and Development in an international company, that is Neeraja Dorairaj. She is a Learning Specialist at Thomson Reuters and has over 10 years of experience in the field. We asked her about the main trends shaping L&D, the most disruptive changes after the pandemic, and her favorite projects this year at Thomson Reuters in a fascinating interview for Talaera Talks. Read the interview notes and the episode transcript below.
Neeraja, Learning Specialist at Thomson Reuters
Neeraja is a Learning Specialist at Thomson Reuters with over 10 years of experience in bringing content to life for global adult learners. As an education enthusiast, she is passionate about creating innovative and effective learning and knowledge management solutions for business problems in a constantly changing workplace. She has implemented several learning and knowledge management processes at Thomson Reuters reaching thousands of people throughout the organization. She's an advocate for the power of the learning mindset and continuous learning, and she has received foundations on instructional design, e-learning, and improving human performance from ATD, the Association for Talent Development. We had lots of questions about her job and the trends in L&D. So we asked, she answered...
1. What got you into the field of Learning and Development?
So I think it was in my college days. During that time, I realized that I wanted to be in the L&D industry, mostly because of the challenges that I went through. I had a really tough time communicating with people. I had these great ideas and thoughts, but I didn't know how to communicate with others. I was shy, I was timid, no confidence to speak. So it took a lot of effort for me to build my communication skills. And that's when I knew, Okay, this is what I want to do! Build others, encourage others. My former leader, Jenny, recognized my passion and gave me an opportunity to pursue my career in L&D. And it was totally worth it.
2. Did communication help you move into L&D?
Yes, I think communication plays a huge part in terms of making a place for yourself, wherever you are. And when I say communication, it's not just the English language. Yes, it is important because we are in an organization where we use English as a common language to communicate. But it's also about your personality, your body language, your confidence. And all of this is a part of communication. And it's very important. You may have these wonderful ideas and thoughts, and people are there to encourage you, but if you're not confident to speak, that is kind of is wasted. So I love to encourage people, and it gives me satisfaction. When I see people grow, they step up, they do presentations, I think there's a lot of job satisfaction that I get when I see people do that after they've taken communication skills, modules or courses. So, yes, I think it's very important.
3. Have you observed any changes in L&D after the COVID-19 pandemic?
Well, I would say it's been a couple of innovative years that I've seen, because the way L&D has evolved in the last year is perhaps greater than that of the last 10 years. There's been a dramatic change in the way L&D is functioning now, especially after the pandemic.
4. What are the biggest trends in L&D?
Just to start with - training used to be like an exclusive event. Nowadays, corporate training, or corporate learning, is an everyday thing. Employees own their learning. They don't really have to wait for them to think, "Oh, I need to learn, so I have to wait for two weeks to get started with it". You have everything. You own your learning.
So having said that, some of the things that I've seen, and even Thomson Reuters has implemented, is social learning. We have a lot of book clubs, tech cohorts, and learning cohorts; small groups where people get together with a common goal. When you do something, you remember the most. So employees have the power to choose what they want to learn and how much they want to learn. And they also have a group of people who support and help them to implement what they've learned. I think it's one of the most effective strategies that we've seen working for us.
And we also have microlearning. People don't want to sit through long workshops just to realize that they are not going to use most of it. But anyone can afford five minutes to watch a video or listen to a podcast or read through an article. It's like learning on the go. It's easy, easy to search, quick to read, and you're learning something new.
And one of the major, I would say biggest trend, is the adoption of data. I think data is going to play a major role in decision-making. Even in the future, that's going to probably be one of the deciding factors on how we draw out learning solutions.
5. How much of your experience in writing and communication has been necessary to offer microlearning?
That's a very interesting question. And you would agree with me when I say this. I think writing paragraphs of information is so easy compared to writing concisely. It's very hard to come up with ways to make sure that you convey the same content in a one-minute video or a two-minute article read. But I think it's worth it because employees find it extremely useful. They have it handy when they want that. And that's the goal. So as long as you're making a point and making sure that there is learner engagement happening, and that is aligned with organizational goals, I think it's worth implementing these methodologies.
6. What platforms or channels are driving the most engagement these days?
E-learning is one of my favorites, as well as reading articles. The e-learning market is expected to grow by 240 billion by 2022, globally. And it completely makes sense because employees own their learning. You can learn at your own pace, and you can choose how much you want to learn today. And I think that is also something that we have been using at Thomson Reuters. And we use authoring tools to create e-learning modules. And as an L&D professional, my focus is, "How can I make those e-learning modules fun and interactive? Because that is what builds the learners' engagement.
