How A Learning Culture Transforms Business
Learning needs to be elevated to being a strategic asset
By Shelley Osborne, Head of L&D, Udemy
Helping employees gain skills and providing career development often take a back seat to business priorities more directly tied to revenue, but workplace learning has never been more critical than it is right now. And given the accelerating pace of workplace transformation, the need for continual upskilling will surely increase too.
To keep up, however, companies have to do much more than roll out additional training programs. That’s just more of the same old thing. Instead, they need to nurture a true learning culture.
When learning is elevated to being a strategic asset, it can drive the business ahead and deliver a competitive edge.
Learning, not Training
In a learning culture, learning is woven into employees’ daily routine. Learning doesn’t interrupt work, and the L&D team doesn’t dictate when training takes place. Instead, L&D facilitates in-the-moment learning and promotes the value of a growth mindset among the entire workforce.
To move learning culture from concept to reality, companies need to have a healthy culture to begin with, where employees feel safe asking for educational resources on hard and soft skills alike. For example, my company recently conducted research into workplace distractions and found that, while distractions cause stress and disengagement, 66% of employees have never spoken to a manager about the problem.
This didn’t come as a surprise to me. In too many organizations, I’ve seen requests for skills training get employees flagged as possibly underperforming and managers who push back because they think “training” should happen outside regular work time. In an open learning culture, however, it’s a good thing when people ask for help. It means they want to get better at their jobs and become more valuable contributors.
Senior leaders need to model this behavior by going public with their own upskilling needs and by evangelizing the power of continuous learning. At my company, we’ve also established a monthly Drop Everything And Learn (DEAL) hour, when every person in the organization focuses on our core value of learning.
Close Your Own Skills Gap
It’s time-consuming and expensive to hunt for candidates with specific skill sets, and with unemployment at historic lows, the competition is fierce for qualified applicants. Plus, there are costs associated with onboarding and the productivity lag as a new hire can take as long as 90 days to be fully performing in their role.
All the while, the world is moving on, technology is evolving, and processes are changing; that job you just hired for may have changed already too.
It just makes sense to upskill the people you already have, but you won’t get the results you want if learning only happens in reactive mode. In a learning culture, where employees are continuously maintaining and growing their skill sets and even pursuing cross-functional training, it’s a lot easier to move talent around where it’s needed.
Drive Innovation
Just as individuals can’t let their skill sets grow stagnant, companies have to keep moving forward too. Without in-house expertise in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and data science, organizations will lose their edge. Whatever capabilities people have when they join your team, they’ll still need to keep technical skills current over time while also developing and fine-tuning the soft skills that can’t be automated.
Innovation can’t happen when workers struggle to stay ahead of workplace transformation.
Giving employees the freedom to learn whatever they need, and letting them do it whenever and however they choose, can bring out their creativity too. Employees are more likely to experiment and innovate when relevant training is right at their fingertips.
Letting workers learn across functions is another way to bring fresh perspectives and ideas into your organization.
Attract Adaptable Learners and Younger Workers, too
Job applicants may be dazzled by fancy snacks, beer on tap, and pawternity leave, but will that keep them motivated and engaged over time? Will those perks bring out their best work and deepen their commitment to your company mission?
Recent research shows younger workers, in particular, aren’t seduced by flashy perks; when weighing their options, they’d rather join a mission-driven company that offers ample career development and opportunities to learn and try new things. Gen Z (just entering the workforce now) and millennials (some of whom may already be in management positions) aren’t interested in doing a job just to pick up a paycheck, and that’s great news. But it puts the onus on employers to deliver meaningful work and growth opportunities.
My own company’s approach to career development is to encourage introspection, goal setting, and mentorship. We’ve designated the entire month of May as “career month” to get people thinking hard about their aspirations and open up conversations around next steps.
Boost Retention, Keep Institutional Knowledge
People don’t expect to stay in the same role indefinitely. They’re looking to employers for career development, and if they don’t get it, they will go elsewhere to find it. When they leave, they take their skills and knowledge with them, putting companies even further behind the curve.
My company’s research backs up the connection between learning-driven corporate cultures and employee retention. Our 2016 Workplace Boredom report found that disengaged workers are 2.5 times more likely to quit, and 64% said the lack of opportunity to learn is the top reason they’re bored. What would make them stay? Eighty percent agreed that “being given opportunities to learn new skills at work would make me more interested and engaged in my job.”
Companies that recruit, nurture, and develop motivated learners will benefit from their ability to adapt to new job demands. Otherwise, they’ll need to continually swap out workers whose skills are obsolete and engage in costly, competitive candidate searches. Good learners make for good leaders too.
That’s how learning enables companies to reach their business goals: by engaging their best, most motivated workers; helping workers build their careers within the organization; and equipping workers with the knowledge and opportunities they need to innovate and achieve on the company’s behalf.
This article originally appeared on HR.com.
