{"id":35925,"date":"2020-05-13T09:29:40","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T07:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.targettraining.eu\/?p=35925"},"modified":"2020-07-01T10:43:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T08:43:29","slug":"building-a-learning-culture-in-a-global-organization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.targettraining.eu\/de\/building-a-learning-culture-in-a-global-organization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret L&D Manager: Building a learning culture in a global organization"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week\u2019s Secret L&D manager is Hungarian and is a Learning & Development Specialist for a global chemical company . In this post, he talks about the\u00a0 journey and the challenges of building a learning culture in a large organization.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Go

When you joined the company, what kind of learning culture did you find?<\/h2>\n

I think it\u2019s really easy to answer this question, because when I joined my company, I can say that there was no learning culture. If I can take a step back, people have different understandings and definitions of the term \u201clearning culture<\/em>\u201d . For me \u201clearning culture<\/em>\u201d means there are people who like learning, there are learning resources and opportunities that people are encouraged to access whenever they need something or expect to need something going forward, and managers enable and encourage learning . Here, in all cases, there was nothing, so people were not, really empowered to learn. The second thing is that there were not a lot of resources available for learning. One of my priorities, and it\u2019s also one of the reasons I was hired, is to create this kind of learning environment and then along with this also create a learning culture.<\/p>\n

How were managers and the leaders in your organization seeing learning before you arrived?<\/h2>\n

I think, and this is only my perspective, that the management was saying, \u201cLearning is very much needed\u201d<\/em> but when it came to the point where they had to invest they said, \u201cWe don\u2019t have the budget for that<\/em>\u201d. On the one hand they definitely like the idea of learning. They talk a lot about learning and do want to enhance, improve and develop their employees. But actually, when an employee comes to them and says \u201cOK we agreed that I need negotiations training<\/em>\u201d and they say, \u201cOK go, have fun<\/em>\u201d, the employee has to find the seminar or resources. Employees would just Google something and then went come back with a course they had found that cost \u20ac20,000. For me this was the first problem because nobody knew if \u00a0it was a good course quality-wise, who the provider was and if they were a fit, whether the investment was reasonable or if the training was needed. \u00a0And then usually 99% of the managers said „sorry but we don\u2019t have the budget for that“<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So how have you gone about building a learning culture?<\/h2>\n

What I did first was convincing management that learning and development really matters to our success as an organization. I used storytelling approaches to help them see why it is good to invest in learning, and how a company actually benefits from having a learning culture. \u00a0Then I showed them that, even if they don\u2019t want to spend a lot of money, using informal or on-the-job learning is still going to create a lot of benefits for the company. For example, using job rotation or on-the-job development does work and can make a tangible difference.\u00a0 Approaches like mentoring and internal coaching can and should be done. The managers in my company really bought into this idea. The first 2 or 3 things that I managed to do were ideas which didn\u2019t cost a lot of money but were still very beneficial.<\/p>\n

Another example where I actually created value and showed the management why learning helps an organization is when we set up the first e-learnings. We built these internally using a tool called EdApp https:\/\/www.edapp.com\/. It\u2019s a very good and \u00a0intuitive tool and easy to use. There were a lot of templates that we could instantly just choose and work with. I worked with our technical experts and together we created e-learning activities on areas such as regulation, process management and . tendering, and product management. We then rolled the e-learnings out to 200 people and the feedback from the participants has been really great. \u00a0Because of this tool we\u2019ve been able to gamify the learning too.<\/p>\n

What else have you done to continue building a culture since?<\/h2>\n

Communication is key. Whenever we have a new product or new system (e.g recruiting, performance management) we \u00a0connect it to the learning. For example, in our performance management you have an annual meeting about your performance with your manager, and you have to talk about your development. \u00a0Of course most people consider meeting a mandatory step and find it boring. I have worked with the managers to help them individually use this moment to create a better dialog with their employees, be more confident when giving feedback, setting goals etc etc. This combination of \u00a0building a catalogue of recommended training providers and training courses, building e-learning, leveraging managers and looking for single moments where we can connect learning to the business process shows why learning is important in a company and is the first steps of building a learning culture. <\/em><\/p>\n

More secret L&D Managers<\/h2>\n