How to create a learning culture in the workplace

Does your culture extol growth mindsets?

Many useless hours a spent by employees hiding their weaknesses. A learning culture fosters growth mindsets. In this type of organization, learning is not seen as a sign of weakness but of character. Failure is not the antonym of success, but part of the growth process.

Is your culture collaborative and matrixed?

Even the most insightful worker can’t do it all. Sometimes the time required to hone a new skill will be too great. In these instances, insightful workers need to connect with those whose complementary skills can be an asset.

Far too often, the help they need is siloed away in a neighbouring department. And within the hyper-specialized architecture of many modern organizations, that can be a difficult barrier to cross. 

Is your culture adaptable?

It’s clear that transformation is the default condition of today’s business world. There will inevitably come a day when the tried-and-true no longer works. When this happens, reactionary organizations panic and falter. 

But transformation-ready organizations evolve, and that begins at the employee level. A learning culture provides time and resources for employees to hone the skills needed to adapt to changing market conditions and demands, skills like resilience and agility. 

Is the culture nurtured by leaders at the organization?

Leaders have an outsized influence on everyone in an organization. Directors who want their managers to learn and grow must model a willingness to do so. The same holds true for managers who want to see their team members improve.

Leadership culture must shift from a group of “know-it-alls” to one of “learn-it-alls.” Learn-it-alls grant permission to admit fallibility and desire to grow. 

This culture shift requires developing leaders with intellectual humility — they must be open to learning, commit to improving, and never use their intellect or position to discourage others. Teaching those skills will mean having open, honest conversations with key leaders as well as embodying intellectual humility yourself.

A learning culture isn’t built overnight. Organizations must commit to intentionally developing employees, and that requires being strategic about how investments are made. To begin developing a culture of learning at your organization, consider the following factors.

• Maintain a consistent budget to gain buy-in by making the value of learning explicitly clear.
• Write a mission statement that aligns your vision with organizational objectives, then choose and design programs with ROI in mind. 
• Plan ongoing initiatives to measure their impact, such as the use of qualitative feedback from employee surveys, and always be prepared to communicate on progress to goal. 

It doesn’t matter how effective a learning program promises to be if employees don’t have the time to participate. For this reason, Google and others have instituted the 80/20 rule. They offer employees 20% of their time to learn, develop, and experiment with new ideas. This ratio can vary, but having a formal rule serves to convey the importance of learning.