Capitalizing on opportunities for continuous learning, empowering employees to participate in the better of work processes, and encouraging collaboration are the beacons lighting the way towards becoming a learning organization. It drives so many positive aspects of a company that it’s simply becoming the new norm. Technology, expectations and cultural shifts are fueling the changes in making this part of the vision of workplace’s new world order. Companies that don’t keep pace will lose the talent war, and more importantly, they’ll miss out on the revolutions that create exception customer experiences – the type of experiences that draw customers away, permanently, from the laggards.
Continuous learning is more than better training. It needs to be steeped into the company’s cultural fabric. But to do that, employees need to find themselves included in processes and encouraged to participate. Moreover, they need tools that seamless fit into their daily lives and work routines that facilitate participation. For high tech works, that’s never been a problem. But for the majority of employees across many industries, that capability has never been promoted down to the line level. Mobile’s changing all that, however.
Which brings us to empowerment. With the speed of decision making being ever more critical in today’s instant gratification world, empowerment closes the gap between action and inaction, or satisfied and unsatisfied customers. Allowing employees to just participate is not empowerment, it’s at best aspirational. Providing them with the mechanisms to contribute in meaningful ways, on the other hand, is not only encouraging but enabling. Enablement demonstrates commitment, and that’s the start of a movement.
Segue to collaboration. The participation in process or product improvements will only take you so far. But when employees begin working as invested team, collaborating with and supporting one another, then the game has changed, forever, for the better. They become owners and stakeholders in outcomes, fostering unimaginable creativity and resolve. The determined product of a proud organization, that child might wobble, stumble, even fall. But, in no time at its walking, even running, on its own, venturing off into places that the company would have never gone.
Employees must constantly learn, improve, and adapt to economic, societal, and technological changes in order to not become obsolete—mostly because the workplace continually changes work practices in an effort to be more productive or competitive. This learning can be formal, non-formal, or informal (see Van Merriënboer, Kirschner, Paas, Sloep, and Caniëls, 2009). Thus, knowledge workers, who are often the focus of workplace learning, must be able to learn informally...
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