Successful retail furniture organizations understand the importance of investing in training and learning opportunities. It’s an investment that strengthens team members’ skills and motivates them to do better.
Learning organizations tend to be the most effective and profitable.
If you want to improve the way your company does business, it is critical to understand how to best select, design and deliver education programming that will have a significant and lasting impact. There are tremendous benefits to adopting a mission and philosophy of continuous improvement. This is true if you decide to develop an in-store training program yourself or work with an outside consultant.
Regardless of HOW you are leading your learning organization, you want to be certain to have an understanding of the best processes, practices, and procedures for selecting, developing, and delivering educational programming and training to your employees.
Understand and Embrace the Value of Ongoing and Continuous Improvement
Success begins with your organizational culture, philosophy, values, and mindset. Ultimately retailers have to decide that a dedication to ongoing learning and growth is a priority. An ideal to aspire and work toward, is to become an authentic “learning organization.” It isn’t about hopping
on a bandwagon or being able to check a box. There are sound business and financial reasons related to motivation and productivity for developing and embracing a learning culture. The many benefits are outlined in scholarly works on the subject. Hang in there, the information gets
a little academic but it will provide a depth of understanding that you can find incredibly valuable.
Benefits of A Learning Culture
Karmen Blackwood of Business Vancouver lists the benefits of a learning culture. There are many benefits to creating a strong organizational learning culture, including:
- Efficiency gains.
- Increased productivity.
- Increased profit.
- Decreased employee turnover, as employee satisfaction levels rise and loyalty and
commitment increase. - Raising the bar by creating a continuous improvement mindset, shared ownership for
projects and shared accountability for results. - Developing leaders at all levels, which helps with succession planning.
- Creating a culture of inquiry, adaptive capacity, and knowledge sharing (vs. knowledge
hoarding). - Enhanced ability for individuals and teams to embrace and adapt to change.
- Once you have embraced the value on ongoing education and growth, you have to make sure your organization is prepared for positive transformation.
Be Ready to Receive and Weather Change
Change is never easy and preparing for it will make transitions much smoother. Develop programming in a way that reflects your vision, goals, and mission.
There is always something to gain from an educational experience, seminar, or workshop, but in order to position yourself for the best possible results, you want to take thoughtful appropriate steps to prepare. Think of it as going into an important meeting prepared, engaged, excited and having a solid idea that something interesting and useful will come of it.
Engage: Be sure to fully engage leadership. Make sure leadership is invested in the programs being onboarded. Leadership needs to demonstrate their commitment by attending training and playing an active role in reinforcing that training. When you demonstrate the importance, and communicate the value ahead of time, participants will be in a better frame of mind to engage and absorb.
Separate: If you don’t have a separate training room, carefully choose a place where learning can happen away from distractions. Provide refreshments. In other words, demonstrate that it is an important undertaking.
Shift: Prepare to make the philosophical and operational shift from having only managers to having coaches. Organizations committed to ongoing improvement allocate resources (human, in this case) to focus their time and energy helping sales professionals and other employees progress.
Influence: Make an effort to get key players on board and consider an incentive or rewards program. In every organization, there is an informal power structure. People carry differing levels of influence even when they are working in lateral positions. A top performing sales professional may hold considerable influence over other members of the team. Enlisting the support of internal influencers is critical.
In our next post we will explore understanding the mindset and psychology of adult learners as well as how to partner with the right educational resources. Our team of experts is ready to help your business transform into a learning organization! Contact us at 404-432-2137 to get started.
Source: Blackwood, Karmen, “Benefits of Creating an Organizational Learning Culture ,”2014.
