Ways to Build a Learning Culture in Your Organization

The skills shortage crisis costs companies billions of dollars annually. While employers struggle to find workers, they spend this amount on recruitment, salaries, and temporary staff. A learning culture is crucial for long-term success as it fosters continuous learning, which boosts employee satisfaction and talent retention.

What is a learning culture?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) defines a learning culture as the process of fusing effective learning into an organization. The verb "fuse" highlights that when things are fused, they’re not easily separated without causing damage to other parts of the fused whole. This emphasizes the importance of keeping these parts together for the best level of functionality.

A learning culture refers to an environment or setting that prioritizes and promotes continuous learning, growth, and development. It’s a mindset and approach that values learning as an integral part of personal and professional development for individuals, teams, and your organization as a whole. And if you want to develop a good learning culture in your organization, then it must be non-negotiable. 

Ways to Build a learning culture

How do you make sure learning is part of the job and not just a benefit? That training is not just a box you tick, but one of the reasons your business succeeds? And how do you create synergies so that people learn from each other?

Consider the following six tips for building a learning organization.

1. Lead by example

Make sure employees understand that learning is important to your entire organization. Heavily involve leaders in the process–whether that’s having them promote upcoming training sessions or actively lead classes and discussions.

You could even involve them in some less formal mentorship opportunities such as lunchtime Q&A conversations or team coaching sessions. Knowing their leaders are committed to a culture of learning will help employees see the value and get on board.

2. Develop personalized learning plans

Make learning relevant to employees by focusing it on their personal plans. Have leaders sit down with employees and set goals around what they want and need to learn to do their jobs.

Discuss their career goals and determine what learning would get them there. Then make plans to help them achieve their goals.

3. Use the right platform

Use a learning management system (LMS) like https://elearning.adansonia.org/ that supports learning as well as training. It is user-friendly and it makes getting started easy. Also, look for features that let employees practice the skills in real-time and interact with other learners to share knowledge.

For example, a “static” platform that serves as a library for online courses will only take your employees so far. On the other hand, if you opt for a feature-rich training platform, you give your people the chance to attend live instructor-led sessions, along with courses, interact with their peers, and track their progress.

4. Promote learning collaboration

Increase opportunities for informal learning where employees can share knowledge and teach one another. For example, on-the-job mentorship or informal discussion group meetings.

When people are encouraged to talk about what they’re learning, they’ll be more engaged in the process and learning will become a part of your company identity.

5. Use a variety of learning methods

Make learning more interesting by changing how employees engage in it. In addition to formal online courses and in-person courses, mix things up to ingrain learning as a part of the day-to-day work life.

Facilitate mentoring or group sessions for brainstorming and problem-solving during the week. The more pervasive your approach, the more natural learning will come into your organization.

6. Measure for success

Whatever your training strategy, you can ensure real learning by tracking how well it’s performing. Download and analyze training metrics from your LMS. You can look at things like engagement, completion rates, and quiz scores to gauge how well employees are doing.

You can also reach out to learners through surveys or polls during or after courses to get their impressions. Ask about how much value they felt they got out of the course, what went well, and what could be better. With this information, you can embrace continuous learning by regularly making improvements as needed.

Commit to building a learning culture

Culture can’t be shaped (or changed) in one day. It’s an ongoing process. As you invest the time and resources to build out your L&D strategy and meet your corporate goals, you’ll create the kind of work environment that promotes learning.

And as you continue to invest in your employees and their learning, you’ll reap the benefits of a forward-thinking, adaptable workforce. Because employees who know how to truly learn will keep your company growing in the years ahead.