I was talking to one of my cousins about the onboarding process he was going through at his new job (onboarding is something that I do at Thomson Reuters, as well). And he said, "Ah, it's boring, I'm just scrolling through the videos". This speaks to me a lot, I start to question whether new hires at Thomson Reuters feel like that. This pushes me to use concepts like gamification and interactive activities to ensure that at that the people are engaged and driven to take those onboarding courses and draw value out of them.
7. What is the role of L&D nowadays?
I've always been an advocate of the 'own your learning' concept, and managers should be there to guide you. You should evaluate, What are the things that I'm good at? And what are the things that I should be focusing on? L&D should be there to guide you and support you with different learning resources. The focus of learning has always been to upskill and to perform well, eventually. Choose what you need to learn and how much you want to learn about it. That's how learning is going to support your performance.
8. Hard Skills and Soft Skills –Are these terms still relevant?
Um, well, I think it's necessary that there is a differentiation between hard skills and soft skills. But having said that, I would prefer to call them essential skills as a whole. So imagine using a tool like Smartsheet is something that I need to learn to do my work. And I have to do that. But if I'm taking a whole lot of time and then my due dates are getting impacted, the whole team is disturbed by it. I need to learn how to manage my time. So that is an essential skill for me. You need to decide, What are the skills you need? I'll just park hard skills or soft skills aside for a while and discuss or evaluate what are the essential skills I need to get my work done.
9. How does an employee figure out what they need to learn?
I think a combination of both [list out the core competencies needed and get managers' support] has been really helpful for me in the past. Other important questions are: How can I align those core skills with organizational goals? How much of it are you going to use in your work? Where do they fall on my priority list? How much time do you have to dedicate? So how much can you afford to learn the skills? You should have a list of priorities in the order that you want to learn them, considering all of these. What I recommend, which has worked for me, is to list out what you want to learn, your focus areas, and then discuss it with your manager.
10. Is English a soft skill or a hard skill?
English is definitely a hard skill for me [jokes]. I think it's necessary. I am not a native-English speaker, and when I work in an environment like this, at Thomson Reuters, where English is a common language that we use to communicate across different locations, it's extremely important for me to learn how to speak that language. That's how you're going to talk to your colleagues and you have to be good at it. It builds trust, it saves time, and language should never be a hindrance in your work.
When we conducted these listening sessions with managers, one of the consistent feedback that we received too was, "I think my folks are having challenges in the way they communicate". And it can be verbal, nonverbal, written... So that was one reason that we came up with these learning solutions like speaking club (inspired by Toastmasters), to provide opportunities for employees to build their public speaking skills and leadership skills, and we also partnered with you (Talaera), because we loved the human-centered approach that you have. And it is working really well for us! Because I have challenges in terms of writing, but my colleague may not have the same challenge, so she needs a different approach. I now feel a lot more confident in terms of writing communications, especially when writing concisely. That's how we ensure that our employees are not having any challenges in the way they communicate using English, especially Business English.
11. You mentioned social learning at the beginning. What is it?
Social learning is where a group of people with a common goal come together, discuss, and learn from each other. You learn a lot from people by observing. Kids look at us and they kind of mimic what we are doing because that's the quickest way to learn. It's one of the most effective strategies. So we have book clubs, learning cohorts, and tech cohorts where people can enroll themselves, and then they can sign up and we have this for three to four months and we can be flexible about the time as long as they know what they want to learn about. And then they meet often maybe weekly or bi-weekly where they have the topics drawn out and they discuss.
With social learning, you curate resources, you have guest speakers, and you can be very flexible about the approach on how you want to learn. People often say, "Hey, this is something that I'm good at, can we discuss it?" And then you learn from each other. They get to collaborate, they get to meet people from different business functions, and you get, you get to build your network. It also drives engagement, as people feel part of something. We've seen people from a learning cohort who want to start a cohort by themselves. And eventually, they are owning it, they're being accountable, they want to share the knowledge that they have with others, and it's really good to see that happening.
