Establishing a Culture of Lifelong Learning in the Workplace

Lifelong learning is highly appreciated in most corporations and organizations from the public and private sectors. Job market transformation and technology utilization require new knowledge and competencies that benefit organizational development. Lifelong learning is a crucial employability skill because it creates and maintains a positive attitude towards knowledge acquisition for personal and professional development. Hence, organizational leaders should know how to facilitate the employees' lifelong learning in the organization.

Lifelong learning is the voluntary and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for personal or professional purposes (Coskun & Demirel, 2010). According to Knapper and Cropley (2000), lifelong learners are more active than passive learners; they plan and evaluate their learning process, learn in different settings and diverse contexts from others, and integrate knowledge from various subject areas using a multitude of strategies when required. Psychologist Carol Dweck (2016) found differences between people's perceptions of their abilities related to their fixed and growth mindsets. People with a fixed mindset believe that emotional intelligence is predetermined, making it challenging to change thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs, affecting learning adaptation and flexibility. By contrast, people with growth mindsets are committed to learning, taking every opportunity to try something new, and willing to take risks to gain knowledge and improve their performance and production. 

Why should organizations care about lifelong learning?

By promoting lifelong learning opportunities through educational programs and training, organizations can help their employees meet skill shortages and prepare future leaders, facilitating internal mobility and reducing the expenses associated with new hiring.

Chamorro-Premuzic and Swan (2016) emphasized the importance of employees' willingness to learn as a critical aspect before implementing training and educational programs because it will impact how employees apply their new knowledge.

Tips to enhance learnability at the workplace

We summarized Chamorro-Premuzic and Swan's (2016) strategies that will help foster motivation for learning new skills and competencies in the workplace.

1. Align interests. Offer training that is interesting for the organization and employees. Employees' motivation will be higher if they feel they are gaining relevant knowledge.
2. Emphasize long-term benefits rather than short-term. Training should teach skills that will benefit employees in their current role as in their future path.
3. Select people for training. Focus on employees who demonstrate higher ability to learn and curiosity and are genuinely interested in acquiring new knowledge.
4.  Be a model. Encourage learning behaviors by doing it yourself. People with high learning ability find a time to learn new things out of their specialization area and enhance their cognitive abilities to transfer the theoretical knowledge to practical application.
5. Be a good mentor. Demonstrate interest in employees' progress. Listen to their concerns related to their learning experience and provide constructive feedback.
6. Encourage collaboration. Try to set up times when employees can come together, help each other, and improve their learning experience.

Tips to reward desired behaviors toward learning new skills and competencies among employees.

Individuals differ in their natural curiosity and learning potential. The physical and human context plays a relevant role in how much ability to learn people display. Since leaders and managers play a significant role in shaping the job climate and culture, they should enhance employees' learnability throughout the organization and human development. The following recommendation can help identify what, how, and when to recognize and reward desired behaviors and actions toward learning new skills and competencies among employees.

• Provide new and challenging opportunities to exercise employees' ability to learn. Reward it by widening their expertise and increasing their value to the organization and themselves.
• Promote people if they have obtained sufficient expertise in other roles within the organization
• Awards individuals who organize events or activities to improve others' ability to learn. Some examples are organizing internal conferences, bringing keynote speakers, and sharing intellectually stimulating information to nurture curiosity. Even simple contributions such as sharing interesting articles, recommending books, podcasts, or films, can be rewarded.

References

Chamorro-Premuzic , T., & Swan, M. (2021, August 27). If you're not helping employees learn, you're not doing your job. Harvard Business Review. 

Coşkun, Y. D., & Demirel, M. (2010). Lifelong learning tendency scale: the study of validity and reliability. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 5, 2343-2350.

Dweck, C. (2016). What having a "growth mindset" actually means. Harvard Business Review, 13, 213-226.

Knapper, C., & Cropley, A. J. (2000). Lifelong learning in higher education. Psychology Press.

Resources

Sacyr Lifelong learning, learnability, and a growth mindset