Providing opportunities for employees to develop new skills is essential for teams and businesses to thrive. Employees who are offered internal progression and professional development opportunities are more likely to stay with a business than those who are not, and training plays a large part in enabling internal mobility and boosting staff retention. Adopting and maintaining a culture of continuous learning is key to staying agile, relevant, and competitive.
So how do you ensure a culture of continuous learning?
1. Get buy-in from managers
To create a culture of continuous learning, training initiatives must be embraced by senior leadership and implemented by management. Managers are the secret, skill-building weapon, so enabling your managers to support their teams is a winning strategy.
2. Make learning social
Community-based learning connects learners to co-workers, peers, and experts to drive higher engagement and inspire skill building. This is a great way to make the most of social features on digital platforms such as messaging and online groups, as well as making space to ask questions during virtual instructor-led training. Since the beginning of the pandemic, LinkedIn has seen a 1,100% increase in people joining Learning Groups and a 225% increase in courses shared with a learner’s professional network. They’ve also seen a 121% increase in course Q&A participation. Employees have already adapted to gathering socially online. Implementing more social learning in your company culture is in line with how employees are already learning.
3. Blend it
Increase engagement and knowledge retention with a blending learning program. You could launch your learning program with a livestream workshop to maximise direct communication with employees, provide more detailed, modular training through a series of e-Learning modules and then wrap up the learning journey with an office learning day. Mixing up the content will keep your employees engaged and will increase learning equity between learners at home, in the office, and in the field or shop floor.
4. Lean into collaboration
Start a collective curriculum that your employees can add to and teach from. Skill swaps are a good example of democratised development where everyone has something to contribute and is learning continually. You could also create a peer-to-peer coaching ecosystem to ensure higher completion rates and learner confidence. For example, Google has the Googler-to-Googler (g2g) program, a volunteer teaching network of over 7,000+ Google employees dedicating a portion of their time to helping their peers learn and grow.
5. Make it relevant
It will be tempting to make efficiency a major driving force when fostering a culture of continuous learning, but management must recognise and prioritise what employees value. Host brainstorms and surveys, speak to employees individually to find out what they would most value learning about. What’s more, people learn best when they have to learn. Applying your knowledge to real-world situations strengthens your focus and determination to learn. Research what skills are becoming more important in your sector to create an engaging and relevant learning culture, which will also help future-proof your employees and set them up for success in the years to come.
Upskilling managers, making learning social and collaborative, and creating blended learning programs, you’ll start building a workforce that is skilled in the one thing all businesses need to thrive — the ability to learn.
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Author bio:
Creative training and learning consultancy.
At Quadmark, we deliver powerful learning solutions for your people, partners and customers. With a learner-centric approach, our training is designed for the best learner experience and outcomes.
Our tailored solutions support L&D, People, and Sales enablement teams to attract and retain talent, drive sales, and implement lasting change.