Aug 26, 2016

My Professional Development colleague, Fee Hosking, and I just celebrated our tenth anniversary at New Horizons. Let’s have a brief look at what has happened in this area over the period and a few predictions for the future.

We are still the same people but not. Most of our management team and delivery staff have not changed in the last ten years, meaning we offer stability, consistency, and reliability to the organisations we serve. However, we have all grown in knowledge and experience, especially in steering the organisation through financial, technological and demand changes during that time.

The Professional Development Portfolio has grown from being a fledgling sideline in our business to a large business stream now offering over forty-five courses (as well as contextualised and purpose-built programs). These are offered in our public schedule or contextualised deliveries at our convenient sites or on customer premises.

The iPhone was released almost a year after I started at New Horizons and what a change it has ushered in. It has shifted the way we do business. For some, it has meant more flexibility; for others, it has meant an inability to balance their personal and professional lives and deal with the mountain of information that technology advancement has brought.

On the Professional Development side of the business, participants come to Time Management and Stress Management courses swamped by emails, unable to disconnect themselves from work and plagued by constant interruptions.

Those in management programs want to know how they can better manage different generations (especially when each prefers different technology to communicate). As technology has seen the rise of hot-desking and virtual teams – many across international borders and time zones – managers also want to know how to manage staff remotely.

Competition is demanding we do more with less, so resource allocation, efficiency, and leadership are areas we have seen grow. Project management is also a consistently growing area.

Human beings’ needs have not changed, just the way they are serviced. Communication skills are still crucial (perhaps more so) and today’s workforce needs to be adept across multiple delivery channels as well as multiple levels in an organisation; especially so in flat structured organisations. The ability to think quickly on your feet, to give feedback appropriately and influence in writing as well as orally, are skills critical to achieving results in our modern businesses.

Change is a constant but staff members still have emotional reactions to it, so, change management is an area that managers need to be adept in. I have definitely witnessed some poorly managed responses to technology change, where we have had to come in and fix problems after the fact. Prevention is still better than cure; I’m pretty sure that has not changed.

Areas for the future:

Social media has dictated a change in the way we derive business. Our CEO, Rahul Kumar, has embraced and led the charge to use social media as a tool to make sure New Horizons remains a strong force in the industry. His knowledge and experience will be available to our customers soon, as we predict more and more organisations will start to move toward this way of engaging with and selling to customers.

Delivery methods will change as people become more time poor and Gen Ys start steering and dictating the decision process. We have already started to cater for this with our Deep Dive series and Online Learning process and are continuing to look for ways to be flexible with our delivery approach, whilst maintaining quality.

For more information on our business skills courses, have a look at our Professional Development portfolio of courses.