5 ways to foster a learning culture in your organisation
It’s a phrase that’s thrown around a lot in corporate-land: a ‘culture of continuous learning’. Heralded as the key strategy for savvy organisations looking to future-proof their workforce, it marks a shift from traditional paradigms, towards a more dynamic model, where employee growth and organisational success are intertwined.
But what does cultivating a learning culture actually entail? And why should your organisation strive to achieve it?
Why aim for a learning culture?
A learning culture ensures that your workforce remains dynamic and ever-improving. It takes note of the fact that the workplace isn’t static —the challenges and requirements of roles are shifting at an ever-growing rate— but also, the people in the workplace are living, breathing, growing individuals.
While this may sound like it’s focused around improving employee engagement, it actually goes a lot deeper than that. IBM released a report that really outlined the true value of employee training for organisations: in the best performing organisations, 84% of employees were receiving ongoing training needed for their roles. In the worst-performing companies? Only 16% of employees were receiving training.
So it’s pretty clear that building this culture of continuous learning is important, and beneficial for business success. Not only does it keep team members engaged and fulfilled, it acts as a magnet to help you attract top talent from outside your organisation too.
But best of all, it improves your capacity to keep and grow relevant, in-demand skillsets in-house —lowering the need for outside hiring of critical roles in a competitive talent market, and giving your company a competitive edge.
How to build a culture of continuous learning
Provide training and development opportunities
This one may seem obvious, but it’s also foundational. It all starts with actually providing your team with training and development opportunities. This might look like providing them with access to online resources to learn autonomously, or PD budgets —or booking courses for your team to attend.
Whatever your option, a culture of learning starts with making learning accessible.
Give employees time to commit to training
It’s not just about the training itself; employees need the time and mental space to dedicate to learning. This is known as psychological safety in the workplace. People can’t (and won’t) seek out new skills when their to-do list is never-ending, their lunch breaks are spent catching up on emails, or their calendar is back-to-back meetings from 8-5.
To truly engage with learning, it needs to be prioritised —and the company needs to help employees to create time and space to prioritise it.
Build internal knowledge sharing platforms
A great way to build a culture of learning is to take a look at all the skills you’ve got in-house already —and encourage subject matter experts to share the love!
From company lunch-and-learns to impromptu tips and tricks, build platforms and ways for your people to share their ideas, skills and knowledge.
Facilitate cross-functional teams and projects
One of the best ways to help teams stay engaged and upskilling is to foster collaboration between teams and team members with different skill sets. Cross-functional projects allow employees to step out of their usual roles and gain new perspectives, building a broader understanding of the organisation’s operations. This exposure to diverse skill sets and problem-solving approaches promotes innovative thinking and continuous learning.
By breaking down silos and promoting a collaborative spirit, you create an environment where knowledge is shared freely, and learning becomes an integral part of everyday work life.
Make it core competency, and a top priority
Learning, like anything else, is a skill. To truly foster a culture of continuous learning, it’s essential to prioritise learning as a core competency within your organisation. This means making it a fundamental part of your hiring process and a key expectation for both new hires and existing team members.
When recruiting, look for candidates who demonstrate a commitment to personal and professional growth. For current employees, emphasise the importance of ongoing education and skill development as critical components of their roles. By embedding learning into your company’s core values and performance metrics, you signal its importance and ensure that it remains a consistent focus.
What role do team leaders play?
In short: a big one. Without the buy-in and direction from top management, these tips and this learning culture won’t be able to seed into the culture and grow in the long term. Outside of the obvious and tactile elements like ensuring adequate resourcing is allocated for training and development, leaders also need to help drive this change culturally.
Team leaders need to lead from the front. By actively keeping their own skills up to date, and engaging with professional development themselves, and showing it to be a business priority, team leaders can show their team what it looks like to prioritise learning.
What’s more, leaders can help to reinforce this transformation by embedding learning into rewards and recognition programs. Monthly learning goals or friendly team learning competitions can help to make learning fun and feel like a core competency of people’s jobs —as opposed to ‘just another thing to be done’ in a busy schedule.
By putting fun and friendly goals around learning and development, it sends the signal that learning is important —just like sales targets, quotas and other performance measures.
Want to give your team a leg up on learning?
At Bespoke, we’re ready to help you make cloud learning a core component of your team’s day-to-day. From cloud fundamentals to advanced specialities, we’ve got options for both individual and team-wide training, as well as a friendly team on hand to help you build the right learning path for your organisation’s goals.
If you’re ready to take the first step towards a culture of continuous learning, get in touch with our team today or browse our training directory. Build future-ready skills in-house and increase your team engagement —train your team in cloud today.
