What’s the learning culture like in your organization?

We were joined by Mark Rivera, Talent Development Partner at Lloyd’s for a webinar discussing ways to make sure your organization’s learning culture is positive, productive, and business-building.

Mark Rivera has over 20 years of experience in learning and talent development, so we were incredibly excited to pick his brain on this topic! Trent Howell, VP of Marketing at eLearning Brothers joined Mark to facilitate the discussion.

In the webinar, Mark and Trent covered 3 main areas:

1. Culture of Learning
2. What’s the Ideal
3. How Do We Get There?

First, they talked about what’s changed in the past 20 years of learning and development.

“Time is at a premium now,” said Mark. The biggest move has been toward bite-sized microlearning. (We certainly agree with that at eLearning Brothers!) There is more variety in ways we attract people to learning and how we deliver the learning to them.

Then they dove into the nitty-gritty of learning cultures.

Every company has a culture, whether it’s intentional or not, said Mark. But if your goal is to have a positive company culture—and learning culture—you have to put some effort into it.

One big thing that Trent and Mark discussed was how team culture trumps everything.

“People will stay with a team before they decide to leave a company.”

-Marcus Buckingham

Mark’s recommendation: You need to build learning into your teams to make it stick. Because of this, it’s vital to train your managers to be coaches and mentors who drive learning.

And you need to build learning into expectations of performance. If your people can invest their time in on-the-job learning, that becomes an investment that pays your company back in better performance, higher engagement, more motivation.

Creating a good learning culture isn’t just a “nice to have.”

What happens when you have a bad learning culture?

• Talent turnover
• Disengagement
• Apathy
• Customer Loss

On the flip side…

You know you have a positive, ideal learning culture when you have:

• Closely aligned business and learning strategies
• Values that affirm learning’s importance
• Managers and staff who seek out new opportunities to learn and to share knowledge with their colleagues
• An atmosphere in which learning is so ingrained that it simply becomes a “way of life”

“If you are developing learning programs because the HR police are on your back or for compliance reasons, that’s not what learning cultures are all about. In a learning culture, you’ll find people learning because they want to.”

-Kim Ruyle, President, Inventive Talent Consulting

SHRM 2014

How to make learning a way of life?

• Don’t treat training as a single event
• Encourage employees to their own answers
• Hire curious people
• Train managers how to coach*
• Reward continuous improvement
• Lead by example

*Hot Tip: Check out the Adobe Check-In system for advice and a toolkit for helping implement their performance management system at your organization.

Mark and Trent discussed many other hot topics, like 70-20-10, and shared great examples of how to build a positive learning culture.

Watch the recording to hear their insights now:

Not sure how to deliver the right training once you’ve improved your learning culture? Or need help planning out the right learning paths for a more engaged audience?

Contact eLearning Brothers Custom Solutions for a free consultation on how we can help you create a learning program that engages and immerses your learners.