The average skill “half-life” means that professionals with four and a half years of employment become half out of date within five. With careers lasting more than four decades, continuous lifelong learning comes with such high importance now. Lifelong learners are naturally dependent on constant learning, and some of this learning, if not most, come from wilful exposure to tacit knowledge. Still, the culture to develop understanding comes with some background, which is simply to be recognised as an innovator of sorts, from applied learning, and with great emphasis on growth or transformation.
Continuous learning and professional development are vital to every professional’s work-life. Therefore, an organisation with a strong learning culture integrated into employee work engagement proves to be highly beneficial to both the business and the professional.
Many organisations, as a principle of engagement, encourage their current staff to make welcome videos, as a reflection on the company’s learning culture, on practical things like the location of office equipment, important files, dress code or general policies. As a matter of personal experience, the best companies go as far as assigning a mentor or buddy to communicate with new staffs and answer as many questions as they can.
Senior leaders and executives also take the lead to interact and embrace new hire into the organisation’s culture. This is to encourage a natural disposition to learn, either tacitly or explicitly.
Building a culture where learning is a natural part of everyday work, is an excellent way for organisations to encourage their workforce to learn in the flow of work. This leads to higher employee engagement outcomes ultimately. But that is not all; In the same manner, it encourages applied learning and practices that require continuous exchanges and engagement with new knowledge.
Learning in the flow of work would mean that there is a provision for the tools and resources to learn while working, rather than creating a separate process for a different activity. In more practical terms, blended – learning and digital learning tools, assets and strategies are introduced to suit a more change – compliant and development – focused organisation. Further to this, the increasing sophistication and high interactivity of digital learning content assure improved engagement with a varied mix of learners and, in many ways, higher levels of knowledge retention.
Also, as concepts such as the democratisation of learning keep emerging, it is now easier to encourage self – directed learning as a means to ensure commitment to development that benefits both the organisation and the employee. ‘Leading winning conversations’, as a point in the case, maybe delivered as an eLearning or VR learning resource with highly engaging prompts, digital leader boards, simulations, scenarios and deeply immersive gamified learning experience.
Where self-directed learning borders on the choice of the learner; within these provisions, motivation, commitment, and engagement are higher and deeper learning is more assured. Learners need to feel confident that the materials available to them will genuinely encourage continuous, self- directed learning; this can be guaranteed upon easy access to high-quality digital learning resources.
In an organisation where digital literacy spans between digital natives and digital immigrants, it is vital to provide access to short, engaging, media-rich content as an avenue to use Just – in – Time (JIT) learning and quality of resources as a bridge to divide between these groups. A case in point is an off – the – shelf platform like Percipio that offers multi-modal content to suit all learning styles. Platforms like this provide opportunities to capitalise on ROIs in an age where learning for career development has changed in no small way.
When it comes to successfully inculcating a culture of continuous learning, especially as a means to any kind of business or digital transformation, it’s easy to remember that the technologies to support ongoing and practical knowledge are now light, rich, easier and more accessible.
Written by:
Bereola Martins
Assistant Consultant
