As suggested in Part I of this post, the development of a true learning culture within business organizations is no longer a "we will experiment with this if we have time but lets keep doing what we have always done" choice. It has become an essential to healthy organizational growth that enables an organization to to truly compete on the new digital playing field.
It starts with admitting that we have a problem, as business organizations, in handling change in ways that do not disrupt what we already do well. In admitting this, we need to take a good look forensically at the nature of our present learning culture and ask some key questions.
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Credit: www.24x7 Learning.com
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Looking at these key questions, we see that they have one thing in common. They emphasize developing employee engagement as a part of their learning culture.
The Element of Employee Engagement
Looking at how much your employees are engaged in the mission and vision of the business organization means that business leaders have to ask themselves some hard questions that reflect directly on their leadership. Some of these questions might be as follows:
- Do employees know and understand the mission and vision of the business organization? If not it is a problem of clarity and communication.
- Do employees have faith in the mission and vision of the business organization recognizing that decisions that are made in relation to mission and vision have direct consequences for their professional lives and then their lives outside the walls of the business?
- Do they see the mission and vision of the organization as being in sync with their connected lives in the 21st century or do they see it as contradictory to being meaningful in the context of the way they live?
- Are they engaged because they are told to be engaged and must endure endless, meaningless training sessions that for the organization means just another check mark on the mandatory list or are they engaged because they are inspired by the vision and mission?
- Are they in fact a picture of the "overwhelmed employee" instead of the highly self-motivated and engaged employee who is committed to a clearly defined and communicated vision and mission?
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| Credit: www.LinkedIn.com |
If engagement is such an important element in a true learning culture then it begs some obvious questions:
- Why is employee engagement important?
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Credit: Lewis Garrard
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Business organizations are finding it is more difficult to retain employees with the necessary skillsets pertaining to 21st century, globally networked business. In particular, the "millennials" as incoming employees are proving to be the most challenging.
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| Credit: www.Deloitte.com |
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Credit: www.Deloitte.com
2. Given that engagement is a problem, how does this translate as a problem for the bottom line of a business?
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| Credit: http:// blog.pomello.com |
Comparing this with highly engaged employees within business organizations, the business case for employee engagement becomes even more convincing.
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In regards to the branding aspect for a business organization that is very much customer focused, how engaged the employees are also translates into sincere efforts of employees to make known to the outside world that this company is not only a good one to work for but also to do business with because it can be seen in the engagement of the employees.
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| Credit: www.exceedglobal.com |
One of the key elements that gives rise to engagement in employees is that the organization is making efforts and progress to make ongoing employee learning systemic throughout their organization. This means that employee needs start to take precedent over organizational needs.
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Credit: Harvard Business Review.org
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In one sense it means that when the learning of employees is concerned that they are given a greater degree of autonomy to developing new skillsets, engaging with co-workers in innovative projects that benefit the company and having a forum by which their ideas may be explored, presented and defended in the presence of key decision making leaders within the organization. In order for an organization to take such steps it requires leadership in the corporate suite with the courage to be innovative in the way that they approach new ideas.
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| Credit: www.forbes.com |
When leadership starts down this path to build and nurture employee engagement through the design of a better learning culture they can take solace in the fact that this is not just a local national problem but it is global in nature and that there is a relationship of need in regards to engagement and learning.
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Credit: Deloitte University Press
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| Credit: Deloitte University Press |
The questions that we are left with are:
- How does the element of collaboration change in order to make a learning culture within an organization more dynamic and in tune with the globally connected economy?
- What would the business organization look like as one that is different by design?
- What steps can we take to change a stagnant learning culture to one that is innovative, vibrant and serving the future of the organizations to the benefit of all stakeholders, especially the employees?
These questions will be the focus of Part III...
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