12. Can you tell us a bit about some of your favorite projects this year at Thomson Reuters?
Digital Literacy and I Am Remarkable are the two projects I've enjoyed doing the most this year. When I spoke about how data has been trending up, Digital Literacy is a perfect example of that. So we asked employees, "What are the tools that you use every day?" "What is your expertise?" "Do you think you're a beginner, an intermediate, or an expert?" Based on the responses that we got from employees, and drawing from that data, we were able to determine the best learning solutions. And when we asked for help, all of the employees stepped up, and they said, "Hey, I'm an expert in this tool. So I'm okay to create a resource so others can use and we had people we contacted people who can help us with, you know, conducting webinars." People kind of choose what they want to do and we've been hearing great feedback. It's working really well. We've had 70% engagement from the Digital Literacy project, and we had 575 learning hours in just two weeks. My colleague Ziella and I, and I should say the entire L&D team that we have in Thomson Reuters, we are a very passionate group of people. We have solid support from our leaders, which helps us to work on and focus on the things that we love to do. So it's great to work with colleagues who are so talented.
I Am Remarkable. I recently conducted a workshop and I think they loved it. At least that's what I'd want to think. It's majorly for underrepresented women, who can be underrepresented. When you speak about yourself, it's hard to promote yourself, when you want to talk about others, it comes out naturally to you. But when you want to speak about yourself, people may think it's bragging. We found, and Google found, that women are having these challenges and they came up with this initiative called I Am Remarkable, where it challenges preconceived notions across talking publicly about your accomplishments and challenging the gender modesty knots. I had women and men both invited to the session. It was really fun to see how much men value women, and it is women who kind of feel that I shouldn't be talking much about themselves. Maybe because there is a cultural impact as well, since women tend to be considered selfless, giving, and caring. And even in Fortune 500, only 30% of women make it to the board. So there is a lot of differentiation that I've seen, and there's so much that we have to work on. The first step is to have people, both men and women, speak about themselves. And when you speak based on facts, it's not bragging because you're just talking about your accomplishments.
Conclusion
It is clear that the world of training and development is evolving faster than ever. The pandemic has propelled digitalization, and microlearning, social learning, and e-learning are leading L&D in 2021 and upcoming years.
We totally agree with Neeraja when she mentions that employees should own their learning. They should learn what they need and want, at their own pace, in the way that's most effective for them. Every year, we strive to provide business English communications training to professionals that is personalized and tailored to their level, interests, and needs. If you are considering personalized communications training for you or your teams, get in touch and we will tell you how other companies are doing it.
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Talaera Talks - Transcript Episode 27
If you are learning English, including new English words and expressions will help you with effective communication. Remember to check out our other episodes on how to make small talk, how to deliver engaging presentations, how to speak English fluently, and many more: visit the podcast website. Listen to it on your favorite platform.
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Intro
Welcome to Talaera Talks, the business English communication podcast for non-native professionals. My name is Paola and I am co-hosting this show with Simon. In this podcast, we're going to be covering communication advice and tips to help express yourself with confidence in English in professional settings. So we hope you enjoy the show!
Simon Kennell 0:24
Okay, welcome to another episode of Talaera Talks. We hope, wherever you are, you're having a great day. My name is Simon and I'm joined as always with Paola. How are you doing today, Paola?
Paola Pascual 0:39
Hi, Simon. I'm particularly excited about today's podcast.
Simon Kennell 0:43
Yes, today is actually really exciting. We have another guest on our show today. And I'm gonna do a little quick intro. And then I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit further. But Neeraja Dorairaj? I'm saying that totally wrong, I'm sure.
Neeraja Dorairaj 1:04
No, you got it.
Simon Kennell 1:08
Great, great. (She) is a learning specialist at Thomson Reuters with over 10 years of experience in bringing content to life for global adult learners. So as an education enthusiast, Neeraja is passionate about creating innovative and effective learning and knowledge management solutions for business problems in a constantly changing workplace. She's implemented several learning and knowledge management processes at Thomson Reuters reaching thousands of people throughout the organization. She's an advocate for the power of the learning mindset and continuous learning, which we are also at Talaera. And she has received foundations on instructional design, e-learning and improving human performance from ATD, which is the Association for Talent Development. And now my probably my favorite bit of information about Neeraja is that you love food, and choreographing classical dance numbers. Is that right?
Neeraja Dorairaj 2:15
Yes, yes, that's absolutely right.
