Pioneering Progress: Positive Workplaces’ Roadmap for Wellbeing and Learning
by Jhoyce Cruz
As the world around us evolves, we also cope with its demands through learning which is why this is one of the many processes that we embrace and go through as we age. In Positive Workplaces, learning is one of the things we advocate for and we do it, not just to train people to be assets of their companies. We do it because we believe that learning can be a beacon of hope that a person could have because it can bring positive changes that might increase the potential of an individual.
Positive Workplaces bags a Gawad Maestro Award
In just three years of our company’s existence, we were able to receive the Gawad Maestro Outsourced Learning and Development Organization of the Year award for the first time in 2023. It all happened because of our advocacy programs like the Culture Changer Internship and our Free Webinars that helped us bag the prestigious award.
L&D through the Lenses of Positive Workplaces
As a training service provider with just three years of being in the L&D world, it is easy for us to spot the things that we might improve on— what sets us apart from other training service providers and our experience since we are relatively new to the field. In Positive Workplaces, we know that we have competitors, big companies, even when it comes to providing training and consulting services. As a ‘newbie’ in this field, we recognize that we have a lot to build on including our edge, which is why we bank on positive psychology, well-being, and strengths as our defining characteristics as a company.
Just as how we cherish learning, we also value employee well-being and we believe that by training employees with the principles of positive psychology, they will be able to lead themselves well to have better well-being. The core principles of positive psychology like the PERMA framework being incorporated into our learning contents help in investing more in employee well-being since it aids in boosting productivity in the workplace. Another principle of positive psychology that supports our employee well-being is strengths. By embracing strengths in our content, we believe that we are not just investing in individuals to be more productive at work, but also in their personal lives because by understanding their strengths they can maximize their growth even more. These are some of the core contents that help us be different with our services.
The Design Structure of Contents of Positive Workplaces
We know that learning new concepts could be difficult sometimes because of the amount of information present within the content. In Positive Workplaces, as advocates for learning, we want concepts to be grasped by our learners through an easier process and we do this by providing our learners experiential learning whether through a virtual set-up of learning or through a face-to-face one. Through Kolb’s experiential learning cycle (1984), we learned the importance of having the learners tap on their experiences, think about these experiences, connect these experiences in theories and frameworks to back it up with research, and give them practical tips to be able to apply and practice the learnings within their daily lives. This is the reason why we have a pattern of creating our contents through our Why-What-How framework. We usually follow this framework to help learners think about their experiences and learn the connection and importance of these experiences to the concepts about to be teached in the Why section. Next, we introduce theories and frameworks related to the concept in the What section. Finally, we provide practical and easy tips in the How section for our learners to take home and apply the learnings on their own. We believe that through this framework, we are able to transform the most difficult concepts to easier ones which would benefit our learners better since they will be able to fully grasp the learnings from the content and be able to apply the theories in practice quickly.
Positive Workplaces’ Dream for the Nation
Being able to conduct around 660 trainings and train more than 61,300 learners, 4,600 learners, we envision a bright future going forward for the country. We want to see our nation thrive and we believe we could do it through fulfilling our hope and plans, like the following:
Co-creating cultures for enhancing the well-being of our workforce
To transform the nation, we must build stronger foundations that will benefit us in the long run. In Positive Workplaces, we believe that we co-create cultures not just with organizations but with the individuals, as well, since they represent their respective organizations. This co-creating translates into building the foundations that we need to transform the nation’s way of learning and thriving. Moreover, we recognize the fact that we, as a company, cannot create cultures alone, so through the courses, workshops, and free webinars we believe that we can create them.
A Nation of Positive Organizations
We want to raise more positive leaders in the country. We believe that these leaders will not become the toxic bosses that we dread to have but rather will make changes in terms of the way they lead not just for better organizational cultures but also for better well-being of the employees. We want to have leaders who can be more compassionate and lead towards growth so we invest in doing content that would help a lot when it comes to leading for a change. Moreover, we instill this also in our Culture Changer Internship Program since we believe that the best way to have more positive leaders in the country is by starting them at an earlier age. In this manner, we are able to cultivate more leaders while being able to impart the values that we need for positive leadership.
Increasing the Country’s Well-being Index
We value employee well-being and we want this to translate into the national level. So far, we have done assessments of the well-being scale for one of the top mining companies in the country and for other employees of different organizations for a pulse check. In addition, we are planning to do more assessments through an application so that we can also bridge the gap between learning and innovating through technology. Through this, we would also generate courses and tips to be able to aid in the improvement of the country’s well-being.
These dreams might be big and audacious for a company with just nine members, but we believe that in advocating for learning we will be able to translate these dreams into reality. We might be new to the L&D field and we might have lesser experiences from our competitors, but we have the confidence that through learning we can bring change that will help bring out more positive changes in the different workplaces and soon, to the nation.
References:
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.
About the Author:
Jhoyce is an advocate of mental health and well-being in the workplace because she values employee well-being. She also serves as the Learning and Development Associate of Positive Workplaces which aims to create a nation of positive organizations. In this role, she helps develop content, materials, and assessment tools for training and workshops done by the company. If your organization is interested to avail of Positive Workplaces’ well-being and leadership trainings, you may get in touch with us at learn@positiveworkplaces.org.
