Your Guide To Building A Learning Organization

About three-fourths of L&D leaders believe workplace learning has become increasingly influential over the past couple of years. A LinkedIn Report also states that 74% of the L&D leaders agree that L&D has become more cross-functional and is now set off for a more strategic function in their organizations. It is evident that organizations gauge the potential of becoming learning organizations but do they have a well-grounded understanding of what’s needed to become one? 

“A learning organization that prioritizes knowledge acquisition and actively translates the acquired knowledge into operations”-  sounds idyllic but what about the application framework? That’s exactly what we are here to discuss! 

Prerequisites For Building A Learning Organization 

Building a learning organization with a high-performance culture is not an overnight job. It requires strategic planning, attitude cultivation, a robust management process, and so much more. Each of the aspects mentioned below will solidify the foundation for you to create a learning culture in your organization. 

Competent L&D Structure

Your L&D structure not only needs to be responsive to the organization’s operational needs but should be at the forefront of your growth plans. You need to redefine how L&D operates and structure it in a way that it independently tracks market changes, develops proactive response strategies, and builds future-proof learning practices. 

A Learning Mindset Among Employees

Employees are what make up an organization; they are the ones who commit to a culture and progress with it. To become a learning organization, you need to ensure your employees have a clear vision of what’s expected of them, how it benefits them, and what the organization is doing to support them. If you’re wondering how to promote a learning culture in your organization, the answer is – through a shared vision. Each employee in the company should be equally enthusiastic about working toward a common goal. Facilitating this is no easy feat and requires a lot of internal discussions and revisions. However, it is 100% achievable and will form the core of your learning organization. 

In-house team

You will require technical help to build a learning organization, like implementing an LMS, but the importance of a good in-house team cannot be stressed enough. Having a group of people actively engaged with learners will help form a better structure and drastically improve the learning experience. An L&D team will be able to efficiently set up the requirements, facilitate measures to fulfill those requirements, and monitor the results. Now, this loop is what will enable you to adapt and scale. 

A Measurable Performance Criteria

Measuring the effectiveness of your L&D initiatives is the most vital aspect of building a learning organization. It enables you to measure business impact, align better with your corporate strategy, increase learner engagement, and facilitate data-backed decisions. You can also check out this blog to know more about KPIs to measure L&D effectiveness. 

Learning Convenience 

Gone are the days when corporate training and workplace learning were restricted to compliance trainings and onboarding. It has now become a part of the organization’s everyday operations and should reflect synonymously. As per a LinkedIn Learning report, a majority of employees prefer to learn but cite lack of time as their primary reason for not being able to actively take up training courses. So, why not offer them convenient options to learn? You can also opt for a cloud-based LMS with mobile learning facilities for greater ease. 

Feedback Model 

It was established long ago that there is a powerful correlation between feedback and high performance. Regular feedback from learners can be your way to efficiently and regularly optimize your L&D structure. Engage with your learners and talk about their pain points when it comes to courses they are taking, their learning experience, the applicability of content, and such. Employ a wide range of feedback methods to promote a learning culture in your organization. 

How To Build A Learning Organization? 

Here are some easily integratable tips that can help you become a learning organization. 

Problem-Solving And Opportunity Building 

The first step is to hook your employees to learning. But how do we do that? It’s actually fairly simple – we use training programs and courses that solve problems for your employees. For example, if your marketing team is struggling with email open rates, you can assign them a professional email writing course to help them optimize their emails. However, it is imperative that the content adds value to their existing skill set. In this scenario, it must include tips that are based on the latest marketing trends and are research-backed to work. Once they are able to transfer the knowledge into their work, they will not only get better open rates, but they will also look forward to taking up more courses to ease out other stress points in their job roles. 

After problem-solving comes opportunity building. If your employees are actively taking up courses and training programs, you can also introduce some qualitative and quantitative incentives into the mix. Offering pre-promotion training is also a great way to facilitate learning engagement. For example, if you have a senior executive that you’re thinking of promoting, you can offer them leadership training courses equipped with team-building techniques for an easy transition into the role of a manager. 

Experiment With Content

All training programs are designed to offer incremental gains in knowledge to the learner; they are developed in sync with a continuous learning process. However, it can be challenging for learners to retain all that information. To make the content easy to retain and apply, we suggest experimenting with various forms of content. Different kinds of content work for different kinds of learners. If you’re lucky, you may even find a preference majority in your organization. 

Building interactive courses is also a recommended strategy as it allows your learners to take meaningful breaks from learning and experience application. You can incorporate quizzes, simulations, exercises, etc to create an interactive course. We also encourage organizations to foster collaborative learning to help create an active learning environment. Some examples of collaborative learning include mentorships, buddy programs, cross-training, etc. 

Comprehensive Reviews

Assessments are an extremely vital part of building a learning organization. There should be multi-fold review processes in place to ensure each aspect of the learning process is as efficient as it can be. You can start with a before-after approach that entails a performance assessment of a particular employee before and after taking up a course. You can have this structured in line with your organizational hierarchy and take up random samples from each job role to measure the impact of a certain training program. Once you are done, you can move on to the next step and identify the gaps in your learning process. You can use surveys, one-on-one feedback, etc. to gain insight into the problems your learners are facing and work towards eliminating them. 

It is also important to review course content periodically for all courses. Relevancy plays a huge role in facilitating learner engagement. So, make sure the course content is relevant, updated in sync with market trends, and easy to understand. 

Learning Engagement

Learning engagement is key to building a learning organization. If you have a good learner engagement rate, this means your courses are cognitively stimulating, relevant for the learners, and help them perform their job roles better. However, if you, like almost every other organization, are struggling with facilitating learning engagement, here’s what you can do.

Building a learning organization can be challenging but with the right support, you can fastrack the process. Give your employees the right learning platform with Auzmor Learn – an award-winning, intuitive, and easy-to-use LMS. It features an extensive content library and elaborate course authoring tools to give your learners a rich learning experience. Book a FREE demo today to know more!