Simon Kennell 2:18
Yeah, I did a little bit of research before we started and Is this correct? Hoochie Coochie dance is this... Is this the classical dance from Hyderabad? Is that correct?
Neeraja Dorairaj 2:32
Yes, that's one of the dance forms that emerged from South India. But I am trained in a dance form called Bharatanatyam, which is based from Tamil Nadu.
Simon Kennell 2:46
Okay, and so and what's the like the real difference between those two different dance forms?
Neeraja Dorairaj 2:52
Oh, well, the use of hands. And the way you dance is completely different. And if you want to Google up the way you dress attire is completely different. So it's beautiful.
Simon Kennell 3:07
Wow, that's interesting. That's, that's so cool. And it's so great to have you have you on and hopefully one day in the future when we both travel to India, then we can meet up and you can show me some of the moves.
Neeraja Dorairaj 3:21
Absolutely. Would love to do that. And thank you, Paola and Simon for having me.
Paola Pascual 3:26
It's great to have you.
Neeraja Dorairaj 3:28
Yeah, great to have you so so today, you know, most of our conversations, and most of our episodes, are around, you know, specific kind of practical tips on on using Business English and English communication. But today, we're kind of taking a different approach and focusing more on learning and development. And that's why we wanted to bring you on, obviously, being a professional and an expert in this area. And, and so if you don't mind just telling us a little bit about how you got into the field of learning and development.
Neeraja Dorairaj 4:07
Sure. So I think it was in my college days during that time, I realized that I wanted to be in (the) L&D industry, because mostly because of the challenges that I went through. I had a really tough time communicating with people. I had these great ideas and thoughts, but I didn't know how to communicate with others. I was shy, I was timid, no confidence to speak. So it took a lot of effort for me to build my communication skills. And that's when I knew Okay, this is what I wanted to do. Build others, encourage others, but it kind of took a backstep for a while. And it was in 2019 when my former leader, Jenny, she recognized my passion and she gave me an opportunity to pursue my career in L&D, and she encouraged me. So that's when I kind of shifted my career after eight years. And it was totally worth it. So that's how I am in L&D.
Simon Kennell 5:12
That's so fascinating. And I think it's, it's important to note, right, that that that first period of your career was really focused around communication, right? (Yes.) And how has that communication aspect helped? Or has it helped your move into learning and development?
Neeraja Dorairaj 5:29
Yes, I think communication plays a huge part in terms of making a place for yourself, wherever you are. And it's a when I say communication, it's not just English language. Yes, it is important because we are in an organization where we use English as a common language to communicate. And it's about your personality, it's about your body language, it's the confidence. And all of this is a part of communication. And it's very important, like you have this wonderful ideas and thoughts, and people are there to encourage you, but you're not confident to speak. And it's, it's a shame if that that kind of is wasted. So I love to encourage people, and it gives me satisfaction. When I see people grow, they step up, they do presentations, I think there's a lot of job satisfaction that I get when I see people do that after they've taken communication skills, modules or courses. So I think it's very important.
Paola Pascual 6:32
That's great. And so when, Yeah, go ahead. It's It's, it's, it's something we tend to hear often, like, I have these great ideas, but then when I try to explain them, it just doesn't... It just doesn't mirror what I had in my head. So it's so great that you bring it up. And so here are the you started working before the pandemic. Have you seen any differences? Any changes when it comes to, you know, the L&D industry?
Neeraja Dorairaj 7:00
Well, I think I would say it's been a couple of innovative years that I've seen, because the way L&D has evolved in (the) last one year, is perhaps greater than that of (the) last 10 years, because there's been a dramatic change in the way L&D is functioning now, especially after (the) pandemic. So yeah.
Simon Kennell 7:24
There's there's this move right from? Well, I think probably most industries, and in most areas of organizations, there's this kind of really intense move towards digitalization, right, and all different forms of it. And yes, you know, the old school, L&D is, you know, we get a classroom or we go to an event or somewhere like that, and then, you know, after a week, maybe we send out a little, you know, survey, Did you enjoy it? Yes. Right. And so, in your experience this past year, you said it, yes, changed so much in the past year, more so almost in the past 10 years? What's been the biggest thing that you've seen change, you know, in this past year?
