“An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage”.  

Jack Welch, American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001

Enough has been said and written about the necessity of an enterprise-wide learning culture, but no amount can emphasize its importance, more so now. Even in a pre-pandemic world a learning culture within organizations was the fulcrum, and now, as globally we are trying to come to terms with a new normal – learning, relearning, unlearning, upskilling, cross skilling, leveraging learning technologies have taken the centre stage. And HR leaders and global CLOs have the huge responsibility of promoting and maintaining a robust learning culture that aids the business objectives of the organization. 

How does one deliver on this, and what are the measures that every CLO will have to undertake to enable learning enterprise. Research indicates that companies in the top quartile of leadership outperform other organizations by nearly two times on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). – Source: McKinsey. 

Here are a set of pointers that can be the signposts that guide you through the path of the learning journey.

Executive Leadership BuyIn:

1. Call it the organizational DNA, cultural fabric of the company, or a mission statement, fact remains that cultivating the habit of continuous learning, developing a curious and problem-solving mindset across the organization will be the fundamental big step in the right direction. The executives at the helm will need to drive this agenda in full throttle providing ample lead by example scenarios and countless opportunities for employees to fail fast and learn fast as well. 

Bottomline: Learning needs to be driven from the top.

Custom Made Learning:

2. All of us know that the one size fits all approach in learning never works anymore. Customized learning solutions keeping in mind the domain, soft skills and behavioural training is what will cut with the employees. While some of the industry specific technical learning solutions are applicable to the entire workforce and this knowledge needs to be baselined to assess performance and impact. 

Bottomline – Learning needs to be tailor made.

Innovations in Learning:

3. There has been an explosion of learning technologies and trendy mediums of delivery of learning content. If its LMS that you are resorting to, it needs to be extremely easy to use and intuitive. Additionally, it would be a brilliant idea to tap into several low cost, smart technology solutions that can provide a seamless and immersive learning experience to learners. 

Bottomline – Learning needs to be innovative.

Including Assessments Wisely

4. Assessments can be a great tool to record and review the pre- and post-training efforts. It tailors the training to individual competencies and capabilities and makes it sharper and more focused. Instead of the one size fits all generic training which will not assure specific results, training efforts must weave in assessments to unlock gaps in technical, soft and behaviours. 

Bottomline – Learning that leverages tests becomes more focused. 

Leveraging Informal Learning

5. Technology and learning technologies have opened enormous possibilities for the learning mind to devour information and stay educated. Organizations will have to be smarter in blending several existing resources and be remarkably different when they roll out training programs. Because several of the informal learning resources are free. From TED talks, YouTube, SlideShare the options are aplenty.

Bottomline – Learning must infuse new age informal learning resources. 

For all of these you will find viable strategies and vendor partners who can make the enterprise-wide learning hassle free and results oriented at our upcoming L&D Success Stories showcase. Contact us to know more about this event.