Beyond the Workshop: Making Employee Development Part of Everyday Work

We love a good workshop. There’s something powerful about getting people together, stepping away from the day-to-day and creating space to think, talk, practice, and learn.

But the best part of a workshop is what happens afterward.

• It’s the leader who tries a different approach in a conversation the next morning.

• The manager who recognizes an opportunity to coach instead of jumping in with the answer.

• The employee who handles a difficult interaction differently because something they learned suddenly clicks.

This is when development becomes real. And these moments happen long after everyone has left the workshop.

So, what happens between the workshops?

That's a question we think about a lot at Kane Learning, because people don't only need development when there's a workshop on the calendar. They need it when they're onboarding to a new organization. When they become a leader. When they're preparing for a difficult conversation. When a team isn't quite clicking. When they want to communicate better, build stronger relationships, or simply get better at what they do.

In other words, they need it while they're working, and that's a big part of why we created Spark Development.

Spark Development is an on-demand professional and leadership development membership curated by the team at Kane Learning. It gives professionals opportunities to:

• Learn: 40+ practical professional and leadership development courses

• Apply: Tools, job aids, articles, videos, and resources that help people put learning into practice

• Keep Growing: New courses and resources researched, curated, and added

Spark gives organizations an ongoing way to make development part of the employee experience, with practical learning people can access, revisit, and use as their needs change. And one of our Spark partners, The Savings Bank, is showing us what that can look like.

The Savings Bank’s Spark Story on Employee Development

When The Savings Bank introduced Spark, they started with their Retail Leadership group. Leaders experienced Spark first so they could understand the learning themselves and then help introduce it to their teams.

This approach did something important, as The Savings Bank shared with us:

“It is giving our leaders a common language and framework to use for coaching and development. We didn’t have that before.”

That's a pretty big deal because when leaders have shared language and frameworks around development, learning has a better chance of making its way into everyday conversations! Skills and strategies learned through a Spark course, and reinforced in an in-house session, are now part of how teams at The Savings Bank show up for each other and work even better together.

The Savings Bank didn't stop with its leaders. They then made Spark part of the broader employee experience by creating a New Hire Learning Path. They used this path to get existing employees started with Spark and then incorporated the same learning path into onboarding for new employees.

We love that. Think about the message it sends to someone joining an organization: Development is part of what we do here, from the beginning.

And because Spark focuses on skills people use across roles – think communication, collaboration, coaching, relationships, and navigating the everyday challenges of working with others – learning in Spark isn't tied to one particular job or product.

The Savings Bank describes Spark as a

“toolbox of courses” they can use for different development activities across the organization. They also told us their teams are getting value from the content and are implementing what they learn in their day-to-day interactions.

“We have a toolbox of courses that we can utilize for various development activities for our employees. It helps them to develop skills that serve them in all aspects of their life, and not just specific to the products and services that we offer. It helps them to better serve their customers and work with their co-workers.”

That's exactly the kind of learning we want Spark to provide. Practical. Relevant. Ready when people need it.

A workshop can create energy. It can introduce a new idea, give people a chance to practice, and start conversations that matter. We still believe deeply in those experiences, but we also know that helping people grow doesn't happen in a day. The Savings Bank has taken that idea and made it their own, starting with leaders, building Spark into onboarding, and using it as an ongoing resource for employee development.

And their people are taking what they learn back into their everyday interactions. That's the kind of development we get excited about. Because we love a good workshop. We just don't think learning should have to wait for the next one.