The personal case for on-the-job learning

It’s important to lead your teams in their professional development, as they look to you to help facilitate it. A workplace with a culture of continuous learning, where you encourage employees to take every learning opportunity that comes to them, often outperforms a workplace that remains stagnant and doesn’t prioritize learning and training. Nobody wants to be on a losing team, so by making on-the-job learning a priority and championing it as a cause for your company’s continued success, you improve morale and reinforce the connection between up-skilling and company performance. Higher morale and a feeling that the company is investing in its people should help make your company one that people really want to work for and will attract top talent.

The business case for on-the-job learning

Providing your employees with opportunities for gaining skills at work can make your company more competitive, increase retention, and promote employee productivity and engagement. By investing in skills training, you show your employees you care about their professional development, which in most cases should lead to increased employee loyalty to your company. Technology is always changing, best practices are evolving, and very few jobs are done in the same way as time passes. To account for this, companies have begun to implement formal training programs for employees in a variety of ways.

Implementing on-the-job learning

Some companies do in-house training. This type of training has a two-fold benefit, giving employees the chance to learn new skills as part of their workday, while giving the teacher/trainer the chance to sharpen their leadership and teaching skills. Not only do your employees learn new skills, but your trainers also improve by getting the chance to teach more employees more often. This method relies on having subject-matter experts in-house, which not all companies may have. Those who do have this opportunity could capitalize on this top talent by sharing their knowledge with the workforce.

Other companies have spending accounts dedicated to employee professional development. This system assigns a variable amount of money, based on seniority or position, for employees to put solely towards education and training. This method gives your employees the flexibility to learn on the job when and how it suits them, and it empowers them to research various training opportunities and really think about where they’d like to improve. Tying this method to an employee’s performance review takes the approach one step further and makes on-the-job learning a crucial part of your company’s employment brand and corporate culture. It also helps ensure your employees are improving their skills each year and are staying competitive in an ever-changing work environment.

Best practices

It isn’t enough to task Human Resources with drafting and implementing a training policy. In order for on-the-job learning to produce dividends and create leading teams, you need to incorporate it into your company’s culture. People should feel empowered to upskill and learn new things, and not on their own time either. For many employees, the last thing they want to do after a long day of work is come home and push aside other responsibilities to do mandatory training. Even worse, if it’s already been chosen for them, they may not engage with it as much as they would a program they researched and picked themselves, which results in a waste of company money and employee time. Flexibility is vitally important, so ensure your employees can choose how and what they’d like to learn, rather than you delegating it from the top down. They’ll feel much more in control of their personal and professional development, and they’ll be able to learn at their own pace on the job.

Time is precious in the corporate world, and the same goes for learning. People generally do not retain information as well when it’s dictated to them over many hours in front of a screen or in a lecture hall. This is the lowest-effort form of employee training and very rarely produces results that justify the time spent. It’s therefore important to emphasize learning from a variety of sources, in a variety of ways, broken into more digestible chunks of engaging content that can be spread out or scheduled in a way that works best for the employee. No two employees learn at the same pace, so to ensure training is as engaging as possible, allow your employees a little leeway in scheduling it.

Give your employees the chance to get practical with their on-the-job learning. Training is meaningless if there aren’t opportunities to implement it in practice. This doesn’t just apply to the subject matter, either. Some training is better delivered with a more practical, learn-by-doing approach. Start by training a few key skills at first, then give employees the chance to learn other elements of the training by actually doing it—whether this is in a low-stakes training environment, or on the job with clients and materials. Not only does this approach emphasize learning from mistakes and improving on successes, it’s a lot more engaging for employees to see the instantaneous impact of their actions and the outcomes of their training when it’s right in front of them.

Make sure what your employees are learning is relevant, modern, and interesting. So many companies fail to make sure their training programs emphasize innovation and future-proof skills, and end up wasting everyone’s time as a result. Your employees will find themselves with obsolete skills much quicker, and they won’t have as much of an appetite to dedicate their time to learning in the future. While it’s important to allow your employees some freedom in deciding how and what they learn, it’s also important for you to guide them and know which programs are good investments of money and time, and which are becoming less relevant. As a leader, you can show your employees you care about their development by suggesting better, more challenging and relevant training and encouraging them to aim higher in their on-the-job learning.

Lastly, it’s important to recognize the impact that on-the-job learning can have on your company and incorporate it into your company’s values. Having employees learn new skills is useless if it isn’t reflected in your day-to-day operations. By implementing what they learn, employees will do a better job and quickly see the value their training has. As a leader, there are many ways to do this. Certifications, more responsibility, and even higher pay and better compensation are all great ways to reward employees for seeking out opportunities. Learning on the job and applying those learnings go hand-in-hand, so encourage employees to leverage what they’ve learned to improve your company’s products and services. A great way to do this is by having newly trained employees teach their direct reports what they’ve learned. Not only will they sharpen their skill set by teaching it, but the trickle-down effect of having everyone aware of new ways of doing things will lead to a better-skilled workforce. Dedicating time for employees to teach each other will also build a leading team where continuous improvement is valued and part of their job.

The benefits of allowing your employees to learn on the job greatly outweigh any initial investment of time or money to get such a program started, so it’s best to get started as soon as you can—identify gaps in skills, or areas where your company could do a better job, and pursue opportunities for employees to address those gaps. Your employees—and your company—will be much better off for it.