The importance of sharing a learning culture

Encouraging learning within the workplace is known to foster a culture of collaboration and a supportive environment, allowing each employee to contribute to the organisation to the best of their ability. A learning culture is the collective conventions and values of an organisation that is aimed at developing knowledge and skill through continuous learning. It consists of a variety of processes, tools and resources that encourage self-improvement through learning and aims to help employees remain successful in today’s fast-paced and skills-based world.

A recent study has found that companies who effectively focus on nurturing their employees’ desire to learn are 30% more likely to become market leaders within their industries.

Fostering a learning culture matters to your employees and can have a colossal impact on the business’ growth with regards to employee productivity, job satisfaction and retention. However, an important driver of healthy learning cultures and successful employee training that is often overlooked is the collective sharing of responsibility in this process.

Having additional role-players such as managers and supervisors as part of the training and development process is more beneficial than many might think. These specific role-players understand the business, its requirements, the different job specifications and of course, their team members. By combining this knowledge, middle management can have a major impact on driving the learning culture, sharing this responsibility across the company.

So, apart from sharing the learning culture, why should middle management be involved in training? Because of their daily interactions with the employees in their teams and departments, they can easily lead by example in showing that training is a priority as well as motivate and incentivise staff members. Their insights into the teams and their individual training can also fully leverage the training benefits. This is due to their deeper understanding of how and which skills have been developed and where skill development is still lacking.

By having middle management involved in training, there will be a more supportive and empowering learning culture within the company, which is crucial in achieving evident behavioural change and performance improvement. Because the daily interaction between team members will be extended into training, a closer relationship between all employees will also be fostered, further producing better team agility.

Creating a learning culture is not only about issuing training-related instructions but is furthermore a collaborative team effort. With the help of modern training technologies, businesses will be able to quickly reap the benefits when the entire team is involved, whether that be evolving its culture of knowledge sharing, increased productivity levels, decreased employee turnover, improved learning agility and more.

To start nurturing a learning culture within your business with the help of online learning, contact Lesson Desk at learn@lessondesk.com or visit www.lessondesk.com for more information