| | NOVEMBER - 2021MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM9Key elements of learning include leaders encouraging curiosity and an environment where it is safe to try and fail. Leaders should take opportunities to communicate the importance of development and enable learning through providing budget, time or resource allocation.Finally, by demonstrating their own ability to develop and learn, leaders can use public or virtual forums to share their own experiences and their journeys towards their own development, successes and failures. In my company, using technology, we encouraged leaders to create short video clips of their experiences, post them for employees to see, react and respond to. A true demonstration of a learning culture is for a leader to show their vulnerability, how they learned from it, and for others to further share their experiences as well. Line Manager Support for LearningWhen employees get promoted to becoming a manager of people, their learning focuses on helping them to manage a team and manage performance of that team and individuals. As a servant leader, it is their responsibility to help their employees be the best they can be, and to provide the support to help them to do this. But what does this look like in practice? In order to build a learning culture, line managers need to leave time, space, and budget for their employees to learn. I have heard many people tell me they will just do their e-learnings at home, or watch a webinar on their own time, because if their managers saw them just sitting staring at a screen, they would deem them to be unproductive and not doing their job. In an organization that has a learning culture, space may be set aside within offices designated just for learning. Or as we are mostly working remotely, managers may encourage employees to block time on their calendars so they can participate in a webinar or read a few articles. Better yet, line managers within a learning culture often encourage their employees to learn and try new areas of interest which are aligned to their current job or career aspirations. Some Line Managers simply believe that performance is getting the job done, but development, and creating space for learning, whether it is during their day, within their flow of work, or supporting them to participate in a conference or webinars, even during their work-day, all create an environment of support for employees to learn.Providing a Safe Environment for Employees to learn, create and share learningSocial learning technology has come a long way over the past decade to say the least. One of the most exciting parts of creating a learning culture is enabling employees to showcase and share their learning with others. We know that employees are using YouTube outside of work to learn how to fix a car, build a patio and write a book. Technology within the workplace further enables employees to learn quickly, effectively and efficiently through the sharing of presentations, best practices, simple how to's and any learning of their own creation. This helps to create a culture of learning and sharing, it enhances the employee experience at work, and invites others to learn through their peers and watch their colleagues try new things, and increase their competence simply by sharing through others. As stated above, this works particularly wellwhen leaders and line managers are also doing the same thing. A true learning culture can be demonstrated when employees within the organization are willing to share and learn from each other. These three pillars enable measurable and observable changes within an organization on its way to building a learning culture. There are visible ways to see leaders, line managers and employees behaving differently and creating space and experiences which contribute to learning. Over time, this culture can be measured in other ways through retention, increased productivity, time to competency and overall employee engagement and employer branding. By starting with some visible and measureable opportunities, learning can be at the heart of company success. A true demonstration of a learning culture is for a leader to show their vulnerability, how they learned from it, and for others to further share their experiences as wellRachel Horwitz
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