Successful companies constantly look for competitive advantages and organizational learning has become an essential strategy to get ahead. This is primarily because building an organizational learning culture creates an environment that’s more receptive to change.
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What is organizational learning?
Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization and using it to change strategy. Simply put, it’s the comprehensive way knowledge is shared in an organization. A strong culture of organizational learning can offer market differentiation and contribute to sustainable growth. Organizational learning also improves a company’s adaptability because of the constant flow of information and skills.
What is employee training and development?
One of the elements of successful organizational learning is a powerful employee training and development program—starting with onboarding. Onboarding employees is an important form of training since it’s the first interaction with the company and sets the stage for an employee’s future growth and development.
Organizations that empower employees with training and career development tools and internal mobility options are typically more agile. Companies with organizational learning cultures also have a positive reputation in the marketplace and can benefit by attracting top talent.
Although they’re often referenced together, employee training and employee development have two different meanings. Employee training is the process of providing employees with instruction to develop skilled behavior or abilities to do their jobs more efficiently.
Examples of employee training include:
- Onboarding employees
- Product training
- Technical skills training
- Soft skills training (such as communication, active listening, conflict resolution, etc.)
- Industry conferences and workshops
Employee development is the on-going process of helping employees improve skills, acquire new knowledge, and grow their careers. Training is a core aspect of development since it directly contributes to an employee’s knowledge and career path. Combined, training and development are successful in helping employees build skills and perform their roles well.
Some examples of employee development include:
- Coaching
- Onboarding and orientation
- Performance reviews
- Industry conferences
- Professional organizations
- Networking events
- Mentorship
- Promotions and lateral moves
- Certifications
- Continuing education
- Management training
Why is organizational learning and employee development so important?
Organizational learning is important since the knowledge that’s retained and transferred benefits the organization. It allows employees to advance their professional growth and development individually and as part of a team.
Organizational learning is also a key to resilience—making it easier to react quickly to changing market conditions. When learning is built into an organizational culture, it becomes crucial to improving retention since employees typically seek out opportunities to learn new skills.
Organizations that develop a learning culture often benefit from lower turnover rates, increased job satisfaction, increased productivity, and greater adaptability.
Employee development is important because it improves employee engagement. Employee development also helps organizations meet or exceed performance expectations.
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Organizations that invest in organizational learning and employee training and development experience several benefits, including:
- Employee satisfaction. Organizational learning cultures emphasize continuous learning which typically leads to higher employee satisfaction.
- Easier employee onboarding. Because learning is built into the organizational culture, onboarding employees is simpler and more streamlined.
- Decreased employee turnover. Another way organizations benefit from a learning culture is their employees are less inclined to leave their jobs.
- Increased productivity. When learning is spread throughout an organization, it has a positive impact on profits and efficiency.
- Developing leaders. When there’s an organizational learning culture in place, leaders are developed at all levels.
- An organizational learning culture enhances adaptability throughout the organization.
- Adding skills. Organizational learning is important since it provides more ways for employees to learn new skills.
- The efficient use of technology. Technology enables the efficient sharing of information within organizations that emphasize learning and development.
How to create an employee training and development program
Training and development pay dividends by positively impacting retention and creating internal mobility opportunities. Although creating a training program for employees when none exists is challenging, putting a plan in place with clear steps and milestones will help accelerate the process.
Training and development are about more than just increasing program offerings; they mean more effectively creating resources and opportunities that offer pathways to career growth.
An effective training and development program has far-reaching benefits since it tends to increase retention and it contributes to employee growth.
The steps to creating an employee training and development program include:
- Identify goals. Start by identifying what business goals you want to achieve with training and development.
- Assess competencies. Assess what overall competencies will have the greatest impact on organizational and employee success.
- Analyze gaps. Get a clear, objective picture of your workforce by identifying gaps in knowledge.
- Gather feedback. Survey employees to find out what their own goals are within your company.
- Formalize training. Once all assessments are complete, launch a formal training program with a blend of instructor-led and digital courses.
- Promote coaching and mentoring. Mentoring and coaching programs create relationships among employees and allow for knowledge transfer to less experienced workers.
- Offer self-directed learning. Self-directed learning accommodates different learning styles, speeds up professional development, and offers more return on investment of training expenses.
How leaders can foster an organizational learning culture
For leaders who want to foster an organizational learning culture, one of the first steps is to actively encourage continuous learning. By modeling the behavior they want to inspire, managers normalize a learning culture. Leaders should also show they value a growth mindset through how they lead and who they hire.
Promoting a learning culture means leaders should frequently listen to employees to learn what they want and to find gaps in training. This requires getting employee feedback through consistent surveys and one-on-one meetings.
Leaders should regularly discover new knowledge about both their industry and their customers. This means conducting surveys, networking with other colleagues, and studying competitors.
Finally, leaders need to design ways to transfer knowledge to other employees through learning and development. Make use of technology such as employee experience platforms to provide access to learning opportunities and gain insights into how teams and employees learn from each other.
There are several ways managers and leaders can promote organizational learning, including:
- Understanding knowledge management. Knowledge management helps facilitate learning by capturing, centralizing, and distributing your employee experiences and information.
- Encouraging knowledge sharing. Leaders can use their influence to encourage employees to share their knowledge, how they learned it, and what led to the discovery.
- Structuring learning in teams and practices. Establish a culture of learning throughout teams by consistently including data in regular business habits.
- Incorporating problem solving. Promote organizational learning by encouraging employees to move past obvious symptoms and find evidence of underlying causes.
- Supporting how organizational learning Understanding how employees retain and spread knowledge can help leaders motivate them to participate in organizational learning.
Organizational learning contributes to employee growth and success
There are significant benefits when organizations adopt a learning culture. Organizational learning typically offers lower turnover rates, increased job satisfaction, increased productivity, and greater adaptability. Training and development programs contribute to employee learning and success by providing growth and advancement opportunities, which in turn boosts engagement and retention rates. Consider how a robust training program for employees could revolutionize your organization by helping improve productivity and performance.
To gain more visibility into how teams work and learn together, try integrating an employee experience platform that’s designed to provide managers with data-driven insights. One way to bring learning into the natural flow of work is by providing employees with personal views and timely prompts so they can track their progress on individual learning tasks and goals.
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