When we talk about learning & development (L&D) and continuous professional development (CPD) at work, often what comes to mind is a formal & expensive training course. But what if it didn't need to cost the earth to create opportunities for learning at work?
Learning doesn't have to equal formal training
I know right...mind blown 🤯 But the thing is, when we shift how we think about learning, it opens your eyes to all the learning opportunities that come up day to day. Learning could be as simple as encouraging staff to find solutions to a problem themselves rather than leaning on someone else. When I worked in Employee Relations, we would often talk about difficult cases we had managed or were managing in our team meetings so that we could either learn from mistakes made, learn best practice or get support from others on a problem we had and learn from one another. Learning doesn't have to mean "training". It can mean "how can we continue to improve?" I know personally, I used to get so much more out of shadowing our Employment Law Expert than I did from reading a textbook - and that was just us getting our work done and learning at the same time!
There are free resources EVERYWHERE!
YouTube, TED talks, podcasts, blogs (including this one!) are freely available and accessible to everyone and are a great way of encouraging employees to constructively challenge current practices within the business. Why not start encouraging staff to share things they find online that might be helpful or relevant to their colleagues? That in itself is creating a space where employees can learn, grow and develop, to your benefit, without spending a penny. Platforms such as Live It Exclusives (ok you have to pay a small fee for it) offer employee benefits as well as whole libraries of free training videos on things like how to use Excel spreadsheets, creative problem solving and effective project management that employees can utilise on a daily basis.
You have to nurture learning for it to be fruitful
Just like my spider plant, Kevin, we have to nurture the culture we want to grow. If I don't water Kevin and leave him in a dark room, he'll die. But if I give him the right attention and fulfil his needs, he'll have lots of spider plant babies that take over my house. So if you want to help your team to grow, you need to allow them to learn, encourage them to learn and reward & recognise them for learning. This will enable them to take control of their learning and before you know it, they will have new ideas, new concepts, new ways of doing things that will help your business grow and grow.
Want to learn how to incorporate learning into the day to day? Book yourself a FREE HR Taster Session & pick Shona's brains!