We live in an era where technology is accelerating business growth and is innovating and changing every day. It can be hard to keep up with all the new developments. Therefore, it is vital to keep improving and striving to grow, as it is the only way to sustainably scale your business.
Creating and implementing a learning culture in your workplace is how you can keep up with all the new and innovative ways of working. A learning culture also helps your employees upskill, and reskill. According to recent statistics, about 74% of the employees believe that a company would be more appealing if it offered additional skill training to its staff.
Learning culture and its implementation is crucial for the growth of your company and it also helps in retention rates as about 86% of millennials believe in keeping a job that offers training and development.
So let’s dive into it.
What is A Learning Culture
A learning culture values and encourages knowledge building and knowledge sharing. It is a collection of organizational values and practices that promote the employees to develop knowledge and keep up with an active and continuous improvement cycle. A learning culture in the workplace is essential because it capitalizes on your employees’ potential and helps your business to grow.
A creative organization, like a technology company, will suffer the consequences of stunted growth if they don’t invest in building their culture. A firm unwilling to shed its old ways and improve is reluctant to grow. There are numerous benefits for organizations implementing a learning culture such as:
- Increased efficiency and productivity of the employees
- Increased employee satisfaction resulting in less turnover
- Ease in succession and transition
- A culture of acquiring and sharing knowledge
- An enhanced ability of workers to adapt to change
Let’s find out ways to create a learning culture in an organization.
How To Build A Learning Culture In Your Organization
According to the research conducted by CIPD, 98% of the learning practitioners wish to develop a positive culture for learning, but only 36% feel like they’ve developed one. Building a learning culture requires the employer to be patient, encouraging, and understanding.
Here is a list of ways you can promote and implement a learning culture in your organization.
- Active Learning
- Personalized Learning Plan And Career Coaching
- Lead By Example
- Create A Reward System
- Keep It Fun And Social
1. Active Learning
The most effective way to promote learning culture is through encouraging active learning. Support your employees in pursuing different educational programs to reduce their skill gap. Introduce a range of learning programs in the organization and encourage your employees to attend the programs to refine their skills. Empower your employees to personalize and choose their learning path and actively apply their learning at work. To successfully build a learning culture, make sure that your employees know that the leadership supports and encourages upskilling and knowledge-sharing.
At Genetech Solutions, we encourage everyone from our team to think about their career progression and the best example of this is one of our previous office help, he learned tech and networking basics and is now working as an IT assistant with us.
2. Personalized Learning Plan And Career Coaching
Help your employees in identifying their weak areas and encourage them to design their learning plans to improve their work skills. Provide your employees with career coaching, as most of the drive for learning stems from ambition.
Career coaching will help your employees identify career opportunities and it will motivate them to build learning plans and participate in relevant programs to further their own ambitions. For the team at Genetech Solutions, it works in the form of peer mentoring and finding outside mentors for our team members. We also focus on reskilling and upskilling our team members so that they can even change departments or their career trajectories. This helps in retaining excellent talent and finding the key skillset within the organization.
3. Lead By Example
Leading by example is always a good strategy. Promote a learning culture in your organization by actively enrolling in training programs. Set your own learning goals, be open to feedback, and reflect and own your mistakes. This practice promotes a sense of trust between the employer and employees and motivates the employees to also participate in different skill training programs to up their game.
4. Create A Reward System
Rewards can go a long way in supporting learning culture. Create and apply a reward system to motivate your employees to enroll in upskilling programs. The rewards can range from virtual rewards to financial incentives for learning success.
The main motive of enacting a reward system recognizes a learner’s success. Rewards support and help develop a learning culture. At Genetech, we have implemented the idea and thank-you awards to encourage our team.
5. Keep It Fun And Social
Learning can be achieved without your employees feeling they are back at school. Try to promote healthy and active learning by keeping it fun and casual. Do not pressurize your employees to participate in training programs by making it mandatory. Instead, encourage them to join for their own skill development.
The Dos And Don’ts Of Creating A Learning Culture
So what are the dos and don’ts of a learning culture? Let’s find out.
