Saffron Interactive Career Adaptability Learning Hub

What is Career Adaptability? And why are we talking about it?

Quite simply, career adaptability is the resilience you display in your skills and development that allows you to weather uncertainty. Individuals that show career adaptability are able to successfully respond to changes to their career and the wider business world. This involves planning, flexibility, and developing skills. Organisations that are made up of workers with career adaptability are much more likely to survive difficult circumstances – such as those brought about by Covid-19 and digital disruption – the combination of which is going to shape everyone’s lives in the near future.

At the same time, the world is going through a yawning skills gap. HR departments are not going to be able to fill these gaps just by hiring – most strategic HR departments now know that talent development plans have to encompass mass re-skilling to meet organisational needs.

We can’t predict the future. However, it is clear is that if you build an adaptable and resilient workforce that can work alongside technology, then THEY will be able to provide the stability and security and protection for an organisation, themselves, the economy and society at large.

What will you find in the Career Adaptability Learning Hub?

This will be a continually updated resource to provide you and your organisation with the best ways to use best practice approaches and frameworks to build Career Adaptability and to create security and resilience within your organisation. You’ll find that by taking advantage of these materials, the workforce will be more agile, flexible, and able to identify skills for a variety of roles – building a continuous learning culture naturally in the organisation. Organisations will benefit from having a skilled workforce that can quickly change to meet economic and business imperatives in reduced time and less cost. Find out more from the resources below :

  • Webinars and videos
  • Articles, reports, and case studies
  • Stay in touch

Webinars and videos

Watch: Career Adaptability webinar from Saffron Interactive and the Learning Skills Group

In this video, Noorie Sazen presents a look at how organisations can build a Career Adaptability framework into their organisations at scale. It’s co-hosted by Don Taylor for the Learning and Skills Group. You can download the slides here.

Watch: Why You Don't Need to Learn

This is a recording from the Learning Technologies 2020 #LT20 conference and exhibition back in February of this year. Saffron Interactive were invited to host a seminar. We spoke about the changing needs of the learner, giving a greater understanding of what point of need tools are and how they can be used to increase productivity as well as the time to develop new skills. See our primer below on ‘Tools for improving career adaptability’ to get an idea of how these ‘point of need’, or ‘workflow tools’ can help build career adaptability.

Articles, reports, and case studies

How the skills gap is failing women

We’ve all heard of what damage the skills gap is doing to economic prospects in the UK and abroad. Saffron’s Lauren Savill has investigated how the skills gap is failing women in particular – and how this can be changed.

The latest on the UK skills landscape: what does learning and development need to know?

The skills gap in the UK is widening, we break down what that means for you.  

Tools for improving career adaptability

What role does technology play in improving career adaptability? Learning new skills and technologies at an accelerated rate will become the norm. Traditional learning methods alone won’t be able to achieve this agility. Whilst classroom, elearning, and virtual learning are all important, the mix of learning modes will need to expand radically to include ‘learning in the workflow’ or point of need tools. Here’s why:

The current economic crisis means that businesses will need to cut costs and increase the rate at which they automate processes and procedures. The ones that can change their business model will be able to survive. However, for this to happen there will be a necessary re-allocation of work. This means that learning on the job, fast, will become essential. There will be no time or resources for more labour intensive methods. As such, in-work support tools will help workers perform at a high standard when needed.

But not all workflow tools are equal. Read more about the future of workflow tools and what they are below.

Case Study: CareerTech Challenge (initiative from Nesta and the Department for Education)

An example of major initiatives using the career adaptability framework to improve outcomes on a large scale is the CareerTech Challenge. This program, managed by Nesta and funded by the Department for Education, set out to select a cohort of high performing training providers and apply their novel approaches to secure the careers of vulnerable workers.

Saffron Interactive, in partnership with Unionlearn, was selected to develop cutting edge video based chatbot technologies to help mentor recipients.

To find out more about this project, its aims, and Saffron’s ambitious contribution, click through to the press release below:

Download: Workflow/ Point of Need Tools Insights Report

With digital transformation accelerating at a pace where 70% of businesses are implementing change, the types of jobs and skills needed are changing radically over the very short term. 

How can HR and Learning and Development keep pace – and keep themselves relevant? Point of need learning technology is the answer.

Register now to be sent a free copy of our research and analysis, and discover:

  • How prepared large organisations are to implement point of need learning
  • What point of need tools are being provided in these organisations
  • The direction being taken by the latest point-of-need technology
  • How point of need learning tools can allow HR and L&D to reclaim the position of trusted advisor

Career Adaptability assessment tool

So how can you start to apply these frameworks to your organisation? Luckily there is a free questionnaire tool that takes 10 minutes to complete and can be easily adapted to your organisation. It was built by CABA for accountants but has all the self-reflection questions an individual would need to answer to see their own career adaptability score. Try it out for yourself.

This tool is a great way to start the conversation within your organisation. Not everyone will be open to it but if it is adopted it can let you know what areas your workforce are strong in, and where you need to focus your efforts. Why not talk to us about frameworks that are specific for your organisation’s needs.

Stay in touch

Sign up to stay up to date with the latest updates and resources on Career Adaptability.

We’d love to stay in touch and share our ongoing research andthought leadership about the topics covered in this Career Adaptability hub, and more. We’re working with leading global brands and organisations to continually innovate training and development.

Since the year 2000 we’ve been leaders in our fields, with a consultative approach that has seen us become one of the most sought-after suppliers of bespoke digital learning solutions. We’re known for always creating measurable results that transform behaviours and improve outcomes – just as you’d expect from a consultancy.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch at any time to discuss your training and development challenges – we love to chat about all things learning related!

More resources updated weekly