Hello there, Fans of Plans! It’s Learning at Work Week and I wanted to draw your attention to the wonder ways that you can be learning in the workplace – whatever your role! 

Build a culture of learning

Encouraging your colleagues to continue their professional or personal development is a great thing to do. If you read my last blog about mental wellbeing, then you’ll know that learning is one of the five steps to wellbeing. 

There are different ways you can go about getting your team involved in learning. One way is to foster an approach of mentoring. Look at your teams and see where there are opportunities for colleagues to learn from each other. What skills to some members of your team excel in and where can you provide an opportunity for them to share their skills or techniques with others in the team. 

You could:

-        Ask your team member to present to the rest of the team about their specialist subject

-        Ask you team member if they would like to be a mentor to another member of your team, or to someone else in the organisation 

By looking into these learning opportunities everyone can be helping to develop their skills with no external expense to the organisation, as well as helping to build stronger understanding and connections within the team. 

Find out what your team want to be learning

Don’t assume the areas that your team want to be learning about. Yes, sometimes colleagues need to do further training or learning for the job they are doing. But think beyond this – what about future proofing your business with succession planning. What skills do your team members want to be learning that will also help them to further their career with within your organisation? 

Some of your team may have desires to move beyond the team they are in and their interests actually lie with another department. Rather than losing a great employee because they want to shift roles, help them to move into that role within your business. 

Great employees can be hard to find, so why lose them because they want to move on in their careers? 

Making sure that you and your organisation are open to learning opportunities will help to create a more engaged workforce.