At Authority Partners we work hard to develop innovative and cost-effective solutions for our clients. We also work hard to promote continuous learning within our business through our Talent Management department. We believe that fostering a culture of learning and development in our workplace is not only important for keeping up with the pace of technological change, but also critical to our success as a company – ensuring that our most valuable asset, our people, is at the top of their game.

At Authority Partners learning and development is an integral part of making sure that our global, 500+ workforce is always at the leading edge of any technological changes and developments going on in the IT space. But we also believe that fostering a culture of organizational development is integral to our success as a business.

A Comprehensive Approach to Learning and Development

You might be asking: What’s the difference between training and learning and development (LD)? Well, training typically focuses on the individuals working in the company and is intended to help increase their capacity to act. It is a program organized by the organization to develop the knowledge and skills needed to perform their role. This could be anything from a class that helps a consultant improve their MS Excel skills to a seminar for scrum masters on how to improve their oversight of scrum teams. In contrast, learning and development is a sort of educational process that focuses on growth; training is just one part of the learning and development process.

Authority Partners consultants are encouraged to attend different types of conferences, congresses and summits. The company sponsors their participation in work-related training and certification programs. Additionally, consultants regularly share their knowledge internally, through mentorship programs and company-wide internal training sessions.

This year alone, Authority Partners organized 40 training sessions and invested more than 4,500 hours in different education programs. We also had more than 100 of our consultants attend a variety of international industry events, such as the SauceCon Conference, QA Global Summit, Bosnia Agile Day, Recruiting Leadership Labs and more!

Why is this significant? An organization that focuses on learning is more productive, improves the quality of its customer service and increases employee retention. The statistics are clear. Research indicates that 93% of employees will stay in a company longer if it invests in their development and learning, 75% of consultants take advantage of learning opportunities when offered by their managers and 59% of employees claim that opportunities for learning and development are the most important factors when deciding to take a job at a company.

Organizational Development and a Growth Mindset

Organizational development, in contrast to learning and development, takes a broader approach. The focus is on strategic concerns at the company level. It is concerned about where a company stands in relation to the acquisition of understanding and know-how. How does the company create procedures to process, interpret and respond to external or internal changes? Is training, learning and development an integral part of the company culture or just an occasional, ad-hoc practice? As such, OD is an umbrella concept that includes both training and learning and development.

At Authority Partners, just as we’ve always focused on learning and development, we also believe that there is always room for improvement. In the last 25 years, our workforce has grown, and our international presence has expanded. Alongside this growth, organizational development has become both an increasingly important pillar to our mission as a company and an increasingly important part of our ability to deliver intelligent IT business solutions to our clients.

As a company, we’ve been focusing more attention on cultivating a growth mindset among our community of consultants. We believe that by providing them with the right tools, and with their determination, our consultants and team members can be the best that they can be. But there are some challenges involved. The two most common are nurturing that growth mindset and encouraging the intrinsic motivation to learn.

These two ideas are closely linked. And in a business that is so focused on programming code and dealing with numbers, we are constantly encouraging the consultants whose world revolves around the ones and zeros of binary code, Python or C# to step out of their comfort zones and improve their soft skills! Given human nature, people are often scared.

So, a big part of our company culture involves understanding and embracing the benefits of soft skills and a growth mindset in order to improve career opportunities within the organization and enhance a consultant’s vocational toolkit. In turn, these have a positive impact on our overall effectiveness.

As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work. Together, a growth mindset and knowledge sharing are critical to the organizational development of the company. With these in place, Authority Partners is nurturing a workforce that is ready for the future, delivering cutting-edge IT solutions to clients around the world, and ensuring continued growth and success.

For 25 years, we at Authority Partners have been providing IT solutions that have helped our clients become leaders in their industries. We have been partners in their growth, creating software solutions that deliver a clear competitive advantage.

Our technical excellence and our commitment to delivering on budget and on time is not only a value proposition, but also a part of a reputation we are extremely proud of. We are partners who help deliver business outcomes.

We are Authority Partners.

To learn more about Authority Partners, please visit our webpage or send us an email at hello@authoritypartners.com.