Neeraja Dorairaj 8:13
Yeah. So so just to start with, Simon, when you said, the, the trainings are like an exclusive event. Earlier, it used to be like that. I think nowadays, corporate training, or corporate learning is an everyday thing, like employees own their learning. They don't really have to wait for them to, oh, I need to learn, so I have to wait for two weeks to you know, get started with it. You have everything you own your learning. So having said that, some of the things that I've seen, and even Thomson Reuters has implemented that is social learning. We have lot of book clubs, tech cohorts, learning cohorts, small groups where people get together with a common goal. Like it said, when you do something you remember the most, so they employees have the power to choose what they want to learn and how much they want to learn. And they also have a group of people who support and help them to implement what they've learned. I think it's one of the very effective strategies that we've seen working for us. And we have micro learning. Well, you do not want to sit through a six year long workshop just to realize that hey, I'm not gonna use this in my everyday you know, work. So we don't want that but you can definitely definitely afford five minutes to watch a video or listen to a podcast or you know, read through an article. And then you... There you go. It's like, learning on the go. It's easy, easy to search, quick to read, and you're learning something new. And I think one of the major, I would say biggest trend, according to me is adoption of data. I think data is going to play a major role in decision making. Even in the future, that's going to probably be one of the deciding factor on how we draw out learning solutions.
Simon Kennell 10:21
So there's, there's so much like good stuff in there. I'm just reaching for paper and pen right now to make some, because I'm like, okay, I want to come back to this. And what the first thing was, was was Yeah, right with micro learning, right. And, and of course, in an L&D, there's so many trends and catchphrases and jargon, right? And, and but the idea of micro learning is right, instead of handing you the book, we hand you the one pager of the boiled-down, need-to-know information, right? And like almost a job aid fashion, right? So yes. So how much of your experience in writing and communication that has been necessary to help with that? Because that's pretty big?
Neeraja Dorairaj 11:07
That's a that's a very interesting question. And Simon, you would agree with me when I say this, because you've literally trained me on it. I think writing paragraphs of information is so easy considering, you know, versus writing concisely. And that is something that Simon has helped me develop as well. So it's very hard to come up with ways to make sure the same content, you're just presenting it in, like a one minute video or a two minute article read. So but having said that, I think it's worth it, because employees find it extremely useful. They have it handy when they want that. And that's the goal. So as long as you're making a point and making sure that there is learner engagement happening, and that is aligned with organizational goals, I think it's worth implementing these methodologies.
Paola Pascual 12:06
And from all these, so you said engagement is is plays a major role in deciding what was going to like how we want to present the information. And you also mentioned like short videos, or quick reads, what platform or what kind of channel have you have you seen it's driving engagement these days?
Neeraja Dorairaj 12:27
So this? Well, e-learning is that that's one of my favorites, as well. And I've been, I think I've been reading a lot of articles. And according to status stuff, yes. So the e-learning market is expected to grow 240 billion by 2022, globally. So and it completely makes sense because employees own their learning, you can learn at your own pace, and you can learn you can choose how much you want to learn today. And I think that is also something that we have been using. And we use authoring tools to create e-learning modules. We use PowerPoint to create videos and articles. So yeah. (That's great)
Simon Kennell 13:13
And isn't this...? So this is where I think it's, it's where it really comes down to communicating this is like communicating that, Hey, everyone, you know, you can actually go and get this and we need to make it easy for people in the organization to address. Right, that's, that's a huge, yes.
Neeraja Dorairaj 13:34
And as an L&D professional, my focus is going to be how can I make those e learning modules fun, interactive, because that is what builds the learners engagement. So I was talking to one of my cousin's, he just started working, and he was going through his onboarding. And onboarding is something that I do in Thomson Reuters, as well. So I asked, so how is onboarding happening with you? And he said, a common sister in our language. So he said, Ah, it's boring, I'm just scrolling through the videos. So you know, it speaks to me a lot when I get a feedback like that. So I start to question to also, you know, in Thomson Reuters peer - Do new hires feel like that? So it pushes me to use concepts like gamification and inter build interactiveness to ensure that at that the people are engaged, and you know, they are driven to take those onboarding courses and draw a value out of those.
Simon Kennell 14:41
And as well, that that that kind of brings up the question, right of, of learning versus performance support, and what is L&D's role? I think that's kind of a shifting thing. And I mean, from your perspective is, is learning and development about providing all of these different resources? Or is it about providing the quick and, and and very performance-focused information? Or is it? Or is it both?
