Creating a Learning Culture in Your Workplace

Dr. Ryan Giffen

The best way to own a successful business is to keep your employees interested in the products or services you offer. If your workers are not excited about the products they create, how can they encourage your customers to buy them? Your employees need more knowledge about what the company offers to keep them interested. They need a better understanding of how customers enjoy using your products or services. To foster this, you must create a learning culture within your business.

You can achieve this by implementing a learning culture to improve your business or organization. Work environments change fast. This can lead to companies and their employees feeling pressured to learn new tactics faster than the competition. This issue is very common in several industries including the hospitality and technology sectors where companies often announce new products. The workers must learn all about these new advancements in a very short time to prevent losing customers.

What are the Benefits?

There are several advantages to adding a learning culture to your organization. The following are a sample of the benefits you can expect by using this form of employee training.

  • Increased efficiency and productivity of your employees. Your workers can produce more products and inform customers because they have greater knowledge about them.
  • Employee satisfaction and faster product turnover time. Motivate your employees to work on a product when they understand the benefits it provides. And they can produce the products faster thanks to their knowledge of the product as well.
  • An improved mindset among your employees. When your workers understand more about what they are creating, they are more encouraged to show up and perform well.
  • An improved sense of ownership and accountability for all workers because of their new knowledge and training.
  • Ease in the transition from one project to another with less stress or confusion involved.
  • Providing your employees with a great ability to adapt to changes with their daily routine. 

Developing a Learning Culture Will Keep Your Business Competitive

Creating a learning culture for your business starts with your company leaders. You are introducing a new training method. Your team leaders should show they are on board with this innovative learning environment.

Here are a few steps you can take toward developing a learning culture for your workplace.

Give Employees Recognition for Their Hard Work

Introducing a learning culture can be difficult to get used to at first. Your workers who have learned new techniques and skills will continue to stay dedicated to the task if they are recognized for their hard work. This will also encourage your other employees to put forth the same effort.

Get Feedback

Things change when you add a new learning culture. You should check the benefits of this method by taking polls and asking for feedback. This will show you how beneficial the new training investment is.

Formulize Training Plans

To introduce a new learning culture, the training should be mandatory for everyone in the organization and not a select few. Training plans that aren’t formalized and carried out by all employees often aren't taken seriously. So they will not be successful.

Develop Knowledge Sharing into a Formal Process for Your Company

Your workers will be more likely to share information and knowledge if required to do so. By sharing what they know with others in the company, you can be sure that everyone gets the crucial details they need.

About Dr. Ryan Giffen

With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Ryan Giffen is an expert in human relations and business culture. His career began in hospitality, leading operations and human resource departments for Fortune 500 companies and the like. Not long after, Ryan found his passion for teaching and consulting. He earned a Ph.D. in Hospitality Management with a Human Resources focus from Iowa State University and now works as an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. For over a decade, he continues to research and speak on organizational culture, relationship intelligence, and leadership effectiveness. Ryan is also the founder of Inospire, a company helping bosses and employees build stronger relationships with one another.  Lastly, Dr. Giffen is producer and host of the Corporate Shadow Podcast. a show helping everyday employees overcome workplace nonsense.