Building A Culture Of Continuous Learning In Your Organization
As the year comes to an end, many of us are starting to think about our New Year's resolutions or, in other words, the things we want to improve about ourselves. Often, companies and individuals have a common goal for the new year, which revolves around Learning and Development. But how does one go about creating a learning culture in their organization? In this article, we will discuss 6 strategies that can help your employees foster learning habits so that your New Year's resolutions make it from paper to reality.
6 Strategies To Help Your Employees Foster Learning Habits
1. Ensure Support From Leadership
Any learning initiative that hopes to achieve significant levels of success must have adequate support from the top. Leaders and executives are the first people who must appreciate the significance of learning and understand how it impacts their organization. But, most importantly, they must communicate these benefits and make sure that their support is visible and tangible. For example, they can make use of learning opportunities themselves, thus enhancing their own personal development in the process. This way, they will set an example for the rest of the organization and encourage a long-term commitment to learning.
2. Make Learning A Top Priority
Fostering learning habits requires more than just words of encouragement. It takes actions that will ensure that learning becomes an integral part of your company's culture. And that starts from the very first day an employee enters the workplace. When learning takes center stage during the onboarding process, new employees realize that they are now working for a company that truly values their professional development. Don't forget to pair learning opportunities with an understanding that training takes time. Make adjustments to your staff's workload and overall requirements so that they have the time necessary to invest in their development.
3. Provide Easy Access To Learning Resources
High-quality training requires high-quality material that you need to develop and make available to your staff. Invest in authoring tools and Learning Management Systems that will not only produce materials that perfectly adapt to your learning needs but also collect them in a single knowledge hub that all employees will have immediate access to at any time and from a variety of devices. Make sure to diversify learning resources and take advantage of several methods and techniques, such as written material, videos, podcasts, and articles, as well as mentoring and off-site training.
4. Align Learning With Performance
We often give employees feedback and pointers on their performance, but we rarely guide them to the specific resources that will help them improve. That can be frustrating for employees and also counterintuitive when trying to foster learning habits. Instead, try to directly align Learning and Development goals with organizational and performance objectives. This way, you can support your employees' learning journey without putting your organization's profitability on the back burner. Not to mention that this alignment can assist you in shaping the most suitable training pathways for each employee, depending on their current position and their long-term goals.
5. Involve Employees And Ask For Feedback
The best way to ensure that your employees will be engaged with learning is to involve them in the process and keep exchanging feedback. Start by asking them which skills they believe they need to develop, as well as what their learning preferences are. Once training has started, give them feedback on what they did well and what they need to improve. But also ask them what they thought of the training and what they would like done differently. Make sure to implement their suggestions so that they realize that they are in control of their learning journey.
6. Keep Track Of Progress
Monitoring how your team's learning journeys are progressing is very important for encouraging continuous learning within your organization. For one, it serves as proof for leadership that learning is making a real impact on organizational success. This way, executives will keep supporting learning initiatives and encouraging employees to take advantage of them. At the same time, the metrics and analytics you gather during this process help you give your employees a clear idea of how close they are to achieving the Learning and Development goals they have set for themselves.
Conclusion
Building a strong learning culture can have many positive outcomes for the success and growth of your organization. And, although many businesses will put learning high on their list of New Year's resolutions, there's no guarantee they will actually manage to help their employees foster learning habits. That is unless they follow the tips we shared in this article. Put the focus on creating a positive work environment that makes room for learning, and the next year will certainly bring you that much closer to creating the learning culture of your dreams.