Neeraja Dorairaj 15:15
I think I would, I would say, I've always been an advocate of own your learning concept. So even with my former, my manager, this used to be my discussion with him. Dave, I used to always ask him, Dave, what are the things that I'm good at? And what are the things that I should be focusing and he was to guide me on, okay, you need to work on these things, it will help you, you know, develop. So I think learning the focus of learning has always been to upskill. And to perform well, eventually. So I think one should own and have this discussion or evaluate, okay, what are the skills that I need to learn? So I can perform well? And you choose - How much do you want to learn about? So there are a whole lot of videos, and we also have LinkedIn courses available? We can curate those. And do you want to enroll yourself in a learning cohort? Or a tech cohort? Or do you just want to get an overview of that particular tool or a concept? So you, you basically Own your learning, choose how much you want to learn about. And yeah, that's how learning is going to support your performance.
Paola Pascual 16:28
And we've traditionally heard these, like division between hard skills, soft skills, or tech skills, are those still relevant? Is that how we still talk about the different skills?
Neeraja Dorairaj 16:42
Um, well, I think it's necessary that there is a differentiation between hard skills and soft skills. But having said that, I think I would want to call it as essential skills as a whole. So if for I'm just taking an example or quoting an example, if a tool, for example, Smartsheet is something that I need to learn to do my work. And I have to do that. But if I'm taking like a whole lot of time, and then you know, my due dates are getting impacted. And you know, the whole team is disturbed by it. So I better learn how to manage my time. So that's also an essential skill. So I would say you decide what are the skills you need? So I'm just going to park hard skills or soft skills aside for a while and discuss or evaluate what are the essential skills I need to get my work done?
Simon Kennell 17:42
I like that, I like that, like the essential skills are... And we've talked about this term as well. And maybe maybe it gives a, it makes sense to give context that Neeraja you're previously one of one of one of my students here with Talaera. So we've, we've worked together on some of these things. And, and we talked about, yeah, core competencies, right. And that being a kind of thing, like as an organization, you know, there's always going to be hundreds and thousands of skills. And you know, and we always talk about upskilling, and upscaling, and all these, but there's so many skills that's hard to pick, you know, what do I need to do? Do I need to learn how to give presentations? Do I need, like you said, with Smartsheet? What do I need to do? So that it makes sense for the individual employee to just kind of sit down and list out what are the core competencies I need? Or do that with a manager? How does that individual employee figure out, this is where I need to go like, this is the direction I need to take?
Neeraja Dorairaj 18:50
I think a combination of both has been really helpful for me in the past. And I also see how can I align those with organizational goals? So I get to work on the projects, because that's important for me to know, okay, I'm learning something. And if I'm not going to be using in my work, where does it fall in my priority list? So that's something that you can learn as many skills you want, you can learn anything you want, but you've got to have a list of priority in the order that you want to learn. And how much of it are you going to use in your work? And, you know, how much of time do you have also to dedicate, because you also have to do so many other things. So how much can you afford to learn the skills? So yeah, it's a good discussion. I think. What I recommend has worked for me is you will list out what you want to learn what are your focus eye areas, and then you discuss with your manager and I think that is a good way to go.
Simon Kennell 20:00
Yeah. And that that kind of brings us to English language communication, right? And this being what do you think? I mean, what would you call it a hard skill or a soft skill? or just in general an essential skill? I mean, what what have you seen.
Neeraja Dorairaj 20:16
English is definitely a hard skill for me.
Simon Kennell 20:20
But do you mean, like, it's a it's a skill, that's, that's difficult, or it's a hard skill that is just a core core skill.
Neeraja Dorairaj 20:28
I think it's necessary. Because I, my first language is not English. So it's, it's not expected out of me that I should be fluent in my communication when I use my English. So and when I work in an environment like this, where and Thomson Reuters, where, you know, English is a common language that we use to communicate across different locations, you know, so it's extremely important for me to learn how to speak that language, majorly because that's how you're going to talk to your colleagues, and you have to be good at it. So it kind of builds trust, it saves time. And language should never be a hindrance in your work. So even when we kind of conducted these listening sessions with managers, one of the consistent feedback that we received too was I think my folks are having challenges in the way they communicate. And it can be verbal, nonverbal, written. So that was one reason that we came up with this learning solutions likes speaking Club, which is inspired from Toastmasters, to provide opportunities for employees to build their public speaking skills and leadership skills. And one of that learning solution was to partner with you (Talaera), because we loved the human centered approach that you have. And that is working really well for us because I have challenges in terms of writing, and I'm bad at it. But my colleague, (well, it's the truth), So my colleague, she may not be really having the same challenge. So needs, she needs a different approach. So after I think Simon kind of taught me or he shared some tips, I started implementing those, I feel a lot more confident in terms of writing communications, or no in and writing concisely. So we've wanted that human centered approach. And so that's how we are kind of focusing to ensure that our employees are not having any challenges in the way they communicate using English, especially Business English.
