Infographic: How to Build a Culture of Continuous Learning

Learning is something that we, as humans, are hard-wired to do. Regardless of whether or not we feel that we enjoy learning.

It’s also something that’s essential to the development of organisations and their competitiveness. 

The most successful organisations are the ones that can adapt. Those that can base their future actions on the things that they’ve learned from previous experiences and innovate. The ones that have a culture of continually learning and improving.

In this infographic, we’ll be exploring some of the key steps and top tips you’ll need to build a culture of continuous learning in your own organisation.

Why invest in continuous learning?

When you learn, you are able to better adapt your actions to meet particular scenarios. Organisations with employees who are constantly learning and improving their skills are those that are better placed to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate against threats. 

Here are some of the key reasons to invest in continuous learning:

• To respond to the changing need for specific skills in the economy
• 3 in 4 organisations (74%) say that reskilling employees will be important to their success over the next 12 to 18 months. https://www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/press-releases/articles/building-a-future-ready-workforce-will-be-crucial-as-we-emerge-from-the-pandemic.html
• 73% of HR specialists feel that it has become harder to recruit candidates with the right skills for roles.
• 87% of key decision makers felt that they are currently experiencing skills gaps in their organisations, or that they expected to experience them in the coming years.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/beyond-hiring-how-companies-are-reskilling-to-address-talent-gaps

• To maintain competitiveness and productivity
• 47% of organisations in the UK are investing in some form of career mentoring and coaching for employees
• 67% of L&D professionals felt that employee learning had a positive impact on an organisation’s revenue (https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1822627/two-thirds-l-d-professionals-say-training-positive-impact-revenue-research-finds) 
• 70% of people say that learning improves their personal connection to their organisation
• To attract and retain the right talent
• 91% of UK employers told the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report that they were concerned about employee retention and used workplace learning to improve this (https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report-uk) 
• 83% of employees in a survey for Docebo said that learning and development was a ‘vital factor’ when it came to choosing an employer (https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1808719/majority-employees-say-l-d-vital-factor-choosing-employer-survey-finds) 
• 66% of Gen Z and 65% of Millennials said they would consider quitting a job if their employer cut learning and development https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1808719/majority-employees-say-l-d-vital-factor-choosing-employer-survey-finds 

Step 1 - Identify needs

Before you start anything you’ll need to work out the specific things that you actually want your culture of continuous learning to achieve. You might want to equip your employees with more relevant skills, suited to a technologically-advancing workplace, or you might want to address a particular skills problem-area, specific to your organisation. Whatever it is, identifying your needs before you start is essential for creating a relevant, targeted plan.

• Determine your objectives: what is it you want your learning culture to achieve?
• Assess the current skill sets of your employees
• Analyse the strengths of your current learning culture – what do you do well?
• Analyse the weaknesses of your learning culture – what needs to be improved?
• Work out where your organisation has skills gaps that need to be filled
• Determine how you’ll evaluate success
• Determine key performance metrics to track 

Step 2 - Create a strategy

With your needs and objectives identified, it’s time to build your continuous learning strategy – the actual plan that you’ll use as a guide. The exact way you go out doing this will depend on your organisations’ processes and procedures but, ultimately, creating a strategy is just a matter of committing your ideas to pen – or computer. 

• 1. Research similar strategies at organisations that you respect and that inspire you
• 2. Define your objectives and goals. Set a series of targets
• 3. Delegate responsibility for particular project areas clearly
• 4. Get buy-in from senior managers and line managers
• 5. Create a clear plan for implementation of the strategy (eg. timescales, budget, ownership etc.)

Step 3 - Implement your strategy

Putting your continuous learning strategy into action is the next step – don’t underestimate the difficulty of this stage. Whilst you may have done a lot of work before this step, here is when it starts to get serious. Even the best plans can be easily blown off-course by unexpected circumstances, so don’t be under any assumptions that most of the hard work is behind you. 

• Make sure that everyone involved understands what’s expected of them
• Provide dedicated training and familiarisation about your strategy for the people who are implementing it
• Triple-check you’re using the most appropriate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your objectives

Step 4- Evaluate and improve!

Evaluating your project is probably one of the most important aspects of a continuous learning culture. As you can tell from the name, continuous learning is… well… continuous. That means that it needs to be sustainable and happening all the time. The best way you can ensure that your learning is continuous is to evaluate it and improve it. 

• Create a report for internal stakeholders to monitor progress
• Focus on the performance of the metrics you previously outlined and report 
• Assemble and analyse these metrics, exploring successes and challenges
• Adapt your approach based on what the evidence shows you!

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