It’s time to make the right space for learning.

Learning is a fundamental part of the value of work. Just 'doing L&D' isn't enough - we need to rethink how to do it right.

What is it that motivates people to do their best work?

To strive beyond the reasonable to do their best, and to create an impact?

To remain engaged with, and loyal to a workplace?

It’s the love of learning.

And the workplace often isn’t living up to the promise.

To ram the point home, look at these statistics:

• 60% of people feel emotionally detached from their work?(Gallup: State of the Workplace Report)
• 69% of employees claim to be putting more effort in developing their skills than pre-pandemic?(McKinsey)
• Investment in professional development is shown to increase engagement by 15% and retention by 34%?(HBR)
• 36% of employees have highlighted that frequent remote working has decreased their opportunities for mentorship and guidance at work?(Stanford)

The need for workplaces to act as centres of learning and development has never been greater. Learning has never been more essential for productivity, for effectiveness, for employee loyalty.

And yet it is not unusual, in these pressured times, to find large numbers of employees reporting that?the time they are allowed to dedicate to learning has been?decreased?over the last year.

In the last few weeks of research, we’ve encountered not a few businesses forecasting a?decrease?in L&D budgets per head for 2024.

Something about L&D isn’t working.

Creating a better space for L&D.

Our new venture LookUP sits at the intersection between strategic problem-solving, cultural change and L&D. That’s meant a lot of conversations in the last few weeks with senior leaders about their L&D initiatives.

They’ve revealed a landscape of?extreme variances.

On the one hand, we’ve found teams deeply investing, both financially and emotionally, in inspiring their teams in new and focused ways. Using learning experiences to bring teams together, to solve problems, and to think differently.

On the other, we’ve found some?rather more ambiguous attitudes to learning. We’ve heard a lot of references to online platforms and resources that look promising but sit unused. To the ticking of multiple capability and issue-based boxes, without really cutting through on any front. To a gulf between learning that makes sense on the paper, and the real day-to-day working experience of Business-As-Usual.

At LookUP, we’re taking everything we’ve heard, and applying it to our work. We don’t think about ourselves primarily as an L&D business, but as an inspiration and effectiveness business – but learning is essential to everything we are doing.

Here are the three key learnings we’re taking to heart…

1.????Urgency is everything.

Everything in psychological research and coaching methodology indicates that if you drastically reduce the time between learning and application, you drastically increase the chances that new thinking and behaviours will be take root.

It’s all too easy to keep ‘learning in theory’ separate from ‘solving in practice.’ In reality, they should be two sides of the same coin.

Learning shouldn’t be set adrift on its own calendar and its own timeline – it should be?built into the flow of work on your most important tasks.

Build learning processes?into?your critical events: your biggest transformation plans, your most important pitches, your major client relationships. That way they will happen, they will show impact, and they will change hearts and minds.

2.????Learning is collective, and cultural.

People are unique, they learn in different ways, and at different times. This is a truth that has shaped L&D, as it has shaped other disciplines like marketing, into an on-demand, personalised, bite-sized discipline.

But for a large number of learning use cases, it’s almost certainly incredibly misleading. In most workplaces,?behaviour change isn’t individual – it’s collective. The embedding or otherwise of new behaviours will be relentlessly shaped by habit and social proof. And that means that learning together is particularly powerful.

If you are introducing new concepts and ways of thinking into a business, the most powerful way is to choreograph a moment through which many people learn them at the same time.

It’s ultimately the peer support, challenge and reinforcement that will enable positive behaviour change in your organisation. Culture change and L&D shouldn’t be different things –?they should be the same thing.

3.????Learning depends on the space you make.

Budgets are essential. But money alone isn’t enough.

It’s a pressurised marketplace, and many of the next generation of talent coming through are desperate to show their worth, and their commitment, so they can progress. The feel the need to show output, to show they are working at full stretch. Learning time is being deprioritised.

And when it comes to learning and development,?time and focus are absolutely pivotal.?Good learning isn’t fast food, bolted down in your lunch break. It is a reflective, patient process. It needs space, and it needs prioritisation.

One of the best things you can do as a leader is to indicate that learning is prioritised. To make it visible, and to lead by example. It should be a top tier leadership priority, not just in your budget, but in your calendar.

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If you want to build the right space for learning in your business, LookUP can help. Contact [email protected] and [email protected]