From future-proofing your workforce to boosting retention and engagement, your organization can reap long-term benefits and create a competitive advantage by having a learning culture. A successful learning culture creates an ecosystem that enables employees to seek, share and apply new knowledge and ideas that support the organizational mission and goals. This type of culture brings bottom-line success by improving customer relations and product or service innovation.
A learning culture goes well beyond simply providing training workshops and e-learning. So how can organizations create a learning culture that will help achieve results? Here are some tips to consider.
1. Enable and encourage knowledge sharing.
You don’t always have to bring in experts from outside your organization to train your people. Leveraging your employees’ experience and expertise via peer-to-peer coaching is an effective way to upskill your team. Not only will people in your organization learn from peers with firsthand knowledge of the business; employees also develop and grow by teaching others. Often, this type of network fosters collaborative brainstorming. Employees are also able to identify solutions to company challenges. A peer community allows your employees to talk through work issues, which ultimately helps improve employee retention.
2. Offer microlearning.
Offer employees just the right amount of information necessary to help them achieve a specific, actionable objective. This enables them to stay engaged and learn and apply new knowledge and skills quickly. Think about catering to a new generation of workers — digital natives who have grown up never having known life without the internet. Use bite-sized training assets, such as podcasts, video clips, apps and short text. As well, consider replacing formal training sessions and workshops with casual lunchtime seminars, where employees can take turns exchanging their insights.
3. Encourage reflection.
Have employees take charge and own their learning through reflection and lessons learned. Following key projects or initiatives, have your team document what went well, what didn’t and what they would do differently. Taking this time to reflect supports team learning and continuous improvement. It is also beneficial to have employees outline reflections and key learning points post-training, including how they find purpose in what they’re doing. Other ways to promote reflection in the workplace include deploying development review surveys, emailing reflection questions and creating discussion groups where people can share their thoughts and questions with the team.
4. Reward continuous learning.
Leaders can motivate employees through formal reward systems. For instance, organizations can incentivize learning through gamification, where badges, points, leaderboards and community involvement can be motivational springboards for your workforce. Healthy competition among peers is one way to fuel training completions.
It’s also important for leaders to communicate the value of learning and how it will benefit their employees and organization. Measure the impacts of training, and make those who actually improve performance stand out. If individuals show interest in expanding their skill sets and network, help finance their training or participation at conferences and events where they could even represent your company.
5. Give meaningful and constructive feedback.
Receiving and giving meaningful feedback will accelerate people’s learning and development. It is common for managers to avoid difficult conversations, so they end up providing more positive than negative feedback. Positive feedback is important for building the recipient's confidence and reinforcing good behavior. However, receiving constructive feedback that addresses unwanted behaviors or missed goals can help your employee grow and develop professionally. Problems arise when employees don’t hear the feedback they need to improve. This means missed opportunities for leaders and the company. It is worth the effort for learning and development teams to coach and help leaders to learn how to properly praise and redirect employees.
Many aspects of a successful learning culture involve focusing on soft skills such as collaboration, reflection, curiosity, and communication. When you create a culture where employees are encouraged to exchange knowledge, give feedback, offer support and learn at their own pace, your workforce and organization will thrive.
