Helping People Learn and Grow

People want to invest in themselves and grow their career. But they also want their employer to invest in them, to support that growth and encourage that learning. In today’s marketplace, retaining valuable people has never been more important. Employers have to step up and show they are willing to make an investment that is beyond salary, health insurance benefits and 401(k) matching. That’s what we’re doing at Real Chemistry, launching a new program giving access to LinkedIn Learning to our firm’s 2,000 employees.

People at Real Chemistry are curious, constant learners, and it’s this trait and these people that have driven the success of our rapidly growing company even as health care and communications have changed so dramatically over the past few years. Our people want to not just keep up, but keep growing.

Our new move to help them grow reflects where the market is going as well. As BenefitsPro reported in September 2021, more than half of employees in one survey said professional development was one of their most desired benefits. Free food in the kitchen and other trendy perks are nice, but people want to learn more and develop themselves.

In years or perhaps decades past, professional development meant attending seminars offsite or maybe taking classes at a local college. That’s not what most people want these days. The LinkedIn Learning experience is designed for today’s professionals, helping them build skills in the time-flexible way they want and in the digital-first way they are accustomed to using.

Using LinkedIn is also meeting our people where they already are. Over the past year, more than half of our employees have engaged with content produced on LinkedIn Learning.

We’re not just offering our team members an employer-paid platform, though, and then ignoring what happens after. Our program will soon blossom into an offering that will be fully integrated into our workflow software, our time management tracking and, more importantly, our people development efforts. We are making growing your career part of the entire employee experience.

All of our employees, whether they’re the most junior staff member or a senior person at the highest level of the company, will be expected to devote 24 hours a year to professional development by diving into the 13,000 courses that LinkedIn Learning offers and other learning opportunities provided by the company.

Eventually, we will create learning tracks that will offer appropriate guidance based on an employee’s role and current and desired skill sets. Our goal is to create ongoing conversations about learning and development, not just between managers and their direct reports, but also among our firm’s practices and teams.

Our vision is that groups of Real Chemistry employees will treat it like a book club: they will watch a LinkedIn Learning course early in the week and talk about it on Friday. This will be another way our people will learn, grow their career and deepen connections with their colleagues – all in support of making Real Chemistry the best place to work.