In the workplace, we often talk about how to find and retain great talent, but what about nurturing the talent we already have? Creating a continuous learning culture within your workplace can help elevate your employees from impressive to outstanding.
Let’s look at what a continuous learning culture might entail and how you can create one.
What is continuous learning?
Lots of people engage in continuous learning without ever giving it a name. It’s an approach to life that prioritizes learning new skills throughout your life rather than only during school or college. For example, you might learn carpentry in your 30s or pick up a new language during retirement.
Within the workplace, a continuous learning culture actively motivates employees to upgrade their skills, share knowledge and experience, and challenge themselves to grow professionally.
Both professional and personal continuous learning can have great benefits. Continuous learning in your personal life brings new opportunities, increases happiness, and can even reduce the risk of dementia in later life. And a culture of continuous learning can be just as valuable to businesses and other organizations.
Why continuous learning in the workplace is key
Continuous learning in the workplace isn’t just about ticking the continued professional development (CPD) box during an annual performance review. It offers meaningful benefits to organizations and employees alike.
Attracting great talent
When you want to fill an important role, you probably want to recruit someone who is knowledgeable, dedicated, curious, and open to new ideas. Those are also the characteristics of someone who wants continuous learning in the workplace.
One Deloitte survey found that people rate “opportunity to learn” as one of their top reasons for taking a job. If you want to attract these individuals, you need to give them the learning and training opportunities they need to thrive.
Increasing employee engagement and retention
Once you have that great talent, a continuous learning culture helps you keep them around. In a LinkedIn survey of 2,400 professionals, 20% said that a lack of continual learning opportunities would be the biggest reason for them to leave their current job.
The desire for continuous learning seems especially strong for Generation Z and Millennials. Deloitte found that 29% of workers in these two groups chose their current employer because of the learning and development opportunities.
Within their current roles, continuous learning helps employees feel engaged, enthusiastic, and focused. 80% of people believe that continuous learning adds purpose to their working lives. This increased sense of meaning improves employee engagement.
Improving productivity
Given that learning and development help organizations source great talent and keep it, it will come as no surprise that a better continuous learning culture is associated with better productivity. These companies have recruited the best people and are investing in getting the best from them.
Continuous learning in the workplace pays dividends for employers. Companies with continuous learning cultures are 92% more likely to innovate, and their teams are 37% more productive.
How to promote a continuous learning culture
Creating a culture of continuous learning within your organization is clearly worth the effort, but how do you start? Here are some valuable steps you can take.
Showcase your commitment to continuous learning during recruitment
Showing your commitment to continuous learning during the recruitment process is a great way to focus your leadership team on setting concrete goals for training and development from the very start of the hiring process.
Emphasizing your learning opportunities will also help attract employees who value continuous learning and are keen to grow within your organization. It can also inspire existing team members to focus more on upskilling as they witness their new coworkers’ enthusiasm and growth.
Make resources available and easily accessible
A simple step to encourage more continuous learning in the workplace is to remove any barriers or friction for employees trying to access it. Provide plenty of learning resources, but, most importantly, make sure that they are easily accessible.
Consider having a single location for all training and development resources and be vocal about it. This ensures all employees know where to look for information.
Ideally, resources should also be available offsite and outside of working hours. Some team members will want to pursue continuous learning in their own time. For example, short training materials could be used when employees are traveling to and from work or have brief gaps between meetings.
Encourage employees to share knowledge
Continuous learning shouldn’t be restricted to formal learning, technical training, and external courses. Team members have so much to learn from each other, and passing on expertise within your organization benefits everyone.
Provide lots of opportunities for employees to share knowledge. Some of these might be formal, for example, in regular meetings or designated training sessions led by more experienced staff members.
You can also encourage informal knowledge sharing through coffee mornings and regular team-building. Normalize employees looking to each other for help and guidance where appropriate, and be sure to give them time for these important conversations.
Get managers involved
Managers who are closely involved with their teams are perfectly placed to help guide employees toward a continuous learning culture.
Give your managers training on the full range of learning opportunities available to team members and empower them to suggest the best options for each team member. Consider setting aside regular opportunities for managers to review staff training goals.
Focus on professional and personal development
It’s easy to focus on continuous professional learning in the workplace and leave personal development to the employees themselves. Both personal and professional development are essential if you want to bring out the best in your team members, so provide opportunities for both.
Encourage staff to balance their continuous learning with personal and professional development training and work to find ways to tie both types of training together. If you can show employees how improving their current skills will help your organization meet its goals, you’re likely to drive more engagement and motivate them to keep learning.
Leverage learning technology
Using the right learning technology can help make this process much easier. These tools can help you create or source learning resources, keep track of achievements, or even organize and manage your entire continuous learning program.
One popular option is to use micro-credentials or digital badges. These are typically associated with very short courses aimed at learning a specific skill. Digital badges allow employees to demonstrate that they have successfully completed a course and celebrate their achievements.
You should also look for opportunities in unlikely places. Social media, for example, can provide many helpful training videos or how-to guides. If you’re using external resources, especially from social media, just be sure to vet all content carefully.
A learning management system (LMS) is the most comprehensive learning technology you can use. These systems allow you to create an entire learning environment dedicated solely to meeting your employees’ needs.
Investing in an LMS makes a powerful statement about the importance of continuous learning to your organization.
Promote continuous learning at work with Moodle
Creating a continuous learning culture is a classic win-win because it benefits your organization and your employees. Plus, it can also be really easy to achieve with the right LMS.
Moodle lets you create training materials quickly and easily to meet your teams’ needs. It’s easy to access for on-the-go workers and lets you easily create courses and monitor progress.
Moodle is also flexible and can be customized to fit your organization. If you’re just getting started with a continuous learning culture, for example, microlearning can help employees build regular learning into their daily routines.
