Provide Learning Resources

Organizational learning strategies are the plans and methods by which knowledge is spread through an organization. More experienced workers and experts in different areas of a business need a place and time to share their knowledge with new employees and those whose performance needs improvement. A strategic plan for organizational learning opens the channels of communication and allows this knowledge to reach all parts of the organization.

Staff Development Leaders

Group Meetings

Hire a team of specialists who will focus on teaching and training your staff. These experts should be veterans of the field in which you work and respected top producers or achievers in their specialty. Their responsibility is to plan, organize and implement a training program that will transfer knowledge and expertise throughout the organization. Send these leaders to observe other experts in the same industry. They can come back with insight about new ways of doing their job more effectively and share it with the others in the organization.

Hold company meetings to communicate the organization's vision and purpose. All members need to be able to articulate the company's goals and vision. Communicate company-wide policy changes, priorities or practices at the large group meetings. Use smaller groups, called action work units, to creatively solve problems that are related to specific departments. Allow time in the smaller groups for experts to model effective techniques of completing work tasks.

Form cross-functional teams from members of different departments, so workers can learn about the concerns and challenges faced by others in the same company. Allow time in these small group sessions for all stakeholders to have a voice in making decisions that affect their department. Report back to management those suggestions for implementation.

Peer Mentoring

Pair experienced workers with novices and workers who need mentoring to improve their performance. These mentoring relationships can grow naturally during the work day or can come from time spent at company social events. Workers can get to know each other away from the work site and build trusting relationships on the job. Develop new talent and recognize areas of strength of your co-workers in these mentoring relationships. When you see someone developing skills or abilities of leadership, report the progress to management. Give recognition and awards to workers who demonstrate extraordinary achievement and skill. Make peer evaluation a motivational tool to increase productivity and performance.

(adapted from Stephen Saylor’s article on Promoting Organizational Strategies)

“More and more, employees are paid for the thinking they do rather than the labors they perform.” (See Browne, M. Neil, and Keeley, Stuart M. Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Prentice Hall). Employees’ cognitive skills and positive behaviors are very often the only factor separating one organization from its competitors. Responsibility for developing the behavioral and cognitive skills of an organization’s workforce is shared at all levels, and should be an ongoing business objective.

There are a number of ways to advance organizational learning:

Create a “learning culture” where opportunities for formal and informal learning can occur among employees up and down the organizational chart.
Ensure personal development and development of subordinates which remains a key performance objective for everyone.
Build learning opportunities into every post-project evaluation.
Create cross-disciplinary learning opportunities.
Match the competencies needed for achieving business objectives against the skill inventories of incumbents; source internal or external subject matter experts (SMEs) to fill the gaps.
Keep the development and advancement of subordinates a meaningful metric for the assessment of leaders.
Maintain close ties between hiring managers and recruitment professionals; in cases when core competencies are in short supply in the labor pool, internal training programs might be an economical solution.
Monitor performance appraisal tools for trends in employee development needs.
Consider the value of knowledge management programs to identify, harvest, archive, retrieve and transfer organizational knowledge. (See Delong, David W., Lost Knowledge, Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, 2004, Oxford University Press, for four kinds of knowledge important in an organization)
The key to any organizational learning concept and proposal being granted efficacy and credibility is providing a positive ROI (return on investment). While the calculation is a simple equation, the question remains >> Is the return measurably greater than the investment?

Lastly, organizational learning is of most value when it becomes a part of routine business operations and we should strive to achieve it.

In the corporate world, there's a meeting between two friends discussing
their career development with the ensuing conversation:

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