Surviving and growing your business in this rapidly changing era is a challenge in itself for almost all organizations around the world. Nowadays, companies and organizations crave employee engagement. It has been quite clear that a developing employee community also helps an organization stand out in the market. Find out how to create learning culture in your organization.
Reskilling has become a top priority for all L&D departments in order to meet rising consumer expectations as well as the latest technological and business trends. In this continuously changing era, hiring new employees and workers is not a sustainable solution, but reskilling the current ones is. In order to meet the organization’s changing needs in the long run, there is no better solution than to create a learning culture in your organization.
Instead of a single e-learning course that all employees have to take in order to work competitively in the organization, continuous learning is the current demand. Creating a healthy learning culture and an environment to support it in your organization will keep your employees updated with not just shifting market trends but will also keep them engaged in learning activities. Through these activities, employers and managers will gain insight into the effectiveness of their employees and learn what types of work they are more productive at.
What is Learning Culture?
Learning culture in an organization means putting strong emphasis or convincing the members of the organization to deeply and continuously learn about the organization’s beliefs, new skills, good practices, and conventions.
To become successful, every organization needs hard-working employees at its back who really understand the “core value” of the organization. And this is exactly what learning culture does. It enables every employee to continuously learn, share, and apply new skill sets and knowledge.
Here is how the “learning culture” is defined as, according to the (SHRM) Society for Human Resource Management:
“A learning culture consists of a community of workers instilled with a “growth mindset.” People not only want to learn and apply what they’ve learned to help their organization, but they also feel compelled to share their knowledge with others. “ (https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0515-learning-culture.aspx)
Characteristics of the Learning Culture
Whether a company knows it or not, it already has a specific “workplace culture” developed. This is the same workplace culture that is followed and shaped by its employees without them really knowing it. It is all based on their perceptions of the actions that leadership has taken and the organizational values they hold. SHRM has defined workplace culture as the glue that holds together an organization.
Organizational culture can be referred to as the glue that keeps an organization together.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-competencies/global-and-cultural-effectiveness/pages/defining-culture.aspx
If that “glue” is strong, the organization will survive and grow. A learning culture or workplace culture that all employees follow has the following common characteristics that are a must-have for any learning culture:
- A healthy learning culture should support independent learning and development.
- A learning culture should be encouraging enough for members to share their knowledge.
- A learning culture should be strong and engaging enough to instill a growth mindset in employees so that they can learn throughout the organization without thinking of it as a burden.
- A learning culture should enable the members to shape the strategies by processing the changing trends.
The Importance of Learning Culture
A learning culture holds importance in every aspect of an organization. From customer retention to growing sales and from production to shaping strategies, the learning culture has a clear impact on any action of the organization.
When an employee has access to a training that they need to work on efficiently in an organization, the outcome becomes profitable not just for that employee but also for the organization as a whole. According to a study by IBM, in some of the best-performing organizations in the world, 84% of employees are getting the e-learning trainings they need. While in some of the worst-performing organizations, this percentage is just 16%.
Another case study in which researchers took a survey of the employees benefiting from a learning culture shows that 94% of the employees said that the reason to stay in the current role for the organization lies in the organization’s investment in continuous training and development.
There are many case studies, surveys, and research which have clearly shown that creating a learning culture in an organization is needed not just by the organization but also by the employees who demand it. Because by making the learning culture an important and continuous practice in the organization, employers are opening the gateway to an unlimited growth opportunities for their business and employees.
The Benefits of Learning Culture
From the above study, it is quite evident that a learning culture increases productivity, employee engagement, top talent retention, customer retention, and reduces employee turnover. Big companies like Google have found their name on the list of “Best Places To Work” because of their continuous and transformative learning culture.
Every organization can get advantages not just in the form of revenue, but also by attracting the top talent in the industry by creating a healthy learning culture. Alongside the above-mentioned benefits the five additional benefits you can get by creating a learning culture in an organization are:
1. Improved Innovation
In an organization where new ideas are not just welcomed but encouraged, the employees will willingly indulge in brainstorming and deep learning to come up with proactive initiatives so that they can see their creative concepts turn into a profitable reality. This kind of innovation only appears when the employees are given the chance to explore, learn, and share their knowledge. The best practice for this is a learning culture that allows members of the organization to come together to share and learn from each other.
2. High Employee Potential
Employees in a learning culture have unlimited access to learning materials from which they can choose what interests them. This interest-based online training helps them perform each activity better and to their full potential. In addition, a good e-learning system promotes rewards for competing in each task, which further motivates participants to work with more effort.
3. Knowledge Sharing
An engaged learning culture where all employees can come together and work as a team on assigned tasks and activities ensures that knowledge is always circulating. This effective flow of information between employees gives them a clear view of the organization’s goals and expectations. This, in turn, will allow them to work more loyally for the organization.
4. Instill Problem-solving Ability
Working together as a team on group tasks instills problem-solving ability in the employees. An online training, where all employees come and work together, gives them access to multiple solutions to a single problem. Because the approach to solving specific tasks differs for each person, this open access to extensive knowledge and continuous learning and sharing allows members of the organization to excel at solving different problems using different approaches and strategies.
