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EKA Hellas

Building a culture of learning at work

1
Aug
2024
open workspace with different learning location options

According to the Work Institute’s latest report, professional development is one of the most important reasons why employees leave their current jobs. On the other hand, according to a Deloitte report, organizations with a strong learning culture have a 30-50% higher employee retention rate.

A culture of continuous in-house learning and improvement is important in retaining the most talented employees. Additionally, learning at work could improve employees’ skills and help narrow the skills gap from within the company advancing innovation and company growth. With a proactive approach to workplace learning, employees could improve their skills, become more productive, and ensure that both they and the company remain competitive.

Innovative companies like Google, have built a learning and training culture empowering employees to learn in various ways. They organize departmental or company-wide meetings to review successful or unsuccessful projects, they invite outside speakers to share their knowledge and experience, and they allow employees to devote part of their workday to working on a project that is not directly related to their role. These efforts allow employees to learn from their own, their peers, and third-party successes and failures.

To build a culture of learning it’s important to have the will and support of the company’s leadership. At the same time, creating the right infrastructure could support and encourage learning at work.

 

How can you inspire a culture of learning at work?

 

Learning within the company can be done in many ways, group or individual, formal or informal. Informally it can be done by sharing knowledge and information between employees and formally by organizing a seminar or inviting a speaker to the company. These are group ways of developing knowledge. Learning, however, can also be done individually with employees taking the time to stay up to date on developments in their field of work by reading an article or watching a webinar or podcast.

Easy access to knowledge as well as providing different ways of learning are important elements in promoting a culture of knowledge in a company. Creating the right workplaces and providing the necessary infrastructure and tools that employees can use to acquire and share knowledge can help foster a learning culture in the workplace.

 

sketch showing different learning spaces

 

Open and collaborative spaces

Open and collaborative spaces are the cornerstone of a learning-friendly environment. Employees with access to common areas are more likely to engage in spontaneous conversations with colleagues and knowledge-sharing.

These spaces can be designed to accommodate groups of various sizes and activities, from informal discussions to brainstorming sessions, and have appropriate support equipment such as monitors and whiteboards, tables or collaboration stands. At the same time, it is important that these spaces also have sound-absorbing solutions to protect employees who are not participating in training or brainstorming from noise.

 

Predefined quiet and gathering areas

As important as the existence of open and collaborative spaces is, the existence of quiet and gathering spaces is just as important. These are spaces designed to promote calm and focused learning and work.

The quiet and gathering areas can be equipped with office booths, individual workplaces, or lounge solutions supported by sound-absorbing products that will create a space without distractions both for work and for individual learning.

 

Training areas

Many companies choose to create special learning spaces, which will also have the appropriate supporting equipment. These spaces can be used by a team to review a project or by larger groups, even by the entire company for seminars, talks, and other training opportunities with the participation of even third-party speakers.

In the specialized learning areas, it is good to have seats that will support the employees throughout the training, as well as a video conferencing system so that employees who work remotely can also participate. Also, tools such as whiteboards can make learning and collaboration easier, while sound-absorbing solutions that will surround the space will mitigate reverberation allowing all participants to hear satisfactorily within the space.

 

By investing in learning at work, companies help employees to develop their knowledge and skills, which in turn supports innovation and increases employees’ job satisfaction, performance, and likelihood of staying with the company. Having learning spaces within the company indicates its commitment to lifelong learning and having different learning spaces can support more employees in the learning journey as not all employees have the same needs and the same way of learning.

Do you want to equip a learning space at work? Let’s talk.

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