Prioritizing employee tasks for growth
Career growth and development is trending higher and higher according to many studies. This Forbes article is a quick read on the topic, but a quick google search will lead you to many more. Growth and development is a growing need for employees but companies are struggling to satisfy that need. I do not envy the position employers are in. They hire someone to do a specific job, but the employee only plans on working in that capacity for a defined amount of time before a promotion, raise, or taking on a new scope of work.
Fostering a growth environment is precarious. Companies are stuck deciding how much time to give their employees for learning and growth, having their employees learning on the job, or keeping their employees in the box they were hired for. Data will show companies opt for the latter, sprinkled in with an inconsistent amount of the other options. After all, production is king in the corporate world.
So what should we do about this corporate tango? The answer is simple in concept but complex in execution; prioritizing employee tasks by growth.
Educational & Learning Theories
We intersect educational psychology and learning theories with employee growth and development.
Growth and development ultimately lie in the employees ability to learn. Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is a good place to start. An oversimplification of his theory is this; There are 3 buckets of learning, what you can learn with no assistance, what you can learn with some assistance, and what you can’t learn regardless of the amount of assistance.
Edward Briceno’s Ted Talk detailing the Learning Zone vs Performance Zone is another theory we like to pair with ZPD to understand what it entails to grow at work. The Learning Zone is where you try new things where failure is encouraged for the sake of growth and there is no impact on deliverables. The Performance Zone is a high stakes environment where you are only doing what you know you can accomplish since there is a direct impact on deliverables.
Take a second and think about where your employees’ tasks may lie? Do they constantly need assistance? Is their work getting completed with no challenges? How much time is dedicated to failing for the sake of learning? Is your team always operating in the high stress/high stakes Performance Zone?
Task Prioritization
Prioritization is historically decided by business need, not by the needs of the employees. Our solution is not to abandon business need for the employees needs. Most Managers, Project Managers, Product Managers, and Leads have a master task list, or they have a good idea of everything that needs to be done. Regardless of the prioritization methodology used the hardest tasks go to the more senior members of the team because of their institutional knowledge.
We advise our clients on creating individual, team, or department wide ratios of tasks spent in the above zones within their current prioritization rankings. For this to be effective managers and employees have a shared duty to track tasks honestly. Through this process our clients have noticed a higher percentage of their employees taking a proactive approach to their learning and growth.
Contact Us if you would like to learn more about how to implement our programs prioritizing tasks for employee growth.