5. Keep Up with The Technological Trends
A learning culture that is based on multiple online trainings and e-learning courses allows the employees to keep in touch with multiple factors at the same time. While on one hand, where they are learning about working together, they could have a free access to learn about technology trends as well. According to surveys, this is the best benefit of a learning culture – it supports online training so that employees are open to learning about what is happening in the world. They are updated with the rising challenges and expectations and it allows them to shape their own strategies to work efficiently and grow.
8 Steps to Creating an Engaged Learning Culture
To create a learning culture in your organization is not that difficult. Many companies think that deploying online training platforms will take up a large chunk of their revenue. But it is not true. With the rising demands of LMS and SCORM, technology experts are trying hard to make these e-learning tools available to everyone.
There are many free LMS platforms available that can help organizations start their online training. You can read our article about LMS here. According to research by CPID, 98% of L&D organizations wish to develop a positive and healthy learning culture, while only 36% feel like they have really developed one. “
For all those organizations that also want to be included in that 36%, here are 8 steps to help you create an engaged learning culture in your organization:
1. Examine Your Current Learning Strategy and Fill the Gaps
Whether it is a strict one that everyone has to follow or just an informal one that is open to those who are willing to learn, every organization has a learning culture and e-learning courses going on. To create a strong and healthy culture, you need to assess the one your organization already has.
This includes evaluating how the current staff is currently learning in your company, what their goals are, the content of those online training courses, and their efficiency as well as productivity reports in those e-learning courses.
You need to examine your current learning strategy and identify the holes in it. Pinpoint the areas where your learning culture is lacking and try to devise new strategies to overcome those gaps.
2. Encourage Active Learning
A healthy learning culture is not just one online course or single e-learning training available to all employees. It is rather a combination of a range of e-learning courses linked together through different routes.
Make sure you have an active learning culture in your organization. For example, allow the members to create their own online training using the material you have provided them with. Give your employees control over their online training and watch them explore the different content on their own. In addition, add tasks and assignments where employees can apply the knowledge they have gained to their daily work and then demonstrate improvement.
In short, don’t just hand out the learning material to your workers. Instead, encourage active learning, which will encourage workers to explore, learn and apply the content whereever it is needed.
3. Ask Employers What They Want to Learn
Communicating with employees about their knowledge gaps, what they want to learn, and their interests will help you create a much more active learning culture in your organization.
When you have a clear idea of what your employees are willing to learn, where their interests lie, and in which areas they are lacking, you will craft a much better online training course that will cater to their needs better than other e-learning courses.
4. Make Training Easily Accessible (Mobile Learning)
Employees prefer e-learning courses that are available to them anywhere and at any time over those that can only be accessed for a limited time and once per day. SCORM and LMS for mobile phones have made this easier.
You can make your online training course mobile-friendly so that your employers have unrestricted and permanent access to the e-learning courses. This will help them to learn whenever they feel like learning.
5. Make It Social and Fun
The major factor that causes employees to discontinue online training after a certain period of time is the checkbox learning culture. When training is strict and employers have to “mark the check box” to just complete the e-learning course, they will never learn it by heart.
That’s why it is necessary to make your learning culture and e-learning trainings fun and social. You can use different strategies and use the LMS gamification feature to add a fun element to your learning culture. Also, by adding options like video calling, podcasts, and chat, you will be allowing your employees to interact with each other and with managers to keep the flow of information going.
6. Make a Reward Program
Employees feel motivated when they know their bosses or managers are aware of their progress. And when they are rewarded with points, scores or even a certificate. They will willingly continue completing the assigned tasks just to gain recognition.
According to surveys, companies where authorities reward employees for their hard work have a more active learning culture than those where employee hard work is not recognized.
7. Keep the Learning Continuous
A continuous learning culture is needed today. The rapidly changing world and its business trends cannot be encapsulated in a single and completed online training. Instead, employees can only work efficiently if they are exposed to continuous learning.
The biggest mistake companies make while creating a learning culture is that they devise an online training program and just forget to add more material in order to keep the employees updated. If you do not want your organization to fall behind in the business world, then keep your employees in touch with learning by inducing a continuous learning culture.
8. Experiment, Evaluate, and Adapt
Last but not least, it is recommended to experiment with different learning cultures. You can try different learning approaches and then select the one that shows some great productivity. For example, you can create group problem-solving e-learning courses, a one-on-one coaching sessions, face-to-face social learning, or the best: online training sessions using LMS and SCORM interactive courses.
Furthermore, keep measuring your progress and do not hesitate to adapt to new ways of learning. If something is not having a positive impact, then do take a step back, cancel out that approach and devise some new strategy.
Only by actively and continuously working on a learning culture can you transform your organization’s goals into a profitable reality where your employees are happy.
Create Learning Culture in Organization – Summary
A strong and healthy learning culture is a key component of success that every organization needs in this rapidly changing world. An effective learning culture will keep the flow of updated information and trends between your employees. It will open them to create their own strategies and training courses for each other.
Make sure you are constantly analyzing the knowledge gaps, devising new strategies for active and continuous learning, promoting a social and fun learning culture, communicating with your employees, catering to their learning needs and interests, and lastly, adapting to the new ways of learning to create a truly effective learning culture in your organization. Visit and follow our Twitter and LinkedIn to find out more!
