How to Help Employees Learn

Developing Top Talent Matters
Our organizational alignment research found that talent accounts for 29 percent of the difference between high and low performing organizations in terms of revenue growth, profitability, customer loyalty, and employee engagement.  If you want your company to perform at its peak, developing top talent should be one your top priorities.  Do you have a clear plan to help employees learn and grow?

If not, you are at risk of being left behind by those who consistently invest in the learning potential of their employees.

Tips on Building a Learning Organization
What does it take to create a continuous learning environment uniquely designed for your organization? How do you help employees learn to improve their performance, engagement, and career development?

Here are some tips on what your leadership needs to do to not only keep up with but also stay ahead of the learning game.

• Start with Strategy
  Effective learning solutions directly support both business and people strategies.  Unfortunately, too many learning leaders make too many training strategy mistakes.  They start with learning objectives, competencies, skills, or content instead of desired business and talent outcomes. 
  
  You will know you are on the right path when you can articulate how your learning solution directly impacts a top five business or people priority.
  
• Create Learning Relevance
  Once you understand how you align with the business and people priorities, your next step is to make sure that employee learning is highly relevant to the participants and their bosses.  They both must see how the learning will not only make their job easier but also help to develop their career.
  
  You will know you are on the right path when the participants and their bosses believe that the learning is as, or more, important than their day job.
  
• Support Continuous Learning
  Learning cultures ensure that their employees have the time, resources, motivation, and support to learn AND do their job.  
  
  Are your leaders modeling the importance of learning?  Are your leaders held accountable for growing their direct reports?  Or do short-term results always take precedence?
  
• Focus on Action and Experiential Learning
  There is little doubt that Action Learning gets results.  Whenever possible, use simulations, role plays, and scenarios to practice, learn, and get real work done.  Then add microlearning nudges to reinforce concepts, prompt reflection, and encourage growth.
  
  Is 75% of your instructional design experiential?
  
• Measure and Reward Learning
  Top learning organizations visibly track key learning metrics, hold learners (and their managers) accountable, and reward learning. 
  
  Do you have a learning dashboard that people pay attention to?

The Bottom Line
If you want to win the war for talent, invest in the learning and growth of your workforce.   When you help employees learn, you create the foundation to attract, develop, engage, and retain the top talent required for high performance. Can you claim to be a learning organization?

To learn more how to help employees learn, download the Top 10 Training Best Practices for More Effective Learning

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.