A high-performing organization starts and ends with culture. 

The organizations that stand head and shoulders above their competition all have the same two prerequisites: A great product and a great culture delivering that great product.

The top companies are the ones that create a culture of continuous workplace learning.

Workplace learning creates a trickle-down effect that enjoys a host of benefits. For example, when employees further their skillsets, their expertise improves, making them feel more like a key part of the team. 

Feeling like a key member leads to higher employee engagement. That then boosts overall morale, increases employee retention, which ultimately leads to increased customer satisfaction.

So how can you create a culture of continuous learning? Here are three ways that will get the job done.

Share the wealth

In the 15th century, a single innovation enabled people to share knowledge faster and with greater ease. That innovation was the printing press. The following two hundred years led civilization into what's known as the Age of Enlightenment.

As the saying goes, knowledge is power. The printing press helped democratize information and disseminate knowledge broader and faster than ever seen before. 

That knowledge led to the Industrial Era, the first time humanity saw innovation at a scale that created the modern world up to the dot com boom. This same thought process works in the office. 

If you choose to bake learning into your culture, then the best thing for your organization is to make newfound knowledge available for everybody.

One of the best methods is to start by gathering a group of employees for 1 hour a week to discuss a particular topic, whether industry trends, current events, or shared topics of interest. Find something that everyone agrees upon and discuss the subject.

Have a dedicated note keeper during the discussion and create a dedicated, company-wide knowledge library.

Your knowledge library should be a living document that is updated once a week. Document the discussion with must-know bullet points in your organization's knowledge library. Encourage all employees to review topics once a week as well after it's posted.

Sharing knowledge can create a company-wide shared belief system that makes it easier for everyone to row in the same direction.

Lead by example

Are you a leader who champions learning? Because you should be. A culture of learning begins at the top with senior leadership.

If you want to develop a culture of learners, you should be learning as well. Not only should you be learning, but you should be sharing what you're learning, as we mentioned above.

Make learning a core organizational value and speak about it openly. If you're going to encourage knowledge-sharing, you and other senior leaders should be the first to share. 

In company-wide meetings, leave 15 to 20 minutes available for a leader to share recent, relevant findings. Company-wide meetings are a great time to share the latest happenings in your industry.

Additionally, make learning a top priority from day one of employment. Onboarding is the perfect place to start. Let your new hires know that as long as they're employed, they're going to be learning.

Allow them to choose what they want to work on first and create a roadmap to help them reach their goals. 

Continual learning can't just be left to the individual contributors to do. It starts at the top.

Develop personalized plans

Top talent already invests in their education. So if you want to recruit and retain said top talent, they need to see you're just as invested in them as they are themselves.

There are many ways for workers to upskill and learn new things, which are easily accessible and on-demand. And because of the ease of learning on the internet, many young millennial and Gen-Z workers are electing to skip traditional education for self-paced learning online. 

While there are many benefits of online education (like learning how you learn), there are bound to be holes in their game due to the lack of structured learning that traditional education provides. 

So now you want to personalize learning for the specific individual that meets your workers where they are. 

Ask what they feel they want to learn and personalize the process. Personalization is all about creating a frictionless learning process. 

At Arist, we built the first text messaging learning platform. Our text-based courses land right to your employee's devices. 

Creating a course takes minutes. You can build courses quickly, launch instantly, and track remote-friendly training in minutes. Or we can build courses for you. 

Book a demo and see it in action.

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