If each of the members of your team is aligned with the goals of your business, then you are well on your way to success. It is important that you are fully conversant with your company values, your product, customer base, mission, structure and conventions, amongst other things. The problem – if you are a growing organisation – is how do you make sure that every member of staff is being given the knowledge that they need? This is where the right workplace learning culture can really pay off.
Developing the right learning culture in the workplace requires some time and effort, but when this is put in place, the long-term result is that it can deliver.
What is a workplace learning culture?
A learning culture refers to the strong emphasis that a business might put on actively working to make sure that employees are conversant with its values, practises, skill sets, beliefs, and conventions. This makes sure that all employees can gain the abilities and knowledge that they require if they are to perform to the best of their ability, make sure that customers are happy and help your business to grow.
Why is a workplace learning culture important?
A learning culture can have an impact on every area of your company’s business, from your productivity to your retention levels. A recent study recent study that looked at the value that might be had from employee training indicated that 84% of employees in those organisations that performed the best are receiving training. This was in comparison to just 16% in those companies considered to be the worst-performing. In addition, another study found that 94% of employees felt that when the company they worked for invested in development and training, this was more likely to make them stay in the role for longer. This is why a good workplace learning culture is so important. It helps your business to grow.
How can you build a learning culture?
The first step towards building a learning culture is to look at anything that you already have in place and see where there are weaknesses and learning gaps. In order to initiate a great learning culture, you need to critically analyse what you already have and build it back up better. Research how you can improve what you are already doing and create a strategy that will help you to do this.
1. Plan what you want your employees to learn
Some of the learning you do will be more informal, but you should still have a structure for any formal learning you want to put in place. This might be things like codes of conduct or product knowledge training – these are things that you will need to plan in full detail so your employees can undertake the learning they need.
This will help you to put a baseline in place across your business that will ensure that everyone has access to the same resources, and this will allow you to measure the impact.
2. Empower any subject matter experts
One big problem many businesses encounter is how to give the information they have to their employees. When you use a subject matter expert, they will be able to put together relevant content for your employees.
3. Ask your employees what they want to learn
Your employees are a vital part of your business, so consult with them about your workplace learning culture. They may have some ideas that you hadn’t thought about.
4. Ensure training is accessible
Make your training easy to access, or your employees just won’t want to do it. This should not only be easy to access but user friendly and well thought out. Give them plenty of notice of the types of training you will be running.
5. Make learning a top priority
If you want to build a learning culture that your project team can really benefit from, then you need to make sure it is part of the workplace routine from the day people start. Training should be offered from the beginning. This could be courses, mentoring, and anything else you feel they might need and one important thing you will learn during training for project managers training for project managers is that you need to ensure that you set aside time, no matter how busy you are, to ensure that this happens.
You should also think about different learning methods that could work for you. Remember, different people learn in different ways, so mixing a range of different methods will help you to provide a better learning culture that will help more employees.
6. Create a resources library
Collating a collection of resources will help you to have something for your employees whenever they need it. You can choose how you collect all of the information you want in the library, ensuring that it is the most useful format for your company.
Other things you may want to consider in order to create a great workplace learning culture include:
• Integrating learning into everyday work life
• Make learning a more social event
• Make learning fun
• Ensure that you actively promote learning
• Make knowledge sharing a habit
• Reward learning
• Keep the learning process continuous
• Ensure that leadership is linked to the learning culture
• Offer feedback
In short, the simple answer is that if you put the right work in, then a workplace learning culture can be a truly wonderful thing for your organisation. But you do have to put the work in to ensure that what you are offering actually adds value, do not just put together a few quick training sessions and think that they will suffice on their own. Use some of those project management qualifications project management qualifications to help you plan out exactly what you want to deliver. You may find that this is one of those tasks that you can use software geared towards project management software geared towards project management to help you ensure you have everything you want in place.
