How do you nurture a continuous learning culture among employees?

First of all, why continuous learning?

The concept of continuous learning has been a buzzword lately, with companies aiming at investing in their employees’ personal and professional development and  promising to support career development among their workforce. But does the corporate reality actually look like this? Most of the time, it does not. Rather than focus on learning and development opportunities, companies direct their attention towards short-term wins that bring noticeable results, constantly postponing the training opportunities. 

So why would they rethink the priorities and focus more on the aspect of continuous learning? Let’s see some statistics from the business environment. According to a Deloitte report, high performing learning organizations have a series of benefits, such as: 

• They are 46% more likely to be first to market;
• They are 58% more prepared to meet future challenges;
• They are 92% more likely to innovate.

Other statistics on continuous learning highlight the correlation between a continuous learning culture and corporate values such as decreasing employee turnover, increasing engagement rates among employees, and fostering workforce’s satisfaction with their jobs:

• 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development, according to this LinkedIn report;
• 40% of employees who do not receive proper training programs leave their roles within the first year, according to a go2HR;
• 80% of today’s workers feel that learning new skills would increase their engagement rates, yet 46% of employees feel bored at work due to a lack of opportunity to learn new skills, according to this Udemy report; 

Thus, continuous learning it is

All these numbers show the importance of continuous learning among the workforce. But if you pay attention to the professionals around you, they will be the clear representatives of these statistics: most professionals want learning opportunities, they aim at professional development, they want to be able to upskill and reskill, to know how to respond to the changes in their professional field, to explore new perspectives to approaching their tasks, and so on. Also, continuous learning is not only beneficial for employees, but also for the company, as it contributes to organizational objectives, and it contributes to an innovation based culture within the organization. 

Continuous training and eLearning

How can eLearning foster continuous training among employees? According to eLearning Industry, “personalized continuous learning in the workplace keeps them motivated and empowered. Employees know that their individual objectives matter just as much as the organization’s desired outcomes”. Thus, besides the learning paths established by the organization as part of the mandatory training process, employees should have the opportunity to design their own learning paths, based on their own training goals, and an LMS facilitates this by giving them access to a series of learning resources that can be digested anytime and from anywhere. 

Moreover, an eLearning platform focuses on self-pacing, as “ongoing training is literally forever, so let them define their own training speed”. (source) Basically, continuous learning should not be a burden in an employee’s life, but rather a voluntary action towards their own development, at whatever speed they decide to pursue it. 

However, if you, as a company, want to keep track of this continuous development process for the employees, you should set up a periodic check-in with them, such as logging onto their LMS once a week and writing about their newly acquired skills or concepts in their own words. 

Case study: Knolyx & the Institute of Financial Studies

The Institute of Financial Studies supports the development of organizations, institutions and people who work or intend to work in the field of insurance, private pensions and financial investments, of the related activities or similar to the ones above and also in the field of risk management, human resources management and organizational management.

Their collaboration with Knolyx started back in 2017, when they needed an online learning platform to deliver their training programs, part of their continuous learning approach. They have implemented a continuous training program dedicated to investment consultants and they have been using Knolyx to deliver the knowledge, to test the professionals and to impose some business rules on the courses, focused on the time spent on a course. 

However, each company has its own perspective upon a continuous learning approach and our eLearning platform can help with its implementation, based on the specific needs of the company and the learning goals and styles of the employees.