Do Explore Different Learning and Development Methods
From traditional classroom-based learning to e-learning, choose what works for your team and employees. Find ways to improve your internal knowledge-sharing by introducing speaker sessions and sharing short content, especially in video format with your teams. Starting an internal newsletter or podcast can also work well in some cases.
Do Commit To Upskilling And Reskilling
By definition, upskilling means acquiring new skills and knowledge, while reskilling means enhancing and updating your employees’ skills to move them to new roles. Recruiting and rehiring are expensive, so use upskilling and reskilling to boost your employees’ performance instead of maxing out the hiring budget.
Do Promote Creating Learning Plans
Creating learning plans is always a good idea. As an employer, you can motivate your employees to create learning plans for themselves. The plan allows them to acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses and create a plan that encourages them to sharpen every tool in their shed. Personalized learning plans that are specifically designed to cater to the individual needs of your employees will help in building an effective learning culture in your organization.
Don’t Copy Your Competitors.
Try not to copy and iterate your rival companies’ L&D program as it will be more harmful than beneficial. Other companies’ learning plans are designed to cater to their employees and will not be helpful or beneficial in promoting and enacting a learning culture in your organization.
Don’t Forget Your Gig Workers.
Most companies forget to include the gig worker when introducing learning culture in their organization. While organizations cannot mandate required training for non-employees, you can create optional training programs for gig workers to participate in. Make sure you don’t overlook this group of workers and provide them with an equal chance at skilling up and growing.
Don’t Give Up!
Learning culture cannot be ingrained overnight. It will take a lot of hard work. You will have to regroup, rescale, rebuild your learning programs to accommodate your employees better. Your L&D team is not the only one responsible for creating a learning culture in your workplace. You would have to encourage each of your employees to participate in active learning.
Best Practices For Creating A Learning Culture In Workplace
Learning culture isn’t developed overnight. It takes work, dedication, and time. The first step is to ask yourself where you stand as an organization and what are some of the areas where your organization needs improvement? Once you identify your strengths and weaknesses, create a plan around it and try to fill the skill gaps by actively implementing practices to promote a learning culture.
Some of the practices that can help you create a learning culture in the workplace are:
- Leaders Should Embrace Learning
- Create An Environment Of Healthy Competition
- Publicize Results
- Allow Time For Off Learning
1. Leaders Should Embrace Learning
Leading by example is the most effective strategy out there and helps improve work culture. Leaders should promote a learning culture by actively embracing and participating in learning activities at the workplace. Leaders should also actively show interest in employees’ growth and provide opportunities for upskilling and sharing of ideas. Strive for excellence together to create a sense of unity and team-building for your employees.
2. Create An Environment Of Healthy Competition
A little competition has never hurt anybody, right? If companies want to succeed, they need to keep an eye out for all their rival companies and what they are doing right. This will help the company to innovate new ideas to try and pull ahead of its competitors. Having industry-based goals often spurs employees to figure out creative ways to close the gaps and improve work culture.
3. Publicize Results
Sharing a learner’s experience can go a long way in motivating your employees. Sharing these stories helps to highlight value-adding opportunities, inspiring employees to participate. The leaders can share their struggles and experiences with their employees and encourage them to learn from those mistakes. The practice motivates the employees to be better learners.
4. Allow Time For Off Learning
Technology businesses have it rough as technology is growing every day. New developments and programs are coming up every day, but it is difficult for employees to take time out for learning in an already packed schedule. Leaders should encourage and allow employees to take time off to participate in workshops, conferences, and other learning experiences that will enable them to develop new skills and refine the ones they already have.
Conclusion
Our company, Genetech Solutions, believes that growth and prosperity are impossible without practicing active learning. We encourage our employees to enroll in different knowledge-building programs and workshops actively and strive to create a healthy learning culture in the workplace.
We hope you enjoyed this article and we have convinced you to implement or improve the learning culture at your organization. Feel free to contact us if you have any queries or need consultation!