How to Create a Learning Culture

Employees want to learn on the job. Sometimes it’s for altruistic reasons, like improving the well-being of the organization. Sometimes it’s for personal ones, like learning a new skill that will improve their job prospects internally or externally. Either way, organizations benefit by supporting professional development. But lately workers have been skeptical about leaders’ capacity or interest in providing it. 

That predicament is especially acute when it comes to generative AI, which organizations are rapidly embracing without being clear with their people about its implications. A business.com survey of small-business employees released last month found that while 42 percent of companies are using AI technology, only about half of the ones who do so are training their staffs on it. “Artificial intelligence implementation is too fast for many of the employees we surveyed,” the report says. “Only 37 percent of all [small and medium-sized business] employees express confidence in their AI skills, and 54 percent believe they need more training in the technology.”

This lack of training doesn’t just erode the potential efficiencies gained from using AI; it erodes employees’ willingness to stick around. A 2023 report from TalentLMS and Vyond found that 41 percent of employees say they’ll leave their employers in the next year if they don’t provide training. Another recent report from Skillsoft found some similar issues around training and employee confidence, suggesting that organizations haven’t stepped up. As a Gartner analyst told CIO magazine in a recent story on the research, “organizations that take a holistic, longer-term, strategic approach to workforce planning and talent development can better prepare their workforce to stay current with their skills and competencies to meeting changing business needs.”

The implications for both association staffs and members should be clear—both want the kind of security and opportunity that comes with training on the latest technology, and they’ll judge organizations on their capacity and willingness to provide it. 

But while this anxiety might press leaders into standing up AI training, it’s also worth taking a broader look at how training and education is handled in your organization more generally, and how to surface the kind of training your people are looking for. A recent article in the Sloan MIT Management Review suggests that while it’s important to look at the skills gaps that need filling, it’s also important to go a little deeper to find out what gives your people a sense of purpose, and build professional development around that.

“Without motivation, there’s no battery power for learning,” write the article’s authors, who interviewed and surveyed more than 350 professionals. “Having a sense of purpose for learning predicts the successful development of skills and capabilities. The sense that what we learn will make a difference motivates us to prioritize learning — and managers can link learning any new skill to an employee’s sense of purpose.”

When it comes to AI, your staff and members are all but shouting that they want to know to understand it, and how to put it to its best use. But AI may not be the most important or relevant problem to tackle. Just as much as setting up training, leaders should get to know what motivates their people, and build a long-term listening strategy that prepares you for helping them learn what they need to in the years to come, not just this year’s latest new technology.

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