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    Learning and Development

    Creating a Successful Learning Culture For Your Business

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    Hadar Keren
    September 19, 2022
    8 min read
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    If you work in the corporate world, you must know that the massive drive toward learning at work is at the top of many managers’ minds.

    And it should be. Harvard Business Publishing released a report which shared that 54% of the workforce require reskilling or upskilling by 2025. The same report also shared that 84% of workers felt they knew where the skill gaps are, but less than half of them (41%) feel that their managers understand their skill gaps.

    So, clearly, many companies and employees feel like there’s still work to do in learning cultures.

    But what does a culture of learning really mean to your business?

    The idea behind professional learning and development is that it helps empower, engage, and entice your top talent. Retaining talent has been a challenge for many businesses over the past few years. But building a professional learning culture alleviates the constant employee churn and helps corporates succeed.

    Since the pandemic, learning cultures in the workplace have been more critical than ever. Think about it; employees work from home, the office, or both today. Workplace environments and habits have changed so drastically that people can choose a specified working team, brand, and space. So, either talent stays with you (generally if you are modernizing your business), or they move on to something more contemporary.

    So, how can you improve your culture of learning and ultimately retain talent? Before we get into those tips, let’s go back to the basics.

    What is a Learning Culture in Business?

    In company learning cultures, employees should have the tools, time, and environment to grow continually at their job successfully. They should also be able to revisit and refresh their existing skills and learn and develop new skills.

    A learning culture is designed to improve employee skills and performance while supporting knowledge sharing and social learning within the organization.

    But how does learning relate to revenue?

    PWC shared their 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, where CEOs agreed that skills shortages could directly threaten their organizations’ growth.

    As you can see, there is a cry for upskilling and reskilling employees. It’s a sector in organizations that truly affects the bottom line if it isn’t addressed. Let’s dive into how learning at work can genuinely contribute to your company’s triumph.

    How Does a Positive Learning Culture Contribute to Your Success?

    Learning organizations gain a competitive advantage in their industry because they are less risk-averse than others. Their employees are adaptable and constantly looking to learn more skills as time goes by. This helps keep workers engaged, motivated, skilled, and, most importantly, retained.

    Here are five incredible things that a culture of learning can do for your business:

    Encourages employee engagement

    When employees are empowered, able to share knowledge, and learn from their leaders, chances are they will feel engaged with your team, clients, and company culture.

    A study from Gallup showed that highly engaged teams showed 21% more profitability. It’s no secret that the level of employee engagement directly relates to an organization’s revenue. In addition, a group of high-performing workers is more likely to talk about their experience learning at work and spread positivity about this learning culture. This creates a ripple effect, where new employees hear about existing high-performing employees’ successes and strive to be as good as them. That’s where the true beauty of employee engagement shines.

    Attracts and retains your core talent

    Naturally, with whispers of the “great resignation” around, managers seek ways to keep employees happy. By building a learning culture, your business is already setting employees up for success from day one.

    Remember, training existing employees is a crucial piece of the puzzle. But attracting new prospects with a robust learning culture is invaluable. With professional learning and development, you’re suddenly attracting and retaining talent.

    Improves customer experiences

    We all see that an employee’s attitude towards their work directly impacts a customer’s experience. Roll back to the last time you were served by someone at a restaurant, make-up counter, or gas station. If their attitude is positive and approachable, you (as the customer) tend to be friendly in return. But if they’re stressed, anxious, and generally quite blue, you may not have such a great interaction with them.

    But here’s the kicker – your interaction with that one worker also represents that store location and brand. Suddenly, a loyal customer may not be back at that location if they had a bad experience there. This is why keeping your employees content and motivated really matters. Equipping them with the right tools and training programs contributes to this.

    Boosts creativity and encourages innovative ideas

    You tend to be more creative when you feel motivated and driven at work. Many employees have unique ideas and are just too shy to share them. Some employees think they’re “too far down the food chain” to be heard.

    Learning cultures in your organization can change all that. You just need to be disciplined about giving all employees, no matter what level of experience, the opportunity to share their ideas and creativity.

    A great way of encouraging creativity is by hosting creative workshops with teams and getting them involved for an entire day of ideas, brainstorming, and games. It’s important to note that employees who see you using their ideas and bringing them to life will feel highly valued at your company. As a result, they’re less likely to leave. Retention is the golden word here.

    Builds prospective leaders

    If you can build up your employee retention level to be on the higher end of the scale, you’ll probably be able to move on to the next career development phase for those employees. This phase is molding them to be your future leaders.

    Creating managers from existing employees has so many benefits; they already know your systems, processes, teams, clients, data policies, office rules, and learning programs. You don’t have to focus on the mundane with them. Instead, use their training time to build management skills. This will also help them learn the more complex and intangible soft skills, all through a quality leadership training program.

    5 Applied Ways to Help You Build an Effective Learning Culture

    Now that we know why you should build an influential culture of learning, let’s look at how you can do so:

    Build learning in relation to employees’ needs

    Forbes shared some great insights about what employees really care about and what elements keep them satisfied and engaged. Some of these include that employees want their company’s vision, mission, and values to be aligned with their own. They also want to focus more on mental and physical health. Workers also want better technology in their work lives. You must build learning with your team’s needs in mind. They’ll thank you for it but also be extremely grateful for the extra effort put in.

    Make learning a personalized experience

    People are looking for personalization in everything they do – whether that be shopping, going to the gym, or at work. Try to personalize their learning experiences. How? Match their experiences back to what else interests them. For example, use scenario questions in your training to test their knowledge. But instead of using a generic scenario, use something their privy to, like a hobby or interest.

    Start introducing learning from the onboarding phase

    Don’t wait to start the learning process. Recruits will be the most motivated at the beginning of their journey with you. It’s essential to introduce them to your training plan and help them understand how crucial learning is at your company. Try to pair them with a mentor who can seamlessly guide them through their onboarding process.

    Embed learning into your daily work life

    The core part of creating a culture of learning is when parties in your organization to teach and learn. But here’s the catch – you have to do so consistently! That’s right. Learning organizations aren’t successful by doing one annual compliance course and calling it quits. You must build up social learning and knowledge sharing as part of your daily culture. This way, knowledge transfers occur regularly, and people find value in these conversations with others at work.

    Use reporting and analytics to inform future learning

    If you choose to use a learning management platform, you can analyze the reports from the software in real-time or post-dated. It’s a good idea to try and analyze your learners’ performance month-on-month so that you can learn from their training experience and improve in any areas they may not have had a great experience with.

    Modernizing Professional Learning and Development for Today’s Talent

    Building a learning culture in your organization can be a priceless tool in your arsenal. And by making continuous learning a top priority, you can be sure that employees and prospects will be intrigued to stay with you. Advanced learning cultures include personalized experiences, which is part of the “new age” of corporate learning. Relatable experiences can help humans learn quicker and more efficiently.

    Here at Juno Journey, we can equip you with the right tools for the job. Our learning experience platform is designed to help you grow your employees’ career paths, provide a top-notch onboarding experience, share knowledge, and learn from one another all in one place. We believe in empowering you to onboard, enable, and develop employees while we take care of the operations behind your learning.

    Click here for more information on how we can help you build a culture of learning today.

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