Cultivating a learning culture in your organisation

A learning culture is important in every workplace. It cultivates the necessary agility and competitive edge to ensure that organisations can grow, sustain performance and keep up with the constant shifts that occur in the world of work. 

The picture I have selected for the article really resonated for me because of the truth it represents. To be a strong contender requires a lot of work and energy to happen behind the scenes. A learning culture represents the hard work required to be like the powerful iceberg that stands firm no matter what. For todays article I will not be focusing on the factors that indicate that you have a learning culture but more on how and why you should be cultivating this culture.  

A learning culture is one that values and encourages learning. Developing a culture that supports learning is an investment in the present and future. A learning culture importantly helps you capitalize on your employees' potential.

The inability to keep up, anticipate and rapidly respond to the changing needs of your customers signals the death blow for any organisation. It is na?ve to think that a strong product or your present market share is sufficient to always keep you successful and relevant. The experiences of many now defunct organisations bears witness to this.

So what does a learning culture mean. The following are key elements:

1. Future, external orientated: This is about being aware of the market changes and always factoring them in. Progressive organisations are constantly assessing the elements impacting their business (political, environmental, social, technological, economic, and legislative for example). This is a great starting point but remember that this information must be shared with employees to create context and buy in. 

2. Free exchange and flow of information: Communication is often a key missing ingredient in organisations. Even the most well thought out strategy that aligns perfectly with trends, changes as well as present and future needs are not effectively transitioned into action if it is not clearly, timeously, and consistently communicated to all employees at all levels in the business. A combination of what’s on the go and why and what’s in it for us all communication is important. This coupled with listening to your staff and the rumblings in your space and responding to it is a winning combination for information flow.   

3. Commitment to learning and personal development: Creating a love of learning and personal development is a necessary ingredient. Ensuring that learning commitments are kept not only by the employee but also the employer are important. This is displayed by ensuring that personal development plans are in place, adhered to by employees, management, and the business as a whole and that all parties are held accountable for learning and personal development. Employers regarding learning as an obligation and compliance exercise cultivates resentment and resistance in employees. It sabotages cultivating a commitment to ongoing learning (both formal and informal) or ensuring that employees align their learning with growing the business.    

4. Valuing people: Valuing people involves including their personal development needs into the needs of the business and cultivating a we’re in it together type of culture. A proper, robust discussion around development plans is not often held in organisations with managers completing this simply as a tick exercise and employees not fully understanding the link between their development with that of the business. Remember valued employees are fully engaged.     

5. Climate of openness and trust: This is cultivated by honest and ongoing communication as well as encouraging employees to apply newly learnt skills and expertise without fear of reprisals  

6. Learning from experience: Debriefing mistakes and lessons learnt is important. Encouraging employees to apply newly learnt skills in the business is often a forgotten element of training roll outs. Further this causes employer’s hesitation, to roll out training, if no value add is experienced back at the workplace. Learning programmes done as a formal requirement without ensuring application of learnt skills, assessment of value achieved and as required modifying approach for further training rollouts is an absolute must. Proper outputs and skill application! 

7. Changing your workplace culture to one that supports learning: This is not something that happens overnight however there are actionable steps you can take to move in the right direction. Here are 9 actionable ways to develop a culture of learning in your workplace:

Make Learning A Core Organizational Value

This shows employees that employers are fully committed to learning. 

Core values drive decision making and guide the actions organizations make. 

Committing to learning also means your company is making a commitment to provide the resources necessary to support employee Learning and Development.

Develop Personalized Learning Plans

Setting learning goals and strategically developing a plan to achieve them makes employees  more engaged in the process of learning. 

This creates a focus on the big picture and supporting your employees to help them reach their career goals.

Give Personalized Career Coaching

Many learning motivations stem from career ambitions. 

When organizations offer one-on-one coaching, they can help individuals identify career opportunities and develop personalized learning plans. 

Coaching, in particular, can also be an effective way to guide self-directed learning in the right direction, explore available resources, and hold your learners accountable.

Lead By Example

Organizational leaders at all levels are often in an influential position. 

If you are engaged and dedicated to your own continuous learning, it reinforces a learning culture. 

Some ways you can do this are by setting your own learning goals, talking about training you’ve taken, being willing and open to corrections and feedback, and reflecting on mistakes made.

Provide The Right Rewards

When introduced right, rewards can go a long way in supporting building a learning culture. These may be soft rewards like publicly recognizing a learner’s success or hard rewards like financial incentives. 

Providing badges and other virtual rewards for learning success for example work fantastically and create healthy competition . The rewards don’t need to be expensive, but ideally, you will want to provide a form of rewards to support learning efforts and develop a culture of learning.

Have The Right Learning Environment

The learning environment your organization uses should both facilitate and support learning. 

It should be easy to use and provide the opportunity for knowledge sharing and interaction between learners.

Encourage Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing is a big part of creating a learning culture. 

Informal learning and social learning are a big part of learning. When employees are encouraged and rewarded for sharing knowledge, they will be more engaged in learning. This, in turn, helps build a strong learning culture.

Ingrain Learning In Your Hiring Process

Start having discussions about your learning commitments during interviews with your candidates. 

This will not only help you attract candidates who have a growth mindset, but it will also make you more attractive as an employer.

Create A Meaningful Training Program

Your employees need to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. When they are engaged on a higher level, it supports your efforts to build a learning culture. 

Having support on this journey always makes it easier . We are professionally accredited and experienced coaches , mentors, business development experts and learning  facilitators who are geared to assist you and  have over twenty years of experience in the area of personal , professional and organisational growth. 

We  focus on ensuring a proper return on investment being achieved on all our  interventions and alignment of the programmes you roll out to the unique needs of your organisation and its specific culture.

Let’s have a conversation to see how we can help you. 

Much love

Cultivating a learning culture in your organisationPumani