Organisations that value learning will outperform those that don’t. Or, at least, that’s what many people believe. At Wranx, we’re of the opinion that all organisations have some culture of learning, but that few can truly lay claim to a culture of learning that’s intertwined with the very fabric of the organisation. This is what it’s all about; inspiring a culture of learning from the employment process to executive roles.

Corporations, SMEs, start-ups, sales directors, managers, and decision makers should start by asking themselves “How can I increase my organisation’s ability to learn”. This is a very important question that needs answering, for modern organisations have a duty to train a workforce and a need to do so, because an organisation’s culture is the one thing that stands between an organisation’s results. To inspire a culture of learning within your organisation, you need to understand how you can improve learning within your organisation, and you need to understand the habits of highly developed learning and development professionals.

Understanding how people learn, and what the tools are that people need to learn with, are the first steps toward inspiring a culture of learning.

When it comes to creating a learning culture, there are several best practices that directors, managers, and decision-makers should take onboard. These are:

Send a clear message

The passion directors, managers, and decision-makers have for learning will show through when it comes to creating a learning culture within an organisation. All of the people who roll out learning initiatives and get professionals onboard need to send a very clear message about just how important a culture of learning is to the business, and these personal feelings need to show how much you value knowledge, learning, information, and change. If you are a decision-marker, you MUST remember that professionals need to trust you to back them when it comes to learning. So send a clear message.

Understand your colleagues

Of course, sending a clear message about how important knowledge, learning, information, and change is to the organisation is no good if you don’t fully understand your colleague’s orientation to learning, and for this reason a great idea is to run an assessment to find out the characteristics of cultures that encourage learning. With this information, you will be empowered with the ability to connect with employees within an organisation on a professional and personal level, and get employees excited about potential learning initiatives thanks to proposing initiatives that suit learning orientation.

Let colleagues get involved

As a decision-maker, you have the final say on what learning initiatives the organisation rolls out, but it’s important to remember who is going to be benefitting from them most; the workforce. As such, during the planning stage, it’s wise to let colleagues get involved who have regular contact with workers ‘on the ground’, so to speak, to help people understand that this isn’t simply just another corporate initiative, but one that has taken on board the ideas and fears of those it will affect. Creating new relationships among people in your organisation is a great way to bring people together and get everybody involved.

Tailor your learning to mobile

If the past 10 years has taught us one thing, it’s that mobile learning is now a key part of the learning culture. Mobile learning environments, such as those from Wranx, empower employees with the tools to learn on-the-move and of course all of this is monitored and tracked to tailor learning experiences to the individual. When it comes to inspiring a culture of working, nothing inspires more than giving people the ability to learn at their own pace, share ideas on-the-move, and take work out of the office. This is a particularly powerful way to inspire a culture of learning with mobile sales teams.

Start at the beginning

In true Wranx style, we have saved the best till last. The most important thing an organisation can do to inspire and create a culture of learning is to start at the beginning and communicate the expectations for employees to learn and develop new knowledge and skills at the recruitment stage. Your organisation should encourage learning immediately and have the infrastructure in place to support employees of different roles, such as sales, marketing, and human resources, to allow the organisation to develop skills evenly across departments. With structured and informal learning experiences playing a key role in a culture of learning, however, this infrastructure may take some time to build.