How to Turn Your Business into a Learning Organization?
London (UK), January 2018 - (By Corentin Sannie, Learning Expert @ 360Learning) A learning organization, a structure capable of naturally integrating and seamlessly sharing knowledge, is an increasingly popular concept in the training world. They are often considered as an unattainable ideal rather than a goal for companies to obtain. However, this is a misconception! Just three steps need to be taken to create a learning organization: decentralizing content creation, focusing on social interactions and continuous evaluation.
Decentralizing the creation of training content
In a learning organization, training is everybody’s job. In this type of structure, each person must be able to share new techniques and information that can increase knowledge and improve performance within the company.
According to a recent study from Adecco, 60% of jobs that will exist in 2030 do not yet exist today. Currently, only business experts are able to identify and anticipate the transformations taking place in their professions. We must give them the floor to speak up about these changes. They are the ones who should define training content and the skills critical to the success of their learners.
This decentralization of training content can’t be done overnight. There needs to be clearly defined processes that are adopted and applied internally. The trainer’s role is to ensure content quality and help experts master the necessary educational techniques to efficiently transfer knowledge.
Time is required to establish and manage the initial process framework, but results will be felt quickly and have a strong impact. In addition to the considerable time saved by training teams, these courses are also perfectly adapted for employee onboarding or skill improvement. Employees are immediately operational and can learn based on their engagement level throughout their entire career.
Social interactions at the heart of learning
A learning organization can’t exist without a true desire to share knowledge, as the organization thrives on member engagement and interaction.
Trainers must put learner engagement at the heart of their strategy. Today, social features are perfectly adapted to achieve this. Not convinced? Simply take a look at how social networks have transformed how we use the Internet over the past 10 years. When applied to learning, social components can help drive learner engagement rates of over 80%.
It's clear that social features are not merely gimmicks - especially considering that they have an immediate impact on the quality of learning by allowing learners to compare their performance and reinforce positive learning behavior among teams. The trainer's role is to identify the most engaged employees and make them learning ambassadors within the company. This collaborative method is a better way to transfer skills and therefore makes for more effective training.
Analyze and evaluate to increase agility
A learning organization can be compared to a living, independent organism. Like a biologist or a doctor, the trainer needs to work to understand the organism and help it grow with two objectives in mind: the development of interactions between learners and constantly improving the quality of training content.
To achieve these goals, trainers need to pay close attention to the collection and analysis of learning-related data. They must know and be able to draw conclusions from the engagement rate, completion rate and virality of the content that's shared on the platform. This allows them to guide business experts in content production and constantly test new ways of engaging and supporting learners in acquiring knowledge.
This agile state of mind, with continuous testing and fine-tuning, has become a necessity. It's thanks to this agility that trainers will learn, improve and develop their learning organization.
In today's world, only a learning organization is capable of independently adapting to perpetual market upheavals. However, turning your company into a learning organization is a long process and the degree of change this represents for the training department shouldn’t be underestimated.
Yet, the results are more than worth the investment and will have an immediate impact on learning within your company. So what's stopping you from testing social and engaging training? With 360Learning, you can start right now.
