Lifelong Learning: Why It Matters & How To Encourage It
New and emerging technologies are changing the landscape of business and placing more importance on the skills workers need to survive automation. Employees recognize that they’ll need to continue learning in order to keep up with AI. As a result, people want to work for companies that support their learning and development.
What does lifelong learning look like in the workplace? It’s learning that is continuous and doesn’t end once the employee completes onboarding. By creating a culture that encourages lifelong learning you can engage your workers and create happier employees.
Workplace satisfaction is one benefit, but it’s not the only thing you stand to gain. By encouraging learning, you can reduce turnover and the costs that come with it.
LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report found that 93% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers. Employees want opportunities to learn beyond the training they receive when they are hired. Companies who support learning can benefit by creating more knowledgeable employees which can increase performance and productivity.
How can you create a culture of lifelong learning at your organization?
Encourage Self-Directed Learning
A study by Deloitte found 61 percent of executives report challenges in moving their organizations toward external self-directed learning. Support self-directed learning by giving your employees the freedom to explore what interests them. Encourage your team to take the time to learn and reward employees by recognizing those who make it a priority. Whether its acknowledgment from management or tangible rewards like gift cards, come up with creative ways to show support for those who intentionally grow their skills. Ultimately, the goal is for learners to take ownership of their own development and become independent learners.
Provide Up to Date, Relevant Content
Lifelong learning is useless if the information that’s presented is inaccurate. Be realistic about the shelf life of your content. Best practices, processes, tools, and skills change constantly, so it’s important to update the content in your LMS regularly. Courses offered a year ago may no longer be relevant or accurate. Offer a library of internal and external content learners find useful. Employees may prefer to consume information differently so diversify the types of content offered. Above all, focus on content that’s relevant to your industry, organizational goals, and people.
Offer Microlearning
Microlearning involves delivering concise, context-sensitive training that is broken up into bite-sized pieces for easier consumption. LinkedIn recently reported that the number one challenge for talent development is getting employees to make time for learning. Employees want to learn but making time for a 2-hour course is much more difficult than making time for a 5-10-minute specific piece of learning.
Microlearning allows you to deliver easily digestible content to your learners without removing them from their work for too long. If categorized and tagged correctly, it also makes it
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Chris Bond
Chris Bond, CEO of Bluewater, has been transforming the Learning and Talent Management field for over 20 years through his leadership, articles, speaking engagements and consulting services.
By combining strategic thinking, people development, process development, user experience and the effective use of technologies, Chris has helped clients meet or exceed organizational goals that impact bottom-line financial growth and corporate success. A sampling of clients includes names like BP, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Lilly, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, Mazda, McKesson Medical-Surgical, Inc., Neiman Marcus, UNIVISION, HEB Grocers and Medtronic.
Chris launched Bluewater in 2003. His diverse industry background and thought leadership were quickly recognized and he is sought after as an authoritative voice in the learning and talent industry. His passion, creativity and experience have inspired the Bluewater team to share his commitment to putting the client first. He has been the guiding hand in Bluewater’s recognized ability to instill confidence, supply creative solutions and deliver measurable business results to its clients.