Paola Pascual 22:46
I love how you said that language should never be something that hinders you, that's so vital. And yeah, it was great to hear all that you said, you know, it just makes me really, really happy.
Neeraja Dorairaj 23:00
And then speaking from an Indian point of view, I was having this fun conversation with a friend. And we were discussing how English is, has become so essential for us to kind of be proficient at and, and it's not easy for us to, you know, build on that skill. It takes effort. Because we were just having this fun conversation. And we were like, you know, we grew up learning British English. And now we are expected to speak American English. So we kind of, you know, hang in between.
Paola Pascual 23:32
Yeah, what you said that human approach, it kind of ties back to what you were saying about owning your learning and having exactly what you need, and working on those essential skills that you need. So that is really great. And I think at the beginning, you also talked about knowledge sharing and social learning. What is that? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? What is it.. What is it exactly? And can you just tell us a bit about this concept?
Neeraja Dorairaj 24:02
Sure, sure, I can. And, well, social learning is where a group of people with common goal come together, and they discuss and learn from each other. I think, I'm not sure if you both will agree... When you see something, and you learn a lot from people by observing. We've seen kids, they look at us, and they kind of mimic what we are doing, because that's the quickest way to learn. And it's one of the effective strategies as well. So we have this bookclubs, learning cohorts, and tech cohorts where people can enroll themselves and then they can sign up and we have this for three to four months and we can we can be flexible about the time as long as they know what they want to learn about. And then they meet often maybe weekly, bi weekly for an hour, and they have the topics drawn out and they discuss. You curate resources, you have guest speakers, and you can be very flexible about the approach on how you want to learn. And this, there's people who come up and they say, Hey, this is something that I'm good at, can we discuss about it? And then you learn from each other. So I think this is one of the effective strategies that we've seen people love being a part of book clubs and learning cohorts, because they get to collaborate, they get to meet people from different business functions, and you get, you get to build your network.
Paola Pascual 25:34
Sounds great. And I would imagine that that also drives engagement, right? If you're showing something and teaching you feel part of the, of that community, and you just want to be more part of it.
Neeraja Dorairaj 25:45
Absolutely. And we've seen people from a learning cohort, they want to start a cohort by themselves. And eventually, you know, they are owning, they're being accountable, they want to share the knowledge that they have with others, and it's really good to see that happening.
Simon Kennell 26:04
You know, that's, that's just one of the coolest things is, and Neeraja, we talked about this as well, like, this was, I think, we started doing our sessions together, right before I submitted my master's thesis, which was, yeah, on communities of practice that I remember how we were both just like, nerding out about.. Yeah, like, unity of practice, and better social learning theory and all this kind of stuff. (Yes). And yeah, it's just, it's really, really fascinating that, you know, you can, you can, like you said, give people the power to shape their own learning. And that's really at the end of the day, what you want, right is that, and, and, you know, when you talk about the idea of the learning organization is, is something where, if you think about it, the, the solutions to your problems might be inside, right, they might actually already be inside, and the answers might already be inside. And that's, that's something that we did with, with Talaera, with, you know, having teachers share tips and things like that. And, you know, we found that that was, that was really, yeah, that was really cool to see. So that's awesome to hear that that's fine.
Neeraja Dorairaj 27:21
I'm personally very happy with the way I got trained, because I feel a lot more confident now when I write. So I like that you've provided resources, and you've helped me, and you're very flexible about lessons. Simon, I know that we had something planned, but can you help me with this? And you're like, Fine, yeah, let's do that. So it was it was nice.
