Jani’s Journal Issue 31: Creating A Culture of Learning
10/1/2024
As we celebrate World Teachers’ Day on October 5th and National Coaching Day on October 6th, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the importance of fostering a culture of learning in the workplace. Just as teachers and coaches inspire growth in their students and athletes, organizations must prioritize continuous learning and development to empower their teams. Whether it’s through effective onboarding, targeted upskilling, or creating a supportive leadership environment, nurturing a learning culture ensures that employees feel valued and engaged.
In this edition of Jani’s Journal, we explore key strategies that organizations—especially nonprofits—can implement to build and sustain a learning-driven environment. By focusing on purposeful onboarding, upskilling, and active leadership, you can inspire your team to achieve more, all while driving productivity and engagement. Let’s dive into the insights that can transform your organization into a mission-driven learning powerhouse.
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🔗 Is Your Organization Harnessing the Proven Power of Learning? 🔗
Organizations that prioritize learning are more adaptable and able to thrive in changing environments. And with the ever-increasing pace of change, building learning-focused resilience is especially important for nonprofits’ long-term sustainability. This McKinsey & Company article highlights the importance of learning as a strategic imperative for all businesses and outlines three critical attributes of a learning culture:
Essential Learning focuses on core skills that align with your organization's mission and immediate needs. Identify the knowledge gaps critical to successful programs and operations, then provide targeted learning opportunities. Essential learning may include topics such as leadership, communication, or compliance, that directly impact your organization's operations and objectives.
Meaningful Learning aligns with both organizational goals and individual career development paths, offering growth opportunities employees find motivating and beneficial. Learning should feel personalized and closely connected to their job responsibilities and aspirations. Meaningful learning
Accessible Learning makes learning opportunities feel like a seamless part of the workflow, as opposed to a disruptive task. Implementing digital learning platforms that allow employees to access training on-demand, offering flexibility in timing and format, such as videos, articles, and interactive modules meet diverse learning preferences and needs.
Continuous Learning
Creating a culture of learning requires a growth mindset that can be fostered through coaching, mentoring, and managing. Not sure of the differences and when to use which approach? Check out this businessDEPOT video.
🔗 Upskilling: The Key to Higher Productivity and Employee Retention 🔗
This Business Management Daily article highlights the benefits of upskilling (expanding existing skills to become more effective in current role). While many organizations focus on reskilling (learning new skills for a different job), particularly as a means to internal promotion, upskilling is essential not only for increased efficiency and productivity, but also for employee satisfaction and long-term retention. Three keys to successful upskilling initiatives include:
Conducting a skills gap analysis,
Building new or identifying existing curricula around skills gaps, and
Accommodating different learning styles. Microlearning, a set of very brief e-learning modules designed to combat learning fatigue, may help employees fit upskilling into their busy workday more easily than day-long in-person training classes.
🔗 How to Keep Learning at work—Even When You Feel Fried 🔗
Continuous learning is crucial for staying relevant and maintaining influence, especially in the nonprofit sector. However, many professionals feel too overwhelmed by the daily demands of the mission to devote energy to learning. This Harvard Business Review article emphasizes the importance of finding personalized, effective strategies to integrate learning even when your energy is low. Key strategies include:
Challenge your beliefs about learning capacity by reframing self-doubt to challenge assumptions about what’s possible. Sometimes learning helps refill your cup.
Start with topics that solve urgent problems. Addressing current challenges helps you gain momentum and realize immediate benefits.
Don’t limit yourself to formal programs. Peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, or internal resources can provide practical and timely learning opportunities.
Make an emotional connection to learning. Aligning your learning experiences with personal values makes the process more meaningful and motivating.
Work with your brain, not against it. Using techniques like spaced repetition and testing recall improves retention and fights the natural forgetting curve.
Onboarding
🔗 Gallup’s Perspective on Creating an Exceptional Onboarding Journey 🔗
This Gallup guide to exceptional onboarding highlights two key findings around the critical nature of an employee’s onboarding experience as the foundation for long-term engagement and retention:
Employees with an exceptional onboarding experience are 2.6 times as likely to be extremely satisfied with their place of work.
Employees who strongly agree they have a clear plan for their professional development are 3.5 times more likely to strongly agree that their onboarding process was exceptional.
This comprehensive guide is well worth the read with too many golden nuggets to fully summarize, but here are Gallup’s six critical steps to creating an exceptional onboarding experience:
Extend the employee onboarding journey to span the entire first year.
Make sure your onboarding experience aligns with your employee value proposition (the benefits, rewards & recognition, culture, and career opportunities promised to employees).
Answer the five questions of onboarding:
What do we believe in around here?
What is my role?
Who are my partners?
What are my strengths?
What does my future here look like?
Add experiences that make new employees feel your distinctive culture.
Train leaders, managers and teams to take responsibility for onboarding.
Combine your onboarding analytics with performance data to gain deeper insights.
🔗 Onboarding New Employees Without Overwhelming Them 🔗
Effective onboarding doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With 20% of new hires leaving within 45 days of hire, the fire hose approach to onboarding not only overwhelms and jeopardizes long-term engagement and retention, it also wastes valuable time resources. This Harvard Business Review article outlines steps to make the process smooth and engaging:
Dose information in a logical sequence prioritizing clarity over quantity.
Be clear about expectations by setting realistic manageable short-term and long-term goals.
Make new hires feel welcome by eliminating “insider terminology.”
Board Learning
Initial and continual nonprofit board learning is often overlooked to the detriment of an organization’s mission and longevity. Like employees, a board member’s onboarding and ongoing learning experience influences their level of engagement and performance.
🔗 Board Orientation Checklist 🔗
Nonprofit board members play a critical role in the success of the organization. Proper orientation is necessary to ensure they understand their roles and responsibilities. This BoardSource checklist outlines key information to include in your new board member orientation to lay a strong foundation for effective board engagement and function. Existing board members and key executive staff should ensure information and general expectations are provided to new board members in the following areas:
Organizational history and current programs & services including the mission, goals, policies, organizational strengths & needs, as well as the larger environment or sector.
Strategic direction including the most recent strategic plan.
Finances including most recent financial statements and other information needed to fulfill fiduciary responsibilities.
Organizational structure including by-laws, organizational chart, key executive staff, and board committees.
Board roles and individual responsibilities including fundraising and advocacy roles as well as committee activities.
Board operations including a review of the board manual (Yes! You need one of these!) and selection of first committee assignment.
🔗 Good Governance Policies for Nonprofits 🔗
This National Council of Nonprofits article emphasizes the importance of ongoing learning and development for nonprofit boards. Here are some key elements of good governance that align with fostering a learning culture:
Maintain corporate minutes of all board and committee meetings that are authorized to act on behalf of the board.
Annually review conflicts of interest policies and document when they are invoked in board minutes.
Approve and document executive compensation to ensure it is appropriate and not excessive.
Review the IRS Form 990 before it is filed, ensuring the board knows the annual filing requirements.
Publicly disclose key financial documents, such as the nonprofit’s IRS Form 990 and its application for tax-exempt status.
By adopting a culture of continuous learning, nonprofit boards can strengthen governance practices, enhance decision-making, and ensure their organizations are well-prepared for future challenges. Just as teachers and coaches guide individuals toward success, nonprofit boards must invest in their own growth to lead their organizations effectively. Key practices for continually learning boards include:
Self-assessment that encourages boards to regularly compare their practices to established benchmarks and prioritize development.
Diversity and inclusion efforts that focuses on cultural sensitivity and diverse board representation to foster a decision-making environment reflecting a full spectrum of perspectives.
Board orientation that ensures new members are familiar with good governance practices from the start.
Conflict of interest awareness that helps board members recognize conflicts when they arise.
External awareness that keeps board members informed of trends affecting the nonprofit sector by subscribing to state and national nonprofit newsletters.
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