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In today’s day and age, many companies are becoming mostly remote. It is of the utmost importance that a company and its employees can adapt to the always-changing world we are living in.
This is why companies need to create learning strategies that allow employees to learn new skills and become experts at what they do.
Additionally, taking the necessary steps to build a learning culture is a great way to keep employees engaged and the company adaptable to new changes.
What is an organizational learning strategy?
Organizational learning strategies are how companies plan on training their employees. With the pandemic, many companies are realizing that some jobs can be fully done remotely. However, this can result in the employees not spending enough time engaging in learning because of the demands during the day. Training someone remotely is a great way to improve their skills to help the company even more in the future. Additionally, training an employee allows them to feel a sense of security that the company is investing in their future to stay in the company.
Examples of corporate learning strategies
Here are six examples of corporate learning strategies to inspire your own.
Give employees the option to join a mentorship program
Mentorships are a great way to keep employees engaged and learning during their downtime. When it comes to one’s career, mentorships allow the employee to create a personal network, interact with employees that are experts in areas they are not, build communication skills, learn how to deal with obstacles at work, and possibly earn promotions and raises.
Read more: Mentoring Programs: Purpose, Benefits + How to Get Your Mentoring Program Started
On a personal level, the employee learns new ways of thinking and solving problems daily and at work. They also become more self-aware and can better evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Doing so allows for better confidence and makes them better at receiving and giving feedback.
Jennifer Petrela, a mentoring expert, connected with our team to discuss inclusive mentoring.
During the conversation, Jennifer emphasized that mentorship is a great way to close the skills gap between the skills new graduates enter the workforce with and the skills they need to thrive:
By using Together, participants of your mentorship program can sign up online and the program tracks each mentorship created. According to the Wall Street Journal, over 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a mentoring program in progress. Together allows you to easily create mentorships and track them by simply accessing the platform.
Encourage peer-to-peer learning by pairing employees
People can also learn a lot together. Peer-to-peer learning consists of employees working together and sharing their knowledge in one-on-one or small groups. Peer-to-peer learning is a more engaging and interactive way of learning because of the collaboration that is required among the group members.
This learning strategy not only allows employees to expand their knowledge. It also allows employees to improve relationships with their coworkers. Additionally, this strategy allows employees to be more independent since they are the ones in charge of their learning and developing their skills on the job.
While many companies train employees using quizzes and coursework, most people tend to learn much better and quicker when working together in a group. For this reason, corporate elearning isn’t a silver bullet for employee training.
Empower experts to be instructors
Every department of every company will have an expert. A great learning strategy is to bring these experts to the forefront and have them teach other employees about their expertise. 360 Learning is a great platform for expert employees to build their online courses and become instructors quickly and easily.
Additionally, this strategy will empower the expert to become more confident and share even more of their knowledge with their coworkers.
Use microlearning tactics to reinforce learning
Microlearning is a quicker and cheaper way of learning virtually.
This strategy focuses on small, short-term learning activities for the sole purpose of the employee learning that small piece of knowledge. Microlearning is an affordable and quick way of teaching.
Rather than spending weeks in a course, employees can quickly get trained on what is needed and get back to work. Additionally, this method is more flexible, covering from the simplest to the most complex topics, just in an easy-to-digest method.
Lastly, microlearning allows the learner to retain more knowledge since one can repeatedly put the small unit learned more often than when learning several weeks-long courses.
Develop learning journeys for employees
The focus of learning journeys is to help employees develop new skills and easily transfer that knowledge into their job.
In today’s day and age, learning online is becoming more popular due to the pandemic. It is important to note that a majority of people benefit from learning in a classroom. However, employees do not have a lot of time to sit in a classroom for hours to learn.
Additionally, some people have a hard time transferring what they learned into the job. One study showed that only 12% of employees apply what they learn from Learning and Development programs.
This is where learning journeys come in, which are learning opportunities that are available across the employee life cycle.
These opportunities include fieldwork, classroom digital learning, social learning, mentoring, and workshops. Learning journeys focus on helping the employee develop skills the way he or she believes to be the most effective for him or her.
Create knowledge wikis to spread what’s learned
Many companies have FAQ sections and help centers for customers. However, it is important to keep a help center or somewhere where all employee questions can be answered that is easily accessible.
Wikis, also known as knowledge bases, allow team members to search for the question they have and easily find it, without wasting too much time or finding a co-worker to help them out.
The main focus of a wiki is that it is simple to navigate. The employee needs to be able to easily and quickly find what they are looking for. Your wiki should be an internal website for the company in which employees can find and share their ideas, knowledge, and best practices. Additionally, all the information needs to be organized efficiently and logically.
Encourage a learning culture through rewards and recognition
Learning cultures focus on employee development through learning, which allows them to feel like they are backed by the company and creates a sense of belonging.
Additionally, learning cultures allow employees to always be on the lookout for how they can further develop their skills and knowledge.
A learning culture is a great way to enhance employees' engagement and perform better than other companies that do not have a learning culture.
To establish a learning culture, there needs to be a change in the company as a whole.
Leadership needs to value learning and how new opportunities can become possible by learning more. Only once the culture is established within the company will a program work.
Learning cultures work when employees' performance reviews emphasize learning and managers make them feel like the part they play is important to the company. This is why it is important to have a way to make learning personal to each employee and include performance reviews that reward employees who worked hard.
How can your company improve training and development programs?
The easiest and most affordable way for employees to learn is through mentorships and peer learning programs since you do not have to hire someone from outside to teach others.
Additionally, these programs allow employees to build confidence when it comes to their skills and communicate better with each other.
The 70-20-10 framework shows that 70% of learning is social, 20% is on-the-job, and 10% is individually through courses.
A company’s learning strategies need to reflect this to be effective. Learn more about starting mentorships or peer learning programs by getting in contact with us or checking out this interactive demo.
