By Mattison Johnson
Changing an organization's culture is never easy. So here are five tips to help you create change and inspire a learning culture in your organization that will promote success for years to come.
1. Get senior leadership involved
In order to start an organization-wide culture shift it is essential to have your executives on board supporting the endeavor from day one. This is doubly important when it comes to transforming a company culture. The main comment from professionals about how they encourage a culture of learning is through meaningful and overt support from their senior leaders.
2. Keep employee impact at the heart of what you do
To maintain a successful learning culture, employees need to acknowledge how their individual learning makes a positive impact on business success. According to Kim Edwards, Talent and Leadership Development Manager at Getty Images and Co-presenter of Learning Now, a healthy professional learning environment is "one which puts the employee at the center of everything."
When individuals feel that their work is valued and their learning efforts have results, they begin to form a positive learning mindset and will be more likely to engage with future learning opportunities.
3. Push for accountability on all ends
For any type of learning initiative to succeed, learning needs to be desired by the employees. If it is forced upon them, then the organization will not see positive and authentic results. In addition, a company's L&D department needs to stay accountable for encouraging and acting on feedback. It is only through communication between learners and the L&D department that progress can be made.
4. Be specific about the impact and then measure it
In order to maintain a long-term learning culture, you need to be able to prove the value of it. By using digital and social technologies to measure impact "“ such as employee engagement "“ you can gage if your learning efforts are achieving the desired results.
In addition, "stories [are] also a really important measure," said Stephen Garguilo, who lead a cultural shift at Johnson & Johnson. Garguilo claims that he would "constantly be on the lookout for impact stories of product development and people development, and collecting dozens of those stories was really valuable in being able to demonstrate value as well as inspire others to realize similar outcomes."
5. Treat it as an ongoing process
If your first attempt at creating a learning culture doesn't work out the way you planned, don't give up. Every organization is different "“ one method may work well for one company but may not work at all for another. All of the companies interviewed in the Findcourses.com L&D Report 2018, "described finding an optimum organizational learning culture as an ongoing process; one of continuous exploration and discovery of what works best for their tribe."
Try various approaches for creating a learning culture and discover what works best for you.
Mattison Johnson is a digital content editor at www.findcourses.com, North America's most popular search engine for professional training. She writes learning and development content and articles on the site. Now located in Stockholm, Mattison was born and raised in California and graduated from San Diego State University in 2016.