Simon Kennell 27:46
Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm really getting flattered and embarrassed over here. So let's, let's move on. But no, thank you very much. That's, that's so great to hear. And that's like, what you what you said before is, when you see that, actually, the things that you're working on are making an impact... That's every what every teacher wants to see, that's what every L&D professional wants to see is, is, you know, the things they're doing are act, you know, making an impact. So that's, that's so cool to see. And the last, you know, kind of one of the last things I wanted to touch on was some of the things that you're working on right now, which I think are pretty cool. Two of the big projects that you've talked to us about have been the digital literacy campaign that you've done. And then the I am remarkable sessions that you're you're starting to do. Can you tell us a little bit about those last two?
Neeraja Dorairaj 28:39
Sure, I think I've enjoyed the most these two projects doing this year of all, and digital literacy, again, so when I spoke about how data has been trending up, so this was, this is a perfect example for that. So we asked employees like, what are the tools that you use every day? And what is your expertise? Like, are you do you think you're at a beginner or you're at an intermediate or you're an expert? So based on the responses that we got from employees, and that data helped us determine coming up with learning solutions? Like should we host a webinar? Should we start a cohort? Or should we just create resources? And when we asked for help, all of the employees stepped up, and they said, Hey, I'm an expert in this tool. So I'm okay to create a resource so others can use and we had people we contacted people who can help us with, you know, conducting webinars, and we started off tech cohorts. So people kind of chose what they wanted to do and we've been hearing great feedback. So I think it's working really well. So we had 70% engagement from the learning initial digital literacy. (Yes, that's wild.) Yes. And we had 575 learning hours in just two weeks. (Wow. Great.)
Simon Kennell 30:12
So you must be really proud of that over there.
Neeraja Dorairaj 30:14
Yes. My colleague Ziella and I, and I should say the entire L&D team that we have in Thomson Reuters, we are a very passionate group of people. And we have a solid support from our leaders, which kind of helps us to work on and focus on the things that we love to do. So it's great to work with colleagues. so talented.
Simon Kennell 30:39
And can you tell us a little bit about I Am Remarkable.
Neeraja Dorairaj 30:43
Right! Yes. So I recently conducted a workshop for my close with my close friends, and I think they loved it. At least that's what I'd want to think. It's majorly for underrepresented women. And, you know, you have these inhibitions. When you speak about yourself, it's hard to promote yourself, when you want to talk about others, it comes out naturally to you. But when you want to speak about yourself, people may think it's bragging. Oh, my god, she's speaking so much about herself. So we found and Google found that women are having these challenges and they came up with this initiative called I Am Remarkable, where it challenges to preconceived notions across talking publicly about your accomplishments, and challenging the gender modesty knots.
Simon Kennell 31:40
Very cool. And, and so what was what do you feel like people took away from from this from this workshop?
Neeraja Dorairaj 31:47
Oh, well, I had women and men both invited to the session. And, and it was really fun to see how much men value women, and it is women who kind of feel that I shouldn't be talking much about myself. Maybe because there is a cultural impact as well, because women always are considered as a selfless, they are giving, you know, they should be more caring. And even in Fortune 500, only 30% of women make it to the board. So there is a lot of differentiation that I've seen, and there's so much that we have to work on. And I think the first step is to have people, both men and women, speak about themselves. And when you speak based on facts, it's not bragging because you're just talking about your accomplishments. And that is the first step to go so I think it's great to drive these conversations and and it's just helping people realize their own accomplishments and feel good about it.
Paola Pascual 32:57
It's incredible how much... it's I love to hear about this project and how big a role communication place and in in gender gap or in pay gap and in equality and it's just great. (Yes.) All right. So this was, this was really a great, great conversation I really appreciate it. I don't know if you would like to if there's anything else you would like to mention, Neera?
Neeraja Dorairaj 33:30
Well, I think this was great. And I would like to thank both you and Paola and Talaera, for having me in this podcast. And it's always fun to have these conversations, love it! (Amazing!)
Simon Kennell 33:43
Thank you, we loved having you. We loved to having you. Thank you so much for taking the time. (Absolutely.) All right. Well, that was today's episode, we met with neeraja learning specialists at Thomson Reuters, who so we're so grateful took the time to discuss with us. And stay tuned for our upcoming episodes. But other than that, as always, keep learning.
34:12
And that's all we have for you today. We hope you enjoyed it, and remember to subscribe to Talaera Talks. We'll be back soon with more! And visit our website at https://talaera.com for more valuable content on business English. You can also request a free consultation on the best ways for you and your team to improve your communication skills. So have a great day and keep learning!
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