Every Company In Every Industry Should Have Self-Improvement Spaces

Within two years of every single hire, one of three things happens.

1. People quit.
2. People plateau.
3. People make a change.

This is all about the last group of people. If you are not encouraging your employees to grow professionally (and personally) in quantifiable and tangible ways, then you aren’t doing your job. In fact, you’re actively damaging your business.

Tough words, but let’s look at what I’m talking about.

Bosses love talking about the importance of innovation and growth. But how do you expect someone to get better if all you are doing to help is telling them, “Get better”? You need to make self-improvement and innovation a daily part of the culture of your organization. It needs to be a priority right up there beside sales and delivery. I said that right. It can’t be a secondary priority. It has to be one of the top.

And you have to make it tangible. “Get better” means nothing. You need to give your employees the time, resources, and ideas of how to get better.

Create spaces for employee growth

If you are not encouraging your employees to grow professionally (and personally) in quantifiable and tangible ways, then you aren’t doing your job. In fact, you’re actively damaging your business.

Tough words, but let’s look at what I’m talking about.

Bosses love talking about the importance of innovation and growth, but how do you expect someone to get better if all you are doing to help is telling them, “Get better”? You need to make self-improvement and innovation a daily part of the philosophy of your organization. It needs to be a priority right up there alongside delivering to clients. I said that right. It can’t be a secondary priority. It has to be one of the top ones.

And you have to make it tangible. “Get better” means nothing. You need to give your employees the time, resources, and ideas of how to get better. Let’s look at some examples.

Example One: Continuous, Daily Learning

What if you gave every employee 1–2 hours a day to learn something new? What if you mandated it? Of your eight hour workday, people are really only productive for six of those hours. You aren’t losing anything by taking a 1–2 hours for professional self-improvement. If anything, by breaking up the monotonous day, you are improving productivity for the hours that you do devote to work. And that isn’t even mentioning all of the benefits you and your employees will get by all that learning.

1. Encourage free online courses such as those at edx.org or coursera.org.
2. Pay for classes at work during office hours such as language courses, exercise classes, or leadership workshops.

Example Two: Teaching and Learning

The absolute best way to learn and improve is by teaching. I can tell you that based on experience. So how else can your employees get better at what they do than by teaching it to someone else?

If you work in a digital agency with software engineers, designers, writers, managers, and salespeople, then each programmer should take 3–5 hours a week to prepare a lesson and teach it to another employee in the company. Same goes for each of the other positions. That also means that each employee is also getting 2–4 hours a week to learn something new. Imagine how great your designers will be by learning code. How great will your writers be by learning sales? And your salespeople if they learn management skills? It’s a win-win for them and for you.

Example Three: Innovation Lab

This one is different than the first example because it focuses on learning by doing. Give your employees 4–8 hours a week to work on their own projects. This obviously works best for those in creative industries, but I would encourage all industries to think hard about how they could apply it.

These “lab projects” will allow your employees to grow within their field. They will experiment with different techniques and trends and learn what works and what doesn’t. Not only will it put your people in an innovative frame of mind for the rest of their work, but it will probably open new avenues in your business that no one had ever thought of before. Your people grow and you grow.

Happy workers are those who feel their work is important.

All three of these examples make your priorities and values very clear to your teams. By knitting these habits into the very fabric of your company, you are telling your business that:

1. It is important to you that they grow.
2. You value them enough to make their growth your priority.
3. Their work is important enough to invest in.
4. You want them to feel creative, innovative, and ultimately happy with what they are doing and where they are going.

Investing in your employees’ self-improvement doesn’t have to be money that is thrown away . If you do it correctly, like in the examples above, then you will be building up a better qualified workforce and increasing the personal happiness and satisfaction that people feel about themselves and their jobs.

And that is how you innovate.