How a Culture of Continuous Training Will Help Your Company Thrive

As a leader within your organization, you have a tremendous amount of power over your culture. You guide company decisions that determine which employees leave and those who remain and grow.

Nowhere else is this more true than in employee training. Management teams can encourage employees to grow and help them advance their careers to the company’s benefit. Or they can focus on getting as much out of their staff and giving as little back in return. 

It isn’t easy to develop and maintain a culture of continuous learning, but the right company initiatives backed by committed leaders can make it happen. 

Why Should You Invest in Continuous Learning?

There are several reasons why your company should focus on employee training and growth. William Craig, president and cofounder of WebFX, says the reasons focus on maximizing employee value. Employees are able to onboard to new positions faster, saving the company money. They are more likely to get promoted internally (because your company made them qualified) so knowledge and expertise stays within your organization. Plus, training increases engagement, which increases productivity.

Investing in your employees also “builds you a solid reputation in the marketplace,” writes marketing consultant Parth Misra. “All companies want to attract the best possible talent over to their camp. But who in their right mind would want to work with a company that treats its members as disposable assets?” 

The team at Vitalyst points to the unpredictable nature of the modern workplace as a driver for continuous learning. Skills can grow stall over the span of the year if they aren’t updated or refreshed. Software tools change, best practices are improved upon. Without continuous learning, your employees have a limited amount of time to use their skills before they become outdated. 

Training isn’t just an expense; it’s an essential tool to grow your revenue.

Learning is Part of Your Company Culture

While a few employees might seek out training and developing courses on their own, continuous learning needs to become part of your overall company culture if you want to reap the benefits to your organization. 

The number one reason employees feel held back from learning is because they don’t have time in the workplace, reports leadership strategist Dan Pontefract, author of “Open to Think.” Employees either don’t have the time to research their learning options, or aren’t able to set aside the necessary hours to learn and implement the new skills. 

“When there is no time to learn, the employee distrusts the organization,” Pontefract writes. “It makes employees believe that the company won’t invest in them, so why should they invest in the company?   

Creating a culture of training allows your employees to build their careers around development. Your top performers won’t be the only ones attending conferences or signing up for webinars. 

“When learning becomes embedded in your culture, it becomes an expectation for employees rather than something they take upon themselves,” says Drew Fortin at online employee training provider Biz Library. “In this sense, you can ensure that new hires aren’t just the right fit for a role, but that they also have a growth mindset that will enable them to continue learning how to be successful in their role.” 

Interestingly, your core culture may be one of the main reasons why employees avoid training and learning. For some people, training means making their current processes obsolete and possibly exposing parts of their job that they don’t want changed.  

“One of the most common reasons why employees resist training is fear of change,” writes Rohia Munavar at HR Zone. “Not everyone readily accepts change, most employees want to continue with their past ways of doing jobs because according to them it is more secure and predictable.” 

Once again, this highlights how learning is part of the greater company culture, not just corporate policy. When employees are open to change and ready to take risks, they become open to improving their processes. 

How to Develop a Learning-Driven Culture

It is impossible to develop a learning-driven culture overnight. Your management team needs to prioritize continuous training and improvement and ingrain these beliefs into the very fiber of the company. However, there are some steps you can take to implement these ideas and introduce team members to what a culture of training looks like.

Focus on Learned Behaviors

The type of training you focus on says a lot about what you hope to get out of your efforts. Mark Feffer, editor and publisher of HCM Technology Report, encourages companies to focus on behaviors, rather than skills. Behaviors can help employees adapt to new skills and provide greater flexibility and value in the long term.

For example, if your employees are calm under pressure and know how to handle a crisis with clear heads, they can overcome almost any problem in their industry. To further understand the difference between a skill and a behavior, think about the emergency exit on an airplane. A skill is being able to operate the exit door. A behavior is opening that door and escorting people out during a crash.

Create Opportunities for Informal Learning

Informal learning is just as important as formal learning, and is a concept that can help companies that promote continuous learning succeed. 

Marissa Levin, CEO of Successful Culture, reports that 70 percent of employee development in organizations comes through informal programs. These include off-hand explanations from coworkers and quick, hour-long meetups to learn a specific skill. Levin suggests setting up team-level book clubs or department-wide lunch meetings where coworkers can get together and discuss certain topics.

Encourage Cross-Training and Peer-to-Peer Learning 

By encouraging employees to learn from each other, you are tapping into existing training materials and knowledge sets within your organization, write workplace futurist Kelly Palmer and David Blake, executive chairman at Degreed. They say peer-to-peer learning also helps employees apply what they learn and get immediate feedback on their efforts. Using the technique, they can lead a project or conduct a specific analysis.  

Make Space for Disagreement and Debate

Every manager or leader can make learning and education part of their culture. The team at Big Think Edge, for instance, says companies should encourage their employees to question the ways things are done and whether the company is taking the right steps in a project. Dissenting opinions open the floor for discussions and the spread of new ideas. Employees can have a broader perspective on the topic and better understand why something is done the way it is. 

Questioning processes can also help employees come up with better ideas for greater efficiency in the future.

Tie Your Training Back to the Job Description

Ask yourself what you hope your employees will get out of the training, and how they can grow professionally from what they learn. Make sure they see the value in the extra education. 

“Most employees see on-the-job education as an extra, something they must do on top of the rest of their work,” writes Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner of Futurum Research. “I know I’ve definitely been to seminars or lectures where I’m just checking the box for some requirement.” 

This is especially true if you use training as a prerequisite for advancement or raises. While these requirements are well-meaning and meant to encourage employees to invest in themselves, it is easy for your staff to treat the learning material like busywork to get a promotion.

“There’s nothing worse than feeling like your work doesn’t matter,” says Jon Paul at learning platform D2L. “To build a strong learning culture, organizations need to show employees how their work contributes to achieving the business’ objectives.” 

This is another drawback of using training as a barrier to advancement. There is no personalization or concrete value to learning the skill, but rather just a general business checklist of good employee traits.   

Introduce an Intrapreneur Program

One valuable behavior that you can foster is the ability for employees to think for themselves. Consultant Jessica Thiefels encourages companies to develop “intrapreneur” programs where employees can create new ideas and have the resources and support to execute them. She says gmail and Sony PlayStation were invented by employees, not executives in the company. 

An intrapreneur program is a great way to encourage your employees to come up with new ideas and take risks, while showing that you support their growth and creative efforts. Sure, not all ideas will pan out, but those that do could have a significant impact on your organization.

Turn Your Managers Into Coaches

Investing in a training culture means teaching managers how to train. Anita Bowness, principal product manager at Saba Software, says most managers don’t know how to coach their employees — or claim they don’t have enough time. By providing key resources and making learning part of the company culture, you can encourage managers to make time and prioritize employee learning.

Bowness isn’t the only one to emphasize the importance of teaching managers to be coaches. Daniel Dobrygowski, head of governance and policy at the World Economic Forum, says he encounters employees all the time who want managers they can learn from.

Today’s employees don’t want a boss to keep them in line or give them lectures on the industry. They want to work for someone who can open doors, create opportunities and help them build their portfolios. In this way, both the manager and the employees are in it together: The employee cares about the company because the company cares about the employee’s skills and future.   

Your employees will determine the success of your company. With a culture focused on improving the personal careers of the people who work for you, your brand can develop a team of skilled, loyal employees who want to see their employer thrive.