You might be wondering, what is a learning culture and why is this important for the growth of your business? There are many reasons to grow a learning culture to help improve your company’s bottom line.
Think of a learning culture as building a growth mindset. Simply put, it’s about creating a workplace culture that is built on continuous learning by both employees and the employer. As a business owner, this means understanding that intelligence and abilities can be developed over time with the right approach.
This type of culture is great because it also enables the employees to appreciate new tools that can be used for business growth. Technology is constantly developing and companies rely on new tools and applications for smoother operations. If your company were trying to incorporate a planning software like NetSuite, your employees would likely be more open-minded towards using it if the business culture appreciated learning and growing.
Having a growth mindset will support your business to move forward, while positioning your brand and your people towards a path to success. If that’s not enough, here are six reasons to build a learning culture.
A learning culture…
- Cultivates leadership and emotional intelligence by providing employees with a higher sense of personal worth. When you help build the skills and abilities of your employees, this not only allows, but encourages them to take on greater responsibilities. But what if you are new to the role or you lack experience in your newfound position? Well, you can do a few things, namely seek help from other professionals or your acquaintances in order to help you manoeuvre this minefield of sorts. Additionally, you can explore online resources, like guides, webinars, blogs and even news articles that focus on leadership, like this one on the Newsweek CEO and his personal mantra when it comes to business. At the end of the day, there are personnel and tools to guide you, should you choose to utilize them but remember, that only with time, can you build up your own philosophy and successfully lead your employees to greater heights, thereby ensuring that your company is in a good position.
- Motivates performance and increases engagement by showing employees that you support them with opportunities for both personal and professional growth. Learning experiences, such as conferences and seminars, will allow your employees to advance with new skills to use on the job. As a result, you may find an increase in efficiency, productivity, and profit.
- Improves employee retention by creating a relationship based on trust. If you provide continuous learning opportunities along with a proper competitive salary (to know what is competitive, you could read up blogs similar to Dig U Pay and others) in tandem with the current market trends, it could translate to an investment in the growth and development of your employees and of your business. By providing this kind of value, feelings of satisfaction often result in increased loyalty to your company. With employee retention, comes reduced costs in recruitment, hiring, and training new staff.
- Builds accountability by seeing the employee-employer relationship as less authoritative and more opportunistic. Employees can expect to be accountable for their own learning path and in doing so, encourages them to take extra pride in the work they do.
- Prepares your business to deal with emergencies by maintaining contingencies. Provide your employees with Insignia Crisis Management training and other relevant courses so that they can help your business overcome challenges and perform well in a dynamic marketplace. Staying ahead of the game also shows clients, partners, and potential hires that you are a business that they should be working with.
- Drives innovation by inspiring new knowledge and encouraging new ideas. This is a key driver to keeping your company ahead of the competition.
Commit to Learning
Take a look at your current practices – what are you doing that supports the learning of your employees, your teams, and yourself as a business leader? How do you define your company culture? It’s important to take the time to build a solid foundation for your business, with a high-performing culture.
