In the ever-changing world of work, where advances in the technologies, methodologies and resources available to an organisation move at a breakneck pace, training programs and skills development opportunities are vital to ensure that your workforce isn't left behind.
Because changes are near-constant in a workplace environment, though, training improvements can't simply be a "one-off" endeavour. And yet too often they're exactly that: day courses to be endured and then forgotten about. But what good does learning like that achieve? For either employer or employee?
Instead, they have to be continuous and enabled as part of a strategy which is geared towards continuous learning and development. That's where enterprise learning comes in. We'll be exploring what it is, as well as why exactly it's so beneficial to modern businesses.
What is Enterprise Learning?
Enterprise learning involves creating a framework of learning principles and processes to enable employees within an organisation to continually improve, thus improving the overall organisation as a result. A company is only good as its weakest employees, and enterprise learning ensures that even the 'weakest' employees are able to perform at a very high baseline.
A core feature of enterprise learning is ensuring that it's incorporated into the overall company culture. Enterprise learning isn't one set "thing" per se, as much as it is a concept. It isn't a formal program to follow, but rather an integral tenet of a company's overarching direction and its attitude towards progress.
Modern organisations require modern approaches to learning
Traditional learning and development models centre around formal training and courses - training that is often carried out away from the workplace. Modern enterprise learning is, by contrast, a much more dynamic, fluid, and progressive approach toward employee training. Instead of being something that has to be done as a box-ticking exercise, a good enterprise learning strategy will empower employees and have them wanting to learn.
It ensures that learning resources are more readily available to employees at all times, and shifts employee mindset (and employer mindset for that matter) away from learning being something that's merely done once and then packed away into a locked box with the key thrown away, into something that's always going on. After all, there are always new things to learn in life, and the same is true of the workplace.
Why is enterprise learning so worthwhile?
One of the main reasons an enterprise learning program is so worthwhile to companies is that it places an emphasis on the holistic, rather than the isolated.
Organisations that make use of company-wide enterprise learning resources not only ensure that valuable resources are available to all employees that need them, but that the level of training across the business becomes more standardised, in turn facilitating a higher and higher baseline for professional standards. In other words, enterprise learning ensures that nobody gets left behind.
If you can channel curiosity on the enterprise level, rather than on the individual, there's less reliance on individual professionals to go about learning what they need for themselves.
Under the everyday stresses and strains of professional life, it's hardly surprising that most employees will shy away from additional learning - in their eyes, it's just one more thing to have to worry about. That's one of the main issues with treating learning as an add-on; an appendage hanging limply off the body of an organisation, rather than being a rock-solid part of its core.
A solid enterprise learning strategy strengthens employee retention
If educational offerings become a core feature of your business, however, you provide employees with ample opportunities to develop and learn - if you make accessing that learning and development process easier - then employees will not only become more skilled, but they'll feel more valued by a company, and that their development is being invested in for the longer-term. As a result, employee satisfaction increases and so too, therefore, does employee retention.
What are the key features of an enterprise learning strategy?
Enterprise learning strategies are nuanced and individual to the organisation implementing them. However, there are several core features that any company-wide learning strategy will share, including:
1. Blended learning
Good enterprise learning programs recognise the importance of learning that's blended. That's to say, training that includes not only formal education but job-related activities and social interactions with employers and mentors, too.
This blend of collaborative/social learning, practical training and more traditional, academic-focused work offers potent efficacy. Your workforce is more likely to improve if its employees are given the opportunity to train in a variety of ways, rather than focusing all of your eggs into one learning basket.
2. Using data to quantify training progress
Much though companies would like it to be the case, resources available for training aren't endless. That means that the learning practices implemented need to be reviewed and assessed to establish whether they're having the desired effect, or whether access to an alternative learning resource would provide better results.
By ensuring data collection is a core part of any learning process, managers can iterate better versions of that learning process, or if it's proving ineffective, switch to something else entirely. This use of data, again, helps establish quality 'baselines' and guards against the inefficient use of resources.
3. Changing perceptions towards learning
As touched upon at the start, a key to any successful enterprise learning and development strategy in the modern age is the change in mindset toward what learning should be at its heart. Learning mustn't be restrained solely to textbooks, theories, or principles in the abstract. Because if you think about it, it can be hard, having assimilated a large quantity of information in a classroom, to actually implement that when you're back in the workplace.
If employees are forced, at every turn, to refer back to manuals the thickness of phone directories, or toward other more inaccessible, impractical materials, then what they've learned is very quickly going to fall by the wayside. If you ensure the availability of more practical, smaller learning materials, even after formal training opportunities have concluded, then you're able to reinforce those principles learned in the classroom, and lead towards a greater level of adoption by employees.
Final Thoughts
Enterprise learning is the modern approach toward training that focuses on the consistency, availability and connectedness of company training. If you'd like to find out about the learning and development programs we offer here at Plus UTS, then get in touch.
