The Importance of Learning and Development in the Workplace

Intuitive and personalised, learning and development is a key asset today in a company’s organisational structure. From finding ways to motivate employees, enhancing their sense of personal growth and aligninging them with a company’s goals and values, there are numerous benefits of this division in a company today.

Even though, there is ‘no one size fits all’, approach for learning. There are four emerging enablers of engagement that can help organizations track their effectiveness appropriately. These are listed as:

Robust Learning Strategy - An empowering leadership, providing a strong narrative about the organization, where it’s come from, where it’s going and how Learning and Development contributes to it.

Strong Employee Voice - for reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally, employees are seen as central to the solution, and what they need to learn to move forward and take the organization forward.  

Develop a Learning Culture -A culture where learning is encouraged is key for the success of any growing organization.

Being People Focused - Engaging managers who treat their people as individuals and coach them. Learning and Development is a key division of Human Resources.

In organizations where training is considered a luxury item, employees rarely see the value and and have resisted participating in training sessions. Employees expect to repay that investment by helping the business continue to grow and increase its position in the market. However when learning and development is an intentional, integrated and necessary investment for the organisation, everybody wins! Organisations that have communicated a strong vision of where they are heading, what they wish to achieve and have an empowering leadership at the frontline, have seen greater success.

Along with having a robust strategy in place, creating a strong employee voice makes a big difference. As we have noticed that employees only remain engaged, if they feel that their contribution matters, that an organisation is investing in them, upscaling is taking place and they are being aligned through effective goal setting. In order for a business to stay relevant, investing in employees results in two possible outcomes one of which helps gauge loyalty as well as ensure a quality commitment to both external and internal stakeholders. 

Having an effective strategy and employee voice in place are definitely the first steps but creating a ‘learning culture’ should perhaps be at the core of an organisation’s structure. Across industries we have seen several market trends that are leading the way skilling is taking place. We must not overlook these, but incorporate them in our training sessions. For instance, understanding and utilizing the use of eLearning platforms. With eLearning platforms, in corporate training we not only now have greater reach with our employees, but opportunities to create and curate a wide range of segments as talking points for them. We can also now create awareness training on these platforms to address topics such as building good service, inclusiveness and building a solid company culture. The second market trend seems to be understanding and engaging millenials and bringing a sense of personalisation in the structure. Millenials want to quickly create impact, and want new information to be internalized and quickly translated into action. Finding a way to captivate their interest in better structured job descriptions, and understanding their needs is also an essential part of training today.

 As L & D professionals, we want to then push the boundaries of learning. We believe organisations need a strategy in place, a strong employee voice but also a learning culture that can reflect we are people focused. The right training and development can immensely enhance learning by nurturing talent and helping people to learn new things and improve their performance. Most people want to feel that they are doing a good job and that they are valued by their organization for the part they play. This can be done by giving employees incentives, and awarding them with the opportunity to grow, through training can be largely beneficial. In addition, very few people like to remain static in a work environment and prefer to have variety in their work and know the potential of their role.

We can see that globally organizations that have considered themselves one with a “ learning culture” enjoy the luxury of having employees who expect an investment in their development. It becomes an essential element to have a L&D department and Employment Training program for any learning organization and this must not be ignored just because of a budget constraint. Learning and Development provides a way to address all of these human needs and improves learning by leaps and bounds. Companies who invest in their people through learning and development are also viewed more favorably by employees than those in organizations who don’t. According to a study (2018), it was found that at present one of the top reasons that prospective employees choose a job over the other is career progression. Thus, organizations that are people focused majorly on employees and their development are seen as top choices by prospective employees. 

It may sound obvious but without this being made explicit, organizations run the risk of training being viewed as a chore instead of a reward.The answer is to link learning and development to specific objectives as discussed and the only way to make this work effectively is for managers to have a one-on-one conversation with their people about the purpose of training and how it can advance their career trajectory. 

Understanding the gap by conversing with your people about what they think they need and setting specific learning objectives is crucial at this stage. If this is done efficiently as well as effectively, learning and development will then accelerate and exhilarate employees to improve themselves. People will feel valued for their contribution and they will understand that the organization supports them to be the best that they can be.

Developing people and creating a strong learning culture in an organisation is, therefore undoubtedly the key to having an engaged workforce and achieving business success reflecting a company with a conscience.

Lets continue to build.........learning organisations.