The fact is that a business environment covers so many wide-ranging disciplines, we’ve got to focus on the aspects that underpin it. Whether you are looking to create a successful marketing strategy or push your business into new and exciting territories, the one thing that provides a foundation to everything is the culture. But as far as the development of knowledge is concerned, a learning culture is one that values and encourages learning in your environment. It is an investment to provide many benefits for your organization. So what steps can we take to ensure that workplace learning is embedded as part of your business culture?
Make Learning a Key Organizational Value
If we want to build a learning culture, it’s not about telling our employees that they have to start doing it, but we’ve got to make sure they feel that the people in positions of power are supporting this. And this is why we need to make learning a core value. The fact is that when you want to start bringing in reactive measures to help your business, from the signs of a phishing scam to cyber security awareness training, when we commit to learning via developing core values, these will guide the actions our business makes. Because by committing to learning, our company is making a solid commitment to giving employees the resources to learn better.
Focus on Personalized Plans
Part of the issue in helping our employees develop is that we expect them to fit in with our approach to learning. But relevancy is more important than ever in the modern world. This is why personalized plans and even personalized career coaching can help our employees to achieve their goals. Setting specific goals and a plan that your employer can achieve on their own merit means they will naturally become more engaged in the learning process. We can think that learning is all about completing a course, however, it’s about bringing an awareness of the big picture and supporting your employees so they can explore the available resources and identify opportunities.
Providing the Right Environment
Everybody learns differently. And this is why we have to recognize that if we are going to engage employees, we’ve got to meet them on their terms. It’s not just about the learning which people can do in-between meetings and tasks, but it’s also about ensuring that your employees can use resources that are easy to pick up and put down that can facilitate sharing and interaction. Everybody learns in methods that are unique to them. Some are auditory learners, some are kinaesthetic, and not many benefit from sitting down and actually reading from a textbook. So the right learning environment is going to give them the right support and the means to retain information better, which they can apply into their working environment more effectively.
Providing Rewards
One of the key aspects of building a great culture in a working environment is to reward employees appropriately. But when you introduce the right rewards, they can support a learning culture. Rewards don’t have to be monetary or material. In fact, soft rewards such as recognizing a learner’s success can be enough to give them the confidence necessary to build up their attitudes towards learning. But also, financial incentives can always give people that motivation. It’s important to remember that in an environment where people are constantly craving financial rewards, you will have to test their knowledge in some way to ensure that they have retained the information. One of the best approaches is to give them the means to implement what they’ve learned into their roles. Because half of the problem is when people learn things that they feel they need to learn, the incentive to implement it is not there, but also there is no need for them to incorporate it into their working lives.
Encourage Sharing Knowledge
Knowledge is such a vital part of creating a culture towards learning. Because learning doesn’t just have to take place in a formal environment but can take place in informal and social circles. We can learn in environments where we aren’t necessarily meant to. We’re always absorbing information and if you are looking to create a strong learning culture, if employees are encouraged to share, this will improve everybody’s abilities to learn but it also goes even further into the fabrics of the business because your employees are actually engaging with each other.
Lead by Example
One of those common pieces of advice being batted around in business is that you need to lead by example and show that you are dedicated to the business. If you can show you’re dedicated to learning, especially your own learning (inside and outside the business), this is going to positively reinforce the culture of learning. And you can do this yourself by setting learning goals or talking about training you’ve undertaken outside of the working environment. But additionally, it’s about showing how you learn from mistakes. Because learning is not just about qualifications and diplomas. Learning is about being able to understand where you can progress from here.
Bring Learning Into the Hiring Process
One of the best ways to get in on the ground floor is to hire individuals who have a growth mindset. This will mean you are helping to embed it at a very early stage but it also means that you will become more attractive as an employer because people want that creativity and freedom to express themselves. Companies that have a strong learning culture tend to have high-performing individuals. It’s a discussion you need to have especially as you can ascertain the right individuals through the interview process.
If you want to create a culture of learning in your organization, your employees need to feel that they are part of something bigger. You want them to be engaged to develop themselves, and this is why creating an effective training program is one aspect but, more importantly, you’ve got to look at it on a cultural level.