What is the best way to move your business to the next level of production, competitiveness, and success? Today, tech advances, demographic shifts, and competitive necessity to improve workforce skills have pushed the need to foster a culture of learning in organizations. Therefore, how can you create a culture of learning? Here is where to start:
Appreciate that Staff-learners are Self-propelling
Learning organizations should rethink about the user experiences of the staff seeking to get more operational stills. Every employee looks forward to growing from one level to another as needs shift according to Maslow’s theory of human needs. Therefore, the organization should consider staff learning needs part of a requirement that should be satisfied as opposed to being pressured on. You should, therefore, open channels to help them to learn easily especially at work.
Drive Staff-centric Learning using Technology
One thing you need to appreciate is that your employees have a dozen of things do when not at work. Some have families to attend to while others want to pursue other interests such as fitness and hobbies. Therefore, you should simplify the process to make learning easy for the learners. For example, an industrial manager can use mobile, social, or web-based platforms to push learning content for staff. This will make it easy for them to learn when traveling on a bus, relaxing at home, or even on holiday. Well, make learning fun and everyone will be happy to join you!
Make Learning Part of the Organization Architecture
To make learning a culture in your organization, it is prudent to entrench it in your architecture. However, it should not be simply another routine that does not have clearly set goals. You should target to use learning as a way of demonstrating where the organization is headed, and outline structures to get there. For example, if you have an industrial plant and want to introduce new technology in the coming years, learning should be directed towards such a goal. In this industry, emerging technologies should always present your enterprise with something new to look forward to.
For staff, this will be a great opportunity to reset their operations and aim to achieve higher productivity. You could even allow the staff to craft new learning niches that can help to take the organization to the next level. This would be a great step towards making them own the organization, its processes and results.
The Final Take
To build a learning culture, it is important to rethink the organization architecture to ensure that all the systems support it. Besides, you should make sure that all employees understand that learning can help them and the organization to grow.
