Things Your Learning Culture Needs to Get Right

Reinventing and revitalizing company culture is one of the biggest priorities for business leaders in today's rapidly evolving climate, in which the requirement to engage and retain talent is fiercer than ever. A learning culture in particular is key to improving the employee experience and moving your business forward, because it can drive skill development, agility, responsiveness, and revenue — all items on the CEO's agenda.

Learning and business leaders alike have struggled to even define learning culture, let alone build or improve one. So let's start there: A learning culture is defined as "shared behaviors, values, and assumptions."

That's why Degreed asked more than 2,400 workers from 15 countries about their behaviors, values, and assumptions in regard to learning and career growth. We focused our attention on the differences that emerged between those who rated their company learning cultures as positive (called promoters) and those who rated their learning cultures as negative (detractors). We found that companies with positive learning cultures on average perform more skillfully, have more agile teams, adapt more rapidly to change, and grow revenue faster than competitors. But to get there, employees need more than just courses, videos, or even AI-personalized homepages.

Instead of creating more content, L&D teams need to shift focus onto creating the conditions for continuous learning. Specifically, we found that four conditions are present for promoters and largely absent for detractors:

In this report, we'll share what these factors mean and offer guidance on how you can prioritize and pinpoint specific actions that can create a more positive learning culture at your own organization.