If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that responding to the changing needs of employees is vital to an organization’s success. Can you think of a time when your organization had to pivot to the environment around them? Common examples your company may think of are shifting to working from home, re-evaluating a “Return to Work” business model, or even updating hiring practices towards a more inclusive, equitable process.  

According to the Brandon Hall Group, organizational agility is “the ability of an organization to adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, disruptive environment. Organizational agility is an organization’s readiness to respond to sudden and often profound change.” 

Luckily, your organization has probably already had to adapt to these changing times, but no matter the time it took for your organization to get there and to continue getting to where you want to be – there’s always room for improvement! 

Creating a culture of learning is a proactive approach to keeping an organization on top of a changing environment as well as being ready to adapt when the timing is right. 

As organizations have reimagined their future of work to represent a hybrid model, many organizations are seeing the value in adopting online tools to connect, collaborate, and learn. Millennials highly value development in the workplace, making this approach even more beneficial to your business’ short and long-term success. 

Here is a list of ways your organization can build a culture of learning through online models:

Build channels to force the flow of learning throughout your organization.

One way of doing this is starting a book club to encourage your team to participate in and open employees’ minds. Employees feel empowered when leadership is on board. Scheduling time on less busy days of the month shows employees you support their development on the clock.

Another way is encouraging employees to give presentations on business-related topics to further teach and engage the entire team. Offering chances to collaborate with team members and host discussions online further allows employees to create individualized learning cultures suited to their specific needs.

To build a culture of learning that accommodates all employees’ individual learning styles, read our blog, Putting Blended Learning to Work: How to Optimize Your Approach to Training Employees.  

Schedule weekly meetings for employees within the organization to share new projects they’re working on or new topics they’re passionate about. 

This is a great way to engage employees across teams and empower them to provide a helping hand on projects they normally wouldn’t touch day-to-day. Doing so allows employees to navigate working with new people, learn new skills, and continue strengthening previously learned skills by applying them to a new field of work – all applicable to building agility within your organization.  

Encourage healthy competition by developing an incentive program.

Motivate your workforce to learn by associating a prize with getting involved in growth opportunities.

Whether it’s a gift card for attending book club sessions, an extra PTO day for offering support to other teams, or a recognition on the employee forum for completing elective training courses, all these incentives will motivate the entire workforce to get involved and spiral a culture of learning.  

Implement an online learning platform to formalize the learning process, quantify growth, and drive results. 

BizLibrary specializes in online learning and provides a one-of-a-kind skills development platform – BizSkills – that maps content to skills to job roles. 

An online learning platform allows employees to feel connected to the company while developing their own individual work selves – a need that is becoming increasingly important as more and more employees re-evaluate their current employers.

BizSkills helps organizations grow and retain their employees by offering individuals a clear path to career growth in addition to backing up these personalized journeys with associated content. A great bonus to implementing an online platform is that administrators can track employee progress and identify gaps in their programs. Our ebook, The Race to Personalized Skill Development shares the current landscape of skills development and how organizations can elevate their programs using online learning platforms. 

Ask for feedback. 

The only way to truly build a culture of learning is if employees are interested in the content matter available to them. Asking employees for their opinions can help instill confidence in themselves and drive change in a positive way.  

Our ebook, Training Strategies to Address the Soft Skills Gap, explains how organizations can successfully administer a needs assessment to better cater to employees’ individualized learning paths.  

Encouraging the sharing of feedback allows your organization’s learning culture to further improve and foster an agile organization ready to take on any challenge life may throw at them.  

While developing your workforce, employees can fill skill gaps, find intention in their work, widen their flexibility – all benefits to maximizing your organization’s agility and ability to combat change and uncertainty. The pandemic has flipped organizations upside down, and now it’s time for organizations to get back on their feet stronger than ever.

If your organization is ready to create a culture of learning, talk to a BizLibrary representative to see how we can help you make it happen!