7 tips to encourage employee learning and development

In the modern workplace, workers continue to learn and develop. Professionally, personally and with focus on their behaviour and competencies. We already knew the importance and this realisation has been greatly enhanced by the corona crisis. Yet implementation frequently falters in the practical translation to the shop floor. While encouraging learning and development or even behavioral change in employees is quite possible. We list seven success factors that are closely related.

The seven success factors:

1. Increase and facility self-direction
2. Strengthen self-understanding
3. Consider 360-degree feedback
4. Watch out for agony!
5. Tune into different forms of conversiation
6. Provide appropriate educational offerings
7. Give employees a valuable purpose

From wanting to really doing

Many employers and employees now know the benefits. When workers remain actively engaged in learning and their development, it creates greater job happiness, job security and career opportunities. Also, many studies show that these employees are more loyal, motivated and productive. Moreover, it is an important prerequisite for increasing sustainable employability, for example. Or to encourage that older workers can and want to work longer in a pleasant way, shows research from Tilburg University.

Awareness of the benefits and necessity has grown considerably since the corona crisis, including among employers. Worldwide, a sizable majority of CEOs (70 percent) now see the added value of continuous learning. Before the corona crisis, this was still shockingly low (29 percent), this international survey shows.

So the will is there, but creating a “learning organisation” is still not always easy in practice. Often, high work pressure is a barrier that causes employees to “keep not getting around” to a learning path or they are insufficiently stimulated and facilitated to keep developing. How is that even possible? These success factors can directly help with this.

1. Increase and facilitate self-direction

In practice, fostering self-direction among workers appears to be the crucial linchpin in companies that successfully became a learning organization. But this does arise from an interaction between employer and employee. It is not just a matter of putting responsibility on employees, but also facilitating them well. Often this starts with increasing awareness, a good conversation cycle and by providing accessible and appropriate development opportunities.

So it takes more than simply launching an “Online Academy”. Ensure good awareness and communication from the perspective of working people. What does it get them? Consider their current position, as well as advancement opportunities, job happiness or more personal motives and drivers. Thus, the picture of learning and development tilts from “should” to self-willing.

2. Strengthen self-understanding

Employers can do a good job of facilitating the awareness and self-direction of workers with practical, approachable tools. In addition to more self-insight into the current situation, online tools can, for example, provide a better picture of one’s own long-term development direction. And what remains to be done for that. To that end, most organizations today work with online assessments to support employee or team development issues.

3. Consider 360-Degree Feedback

A concrete example of a powerful tool for increasing self-insight is tapping into 360 Degree Feedback. Because good feedback is very valuable for increased self-insight and employee development. Not only do their own insights count, but also those of relevant people around them. Think colleagues, a supervisor or, for example, (internal) customers. By utilizing employees’ environments more broadly, performance and development opportunities come into focus in a good and approachable way. The “360 degrees” represent the perspectives from which feedback is received on such things as skills, personality, abilities and motivation. The questionnaires can be tailored to different competency (level)s and are also often used for good dialogue between employee and manager or to ensure a modern customized interview cycle.

4. Watch out for agony!

When there are organizational changes that require different learning or development behaviors, it is good to be aware of an important pitfall. It is located in our brain. Changes often initially meet with immediate resistance from people. This is because in our brain, when changes occur, the same parts of the brain are activated as when we think about death. “A change – even a positive one – is primarily viewed by our brain as a loss. That triggers our thoughts of mortality, because death is the ultimate loss,” said American researcher Professor James R. Bailey of George Washington University on the subject. “When unconscious thoughts of death are activated, a whole series of defense mechanisms come into play to protect our identity, routines and competencies.”

But you can also leverage these principles, for example, by informing and preparing employees in a timely manner. This underscores the importance of good communication, in this case allowing people to acclimate safely first. Then the brain can move along flexibly, because in fact, brains are constantly changing. The trick is to influence this positively. This can be done by connecting change to the deepest essence and motivations of employees (the WHY from Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model). Besides WHAT someone does and HOW, what matters most in the end is WHY someone actually does something. With that awareness, people can consciously work on their development and their brain structure is actually positively influenced. HR can facilitate this by seeking methods by which employees and managers consciously reflect on this key question.

5. Tune into different forms of conversation

To facilitate the good conversation between employee and manager during changes or learning and development processes, it is important to keep an eye on the different conversation cycles. Indeed, in a complete interview cycle, they conduct different types of interviews (such as Bila+ and development or annual interviews), each time at different times and for different purposes. A (digital) development cycle can be used to facilitate individual or team development. The starting point is usually the job home and job profiles in an organization. Around this are built the principles of the interview cycle. In doing so, objectified questionnaires can help bring the conversations to the right level quickly and substantiated.

6. Provide appropriate educational offer

It may sound logical initiallyat first glance, but also provide appropriate learning offerings when learning and development actually need to be facilitated. Across an entire organization, this is often a diverse offering, tailored by target group and to what individual employees want to learn. Because different people learn in different ways. Not every learning pathway is suitable for everyone. Therefore, think carefully about the learning methods and forms of learning offered. At one time, perhaps a low-threshold e-learning will suffice while in another situation, practitioners may prefer to learn together collaboratively in a classroom. Discuss this and match the learning offerings well with different learning needs. In an online learning environment there, test forms can also be offered to increase self-insight and self-direction.

Don’t forget the opportunities for internal knowledge sharing among colleagues as well. Don’t underestimate how much knowledge, experience and experts are in your organisation. This can be shared with internal webinars, training or knowledge-sharing sessions, for example. Or choose a form that answers questions that are regularly asked. This can also be about learning and development or simply the content knowledge and experience that can be shared internally.

7. Give employees a valuable purpose

In a fruitful “learning organization,” many of the success factors just mentioned – if all goes well – are closely related. Because no self-direction without self-insight. And no enriching learning pathway without appropriate learning offerings. A key underlying success factor is giving employees a clear goal to work toward. To do this, unite the organization’s purpose with an employee’s professional and preferably personal purpose.

Often the organisation’s purpose and strategy are clear, but sometimes they could be better translated to employees. Employees themselves are often a bit searching for their own purpose at first. To do so, see to what extent their talents, drives and interests can be connected to the goals of the organization or their team. Again, the 360 Degree Feedback can probably come in handy for that.

Floor Hendriks

Floor has extensive experience in advising and implementing (online) HR tools and services. For over a decade, he has specialized in leveraging online assessments and tools for talent management challenges in the HR cycle with the aim of increasing employee and organizational performance.