As a digital marketing agency, keeping up with the latest trends and developments in online marketing is no easy task. But as a team, we’ve managed to find and cultivate ways to keep our staff up to date on new developments.
Here’s an interesting fact: organizations can earn over 200% more income from employees by investing in continuous training. The rewards from continuous learning and development do not only come from the skills gained, but the net effect on perception, culture, and camaraderie. It’s been proven time and time again that a positive and supportive company culture works. When you invest in your employees, they are more invested in your business. Employee productivity is a critical component of organizational success.
The Benefits of Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning
Throughout the years, we’ve found that any effort put towards training helps foster benefits for our entire team all the way around. Planning one-one-one meetings, in-office training, or attending conferences together are all ways that a team can begin to create the culture. Below are a few more benefits that we’ve found when your organization invests in continuous learning.
Filling Gaps Is Easier
As your business grows, it will require a larger and more diverse pool of skills to ensure the growth rate is sustained or increased. However, getting and retaining highly skilled employees is one of the biggest challenges businesses face today. A survey conducted in 2018 revealed that 33% of employees quit their jobs within the first three months. Other than creating constant skills gaps in the organization, companies also have to incur the high cost of recruiting repeatedly.
Continuous training helps solve this issue in two ways. First, you will be able to retain new hires longer (one of the main reasons recruits quit is lack of on-job training). Second, by conducting regular training for employees, the more experienced employees will pass crucial skills to recruits faster. In the event one of your most skilled team members leaves your company, there will be multiple suitable replacements internally.
We are a huge fan of peer-to-peer training and we record a lot of our technical skills training on video so that it is easier for our team to operate consistently.
Employee Engagement Increases
Achieving optimum levels of productivity is impossible if employee engagement is low. Employee engagement is simply the level to which employees are mentally and emotionally committed to their jobs and the organization. High employee engagement means that they take the failures and successes of the business personally and would go the extra mile to ensure the latter.
Investing in employee training shows them that your organization is invested in their future and that there will be opportunities for advancing their careers. This boosts their engagement and motivates them to work hard in their current positions.
However, it’s good to note that having highly engaged employees does not necessarily mean that they are happy or satisfied; avenues that may also require some investment.
Fostered Creativity and Innovation
In the current business landscape – and indeed, our very digital world – creativity and innovation are invaluable. But in organizations where there are only rigid methods on how employees can complete tasks, these values can get stifled.
By conducting and encouraging regular training, your team is consistently learning and adopting new ways of doing things that stimulate their creativity and makes management teams more open to trying different things. In the marketing field, this is particularly important as social media and digital advertising shift so frequently.
How to Create Your Culture of Continuous Learning
Strengthen Communication
Investing in employee training should be geared towards helping them just as much as the organization. To get desirable results, it is crucial to engage with your teams and find out which skills they want to improve. You could send out a company-wide survey, post a message board, or hold a panel to determine what the popular learning topics are. From there, you could create (or strengthen, if you already have one) a committee or team dedicated to education and training. This way, the employees themselves can have an invested hand in the development of their knowledge base.
Develop Strong Programming
Having the right digital systems in place to provide training and learning opportunities for your employees is paramount. Not only will this direct them to education sources you trust and are relevant to your organization, but it will also increase the likelihood of participation since they don’t have to seek out tools themselves. Some types of programming you could implement in your business are regular seminars on different topics and new tools, sharing articles or resources company-wide in newsletters or on dashboards, and creating your own teaching videos. As we’re all learning right now, it’s important that any programming you offer is usable remotely.
Offer Incentives
While lifelong learning is certainly a reward within itself, incentivizing continued training is a great way to get your employees involved. At minimum, definitely utilize whatever process you have in place to share employee accomplishments. Give kudos to those who are actively participating in training and development. Some other ways you can encourage and show appreciation for your employees growing their skill sets are education bonuses, financial assistance towards higher education initiatives, travel expenses toward educational or professional development events, priority promotion opportunities, and relevant project management opportunities.
Encouraging and facilitating continuous learning in your workplace is a tried-and-true strategy to boost productivity and efficiency in your business. When you show up for your employees, they’re more likely to show up for your organization. That’s what being a true leader means: coaching up your team, not just coaching to them.
If your business needs guidance or resources on how to create a culture of continuous learning, please contact us! We also provide online training on various digital marketing and social media topics for you and your team to start learning. Some of our most popular workshops include:
- Google Analytics Training
- Search Engine Optimization Training
- WordPress Training
- Facebook Ads Training
- Instagram for Business
To view all our upcoming events, please visit our Marketing Workshops & Events page!
On our blog, you can also find many informative subjects on digital marketing and productivity. We also post episodes of our 10 Minute Marketing podcast, hosted by Sonja Crystal Williams, for some quick tutorials and resources to further enhance your digital marketing education.