Being part of a learning organization fundamentally changes the way you view training. It’s never simply a one and done event. It isn’t even just a monthly or quarterly seminar. It’s fused into the everyday.

The skills needed to succeed in today’s workplace have an extremely limited shelf-life, and that means employees have to learn new skills continuously to keep companies competitive in a volatile marketplace. Organizations that recognize the need for learning every day are the ones that will successfully turn with the tide, rather than be drowned by it.

Learning How to Learn

The most valuable skill that can be acquired through ongoing training is the skill of learning itself. The key element of a business that stays agile and ahead of the competition is a workforce that embraces the act of learning every single day. Continuous learning isn’t a fad – it’s a core strategy. 

To turn your employees’ mindsets toward everyday learning, training can’t simply be a supplemental exercise. To get the learning juices flowing on a consistent basis, you’ll need to create an environment that encourages and thrives on microlearning, coaching and mentoring.

How to Make the Time

If you’re thinking that pulling people off the job to train them on something new every day is completely unreasonable, then you’d be right. Luckily, with today’s technology and solutions, effective training can happen in under 10 minutes wherever your employees are. Video-based microlearning allows an employee to learn from anywhere, at any time, without interrupting their work for hours.

Ok hold on, but how is so little time spent in training going to actually create behavior changes?

Making learning micro allows for change because it protects your employees’ brains from information overload. Our brains are designed to forget, and they do so in spectacular fashion when too much training is lumped together all at once. Increasing learning retention starts with breaking down your training curriculum into manageable pieces.

Otherwise, 90% of that training budget is going in one ear and out the other.

Microlearning is the best way to learn a skill in the moment, but it’s also the first step to becoming a learning organization by making learning an everyday event. Opening up your workforce’s collective mind to becoming smarter every day lays the foundation for wild innovation and upward growth.

Get In the Game with Continuous Coaching

Another key to becoming a learning organization is keeping training aligned with business objectives. Allowing elective training is a big advantage of microlearning, but to see high level results based on individual development, you’ll also need to empower managers as coaches. Managing employees is not enough when you’re striving to see growth and innovation become the norm rather than the exception in your business.

Your employees need to know that their development is valuable to the company, and coaching is a concrete way to create and follow through on their professional goals. Training managers to coach will provide accountability in a way that motivates, rather than leaves an employee feeling like they’re just not good enough.

Learn how to implement coaching with our free on-demand webinar:

Use Mentoring to Leave Mediocre in the Dust

Perhaps the most important aspect of becoming a learning organization is proving that leadership is 100% behind the initiatives guiding it. Motivation comes from the top down, and a highly effective way of providing motivation for employees to develop their business skills is through a mentoring program.

The knowledge and experience that top leadership possesses is invaluable to building up the next generation of leaders. Millennials catch a lot of flack for not having the experience necessary for leadership, so why not hit that issue head on by getting them involved with a mentor?

Developing that growth mindset early on will be a catalyst for the innovation necessary to keep your company as an industry leader for years to come.

Becoming a learning organization isn’t going to happen overnight, but if you’re willing to commit to the training and development your workforce needs to move the company forward, new heights will be on your horizon.

Enjoy a 1-minute preview of “Becoming a Learning Organization” below: