Tuesday Insight: Learning at Work

It’s Learning at Work Week 2018, an important reminder from the Campaign for Learning of the importance of learning at work.

Since it’s launch in 1999, there’s been a growing awareness of what makes learning at work effective and I thought I’d take this opportunity to reflect on some of the most important developments I’ve witnessed over the years.

We’ve probably all experienced those courses where an ‘expert’ at the front of the room delivers training in a lecturing style armed with thousands of PowerPoint slides, which often resemble a script.

Fortunately, a growing awareness of the importance of learner-led learning has created an environment where you’re just as likely to experience a learning event that is engaging, fun and interactive; an event where the learner is given the opportunity to learn from new experiences and reflect on those he/she has already had. It was a passion for engaging the learner that led us to create Trainers’ Library; a library of professional resources to help trainers around the world achieve just that.  

Training was once seen as the responsibility of the learning and development department, or in some cases HR. If someone was underperforming, or needed to develop new skills or behaviours, they were sent on a course with the expectation that they’d be ‘cured’ and returned as a cloned version of a ‘perfect’ employee.  

Workshops and group training still provide vitally important opportunities for learning 

because they provide a great space in which to learn together, work to solve shared problems and learn from each other’s experiences, but learning doesn’t end with these events.

When we become a manager, we’re no longer responsible for just our personal outputs, but on what we achieve through others. That realisation should put leadership and people development at the heart of the manager’s role, as more and more organisations are recognising. It’s why we developed Managers’ Library, a rich library of resources to help managers develop their leadership skills and the skills and abilities of their teams. In short, it can help them become better at fulfilling the vital part they each play in learning at work. 

Ironically, this week serves as a good reminder that far from being something that needs to happen once a year, learning at work is a continuous process.

A greater awareness of learning as a continuous journey has also led to a greater awareness of how people learn and how they access learning. Whilst group work still provides a vital part of the learning mix, so does 1:1 coaching and mentoring (Trainers’ Library has lots of materials to help you develop these skills within the organisation). And, of course, self-facilitated learning, like that provided to managers by Managers’ Library and by the many resources in Trainers’ Market, is important too.

With so much learning going on, more and more organisations use a Learning Management System of their own, to curate, manage and track learning throughout the organisation. So, it’s good to know that the Self Study content (like e-learning but with an element of practical application) from Managers’ Library can be purchased ‘off the shelf’ for your own LMS too. 

It’s easy to overlook just how important effective feedback is to learning at work. (There’s loads of material on effective feedback in both Trainers’ Library and Managers’ Library.) Good feedback not only helps individuals and organisations understand their strengths and weaknesses, but also how they can improve. 

And that applies to us too! Our mission is to enable people by providing a library of effective resources that help make learning at work effective and fun, and you can help us continue learning at work by giving us your feedback.

There’s loads of ways to let us know how we’re doing and share your ideas for the future development of any of our services. You can review materials you’ve used in Trainers’ Library, respond to this email, complete our short online survey, give us a call or chat to us online, to name just a few. We’d love to hear from you.

Until next time…