Introduce A Life Long Learning Culture At Work

If you are a Leader, Manager or HR Professional then you may have established a life-long learning habit.  In a survey by CIPD, The Coaching Climate shows out of 332 responses from organisations; 77% of them used coaching and mentoring.  All activity was to help develop and improve talent planning and performance. A massive 61% used coaching to aid leadership development.

Life long learning by leaders is alive and well

Life long learning has featured as a major part of my career to date.  My love of lifelong learning has not just been to develop my career and work life.  I have been a lifelong learner of life itself.  My zest for learning started at an early stage for me.  I can confidently say the drive for learning is in all of us from the beginning.

Whether we like it or not, we are all lifelong learners.  Some of us learn consciously. A lot of us learn unconsciously. Some of us learn how to make our lives better, usually through a conscious decision.  There are people who learn the hard way by making decisions that don’t honour themselves or others.

Life long learning and motivation

Coaches often deal with the concept of “away from” and “towards” motivation.  If you haven’t come across those terms, they describe whether your motivation to learn is to avoid pain or to seek pleasure. An organisation that has a whole philosophy around “towards” learning would definitely be on my list of wants. In other words, an organisation that supports and values lifelong learning and development is a must for my employer of choice.

Not only does lifelong learning support the development of valuable skills, knowledge and competence. It also gives an employee a conscious and positive experience of learning and bringing out the best in them. It also raises self-awareness, which enhances the understanding of others.

Resisting a lifelong learning culture

Unfortunately too often, organisations will slash the training budget or undervalue the life-long learning experience as not their responsibility.  Some employers resist helping their people to develop beyond their current skill set for fear they will move on. Taking their newly found skills with them.  This mindset teaches employees they aren’t valuable. Employers don’t support growth.

Develop a lifelong learning culture

For employers who want to bring out their best in people. For those who want to develop a learning culture as one of their cornerstones of being an employer of choice, here are my top tips:

•  Wherever possible have a clear internal career path to allow employees to progress up the ranks
• Support people with professional or specialism qualifications, either with time or money.  Tie in, if necessary as a condition, but not for too long.
• Support personal development as well as skills and knowledge development.  Helping employees develop greater self-awareness,  emotional intelligence, confidence or a sense of wellbeing through your learning activities, will definitely empower them, and pay dividends for you.
• Support your employees to move on to pastures new when it’s right for them.  It gives the right signals, and if people are free and encouraged to do the right thing for them, then they know you have their best interests at heart.  You will never lose the reputation for supporting them.
• Use a multitude of learning opportunities.  Learning can be encouraged, when employees are working on projects, helping develop business plans, being involved in customer relationships etc.  If the learning potential for employees was articulated and defined, when they are helping to move the business on, then it creates a win/win culture.
• If budgets are tight, consider developing your in-house expertise for disseminating skills and knowledge.  Have a skills register, so you can tap into the rich resource you may already have at your fingertips.  There is nothing more frustrating for an employee sitting there with requisite skills and you don’t make use of them.
• Make sure your life-long learning culture is at the top of your communication strategy, both internally and externally.  Even if you aren’t recruiting right away, you will be at some point.  If your learning reputation is to go before you, then you need to articulate it at every opportunity.