Upskill, Reskill, Thrive: Optimizing Learning and Development in the Workplace

Author(s)

James McKenna

Date

2023

About the Book

Upskill, Reskill, Thrive: Optimizing Learning and Development in the Workplace offers readers an accessible guide to understanding and applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to the workplace. Using exemplars from across sectors and industries, James McKenna highlights how learning and development professionals can redefine the goals of learning in the corporate environment - not only for the benefit of the organization but also, and perhaps more importantly, for the individual.

Upskill, Reskill, Thrive illustrates how to create and sustain learning and work environments that honor and empower individuals in ways that promote knowledge generation and sharing. This book will help L&D educators and corporate leaders motivate their teams from the inside to improve performance and become part of an inclusive culture across an organization.

Upskill, Reskill, Thrive is available in print (198 pages, ISBN: 9781930583962) and accessible EPUB (ISBN: 9781930583979) wherever books are sold!

Table of Contents

Praise for Upskill, Reskill, Thrive

McKenna offers a compelling guidebook for utilizing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create 'expert learners' in your organization—learners who assess their own capabilities, tailor their own learning opportunities, and fulfill an organizational impact that so often evades traditional training. This isn't about accommodation, but rather enablement. Using UDL to understand and leverage variability across learners—in language, learning differences, disabilities, backgrounds and experience—McKenna outlines the considerable learning science underpinning the framework, and culminates with a detailed guide for applying UDL Guidelines. This is a great entry point to UDL for anybody involved in corporate learning and training.

McKenna's easy-to-follow UDL progression of learners, the environment, neuroscience, emotion, intellect, and strategy will help you to create just-in-time and point-of-need learning, at scale, for the wide variety of learners in your workplace. He relies on his own career in industry, education, and military service, as well as conversations with leaders across the workforce in North America to deliver practical, evidence-based strategies for lowering workplace-learning barriers and making your learning & development efforts smoother, easier to facilitate, and more effective. I strongly recommend this book to every L&D leader.

Table of Contents

• Foreword: Making the UDL Journey by Kendra Grant
• Introduction: A New Approach to Learning and Development
• Chapter 1: Learning in the Modern World
• Chapter 2: Know Your Learners
• Chapter 3: Know Your Environment
• Chapter 4: Align Your Mind
• Chapter 5: Make an Emotional Connection
• Chapter 6: Make an Intellectual Connection
• Chapter 7: Make a Strategic Connection
• Chapter 8: Put Your Learning to Work
• Appendix A - Using the UDL Guidelines in the Workplace