Creating a Learning Culture

A learning culture can help businesses achieve their strategic goals by allowing individuals to reflect on problems or mistakes to gain from the learning experience. The learning can then be used to create positive organisational change.

You may have seen situations where the question is asked: ‘why are you doing that?’ and the response is, ‘we have always done it this way.’ In this example, quite often, the individual carrying out the process will know it is inefficient, unsafe, or unnecessary, but they do it anyway. In a learning organisational culture, individual staff members are empowered to question the status quo and seek better ways of doing business.

An embedded learning culture within an organisation can improve its processes, strategy, and bottom line. This is because learning organisations are better equipped to drive change, keep up with technological advancements and deliver continuous improvement.

Developing a learning culture can empower employees through professional development and training. The investment in personnel means that staff become better equipped to face business challenges which ultimately benefits the organisation.

Now we understand the basics of a learning culture; the section below gives you some ideas on how to start the transition towards becoming a learning organisation.

1. Leaders should set the right example by remaining curious and practising continuous professional development
2. Coaching and mentoring must run throughout the organisation (not just management)
3. Root cause analysis should be carried out for service, product, and process failures to prevent reoccurrence and to trigger change
4. Reflection on personal performance must be encouraged, and feedback should be given
5. Opportunities for training and development should be agreed upon as part of the staff appraisal process
6. Listen and act on customer feedback to improve by learning from mistakes
7. Plan strategically as a business and learn from previous errors (they will happen again if the change is not initiated when required)
8. Cultivate a just culture where people are encouraged to share mistakes 
9. Link professional development to strategic goals and praise staff that complete courses and training
10. Start from your workplace induction with training to cover the basics and bespoke requirements for each role
11. Praise business wins and reward the individuals responsible for the success to encourage more