A Linked In study with Josh Bersin found that people who spend 5 or more hours a week learning at work were 21% more likely to be happy at work, 47% less likely to be stressed at work, 39% more likely to feel productive and successful and an impressive 74% more likely to know where they want to go in their career. Those statistics were from individuals considered the “heavy learners.”
For “medium” and “light learners” who learned at work between 1 and 5 hours a week, the results were remarkably similar!
The same study found that the most successful, fastest-growing organizations had made learning a continuous practice.
I think these results are so interesting and underscore what current polls and studies in the last 12-18 months have shown. The workforce is looking for opportunities to learn and grow, ways to contribute to their team and organization, and to make a difference at work.
3 Ways to Integrate Learning into your Daily Workflow.
Excellent workplaces that attract and retain talented people provide continuous learning opportunities for their team members. This does not mean implementing learning management systems and training programs like big corporations who are managing thousands of employees.
Formal training, conferences and workshops are good, and can be high impact but learning is also about establishing habits and a culture that reinforces continuous learnings in the daily experience.
The goal is that 'learning' becomes integrated, active and routine.
Here are 3 examples of how you can integrate and promote individual and team learning into your daily workflow:
Sharing Wins and Lessons-Learned: Integrate sharing wins, lessons-learned and "mini-ted talks" where people share a teachable moment. These can be added to your regularly scheduled meetings, don't take that much time and are surprisingly high-impact.
It's a great way for people to share about current trends, insights and learnings from what they are reading or listening to and to normalize sharing lessons-learned and do-betters. Note: this doesn't mean you add to every meeting but do look for routine ways to share in meetings, in Teams or Slack and/or ways that make sense for your team.
Creating your own company language for sharing wins and lessons-learned is a powerful way to make this routine and integrated.
Project / Event / Product Launch Debrief: Debriefing (or a Post Mortem or a Retrospective) is a great way to make sure projects are brought to completion, recognize the work done, and share wins and lessons learned.
Some of the world’s most successful teams are famous for this. The Navy Seals call it the After-Action Review. After every exercise they ask 4 questions: What did we intend to accomplish? What happened? Why did it happen that way? And What will we do next time for a better outcome or to repeat our success?
Find your company way to debrief and integrate learnings.
Performance Reviews: Use a forward-looking approach to performance management, and commit to more frequent, on-going conversations vs. a once-a-year discussion on how the past year went, so you can integrate and act on learning real-time.
Also, don’t forget we have personal accountability. As individual professionals we need to take ownership and prioritize time to read, listen to a blog, take an online course or other learning activities for ourselves.
For example, I just completed a Cornell University Board Governance Webinar because I’m committed to showing up as a strong, accountable Board member for Global Dental Relief and I’m currently listening to 10x is Easier Than 2x. I have time scheduled with a colleague who is also reading the book, to talk about what I’ve learned and key insights so I can better integrate the learnings.
As a leader and manager, consider this research with how you lead your team. Your job is not just to "teach," it's to create an environment where people can truly learn in the flow of their daily work.
The reward for you and your team --> 21% more likely to be happy at work, 47% less likely to be stressed at work, 39% more likely to feel productive!
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