Manufacturers familiar with kaizen, a process of continually searching for ways to improve the production process, will understand the importance of a culture of continuous learning. In the kaizen approach, improvement isn’t something separate from the rest of a business’s everyday activities, performed in annual meetings or by a separate department. It is a part of everything you do.
The same underlying principles can be put to work in any kind of organization. Building a high-performing team doesn’t end at recruitment. If you want your company to grow, your employees also have to grow. That’s why it’s so important to create a culture of continuous learning and development.
Benefits of Continuous Learning
As a small business owner, you probably wear quite a few hats, often at once, and that much weight on your head can be a real pain in the neck. By giving your team the resources and time they need to learn as much as possible about your business, you’re giving them the expertise and confidence to assume more responsibility and to carry out some of the day-to-day operations you’d be better off delegating.
A team empowered to take the initiative in their own learning and development will feel more confident in taking on new roles and responsibilities. Your organization will become more flexible, and you’ll be more capable of promoting from within as your business grows.
But what if you give your employees all of these new skills, and they just take them to another company? There are two ways to look at this question, with both answers ultimately beneficial to you. The first is that these employees don’t leave. As your employees grow, your company grows, and you’ll be in a better position to offer them something more to stay if they are thinking about leaving—but in a world where employees are increasingly interested in benefits other than monetary compensation, a culture of learning and development might already offer enough reason to stay. The confidence and novelty that comes with learning more and doing more is something employees won’t easily find just anywhere.
The other outcome is that they do leave, but their departure becomes a powerful recruiting tool for you. Your company will be known as the small business that prepares talent for roles at larger companies. When you’re looking to hire a replacement, that fact becomes a recruiting tool to bring in high-potential young workers: come work with us for a few years and learn everything you’ll need to know to advance your career. Who knows; they might find themselves so fulfilled that they end up staying for years.
Culture Has to Be Built
Just wanting this kind of environment doesn’t bring it to fruition. You can tell your employees to get out there and learn and grow, but without the structures in place to encourage development, it likely won’t happen on its own. If they’re busy with other tasks for 40 hours a week, there’s no time or energy left for them to expand their skills. The solution is to make continuous development a part of your company culture by making room for it during the workday.
In addition to opportunities for learning, provide opportunities for teaching to give employees a platform to share their achievements, educate team members, and create a sense of camaraderie, that we’re all in it together to lift everyone up.
Process documentation involves documenting the steps of a specific business process, which supports development in at least three ways. First, it provides instructions to refer to when undertaking a task for the first time. Second, it reinforces that learning by giving employees a list to follow every time they attempt a task. It’s surprising how often you might skip steps when doing something you’ve already done a million times. Having those processes documented helps you get it right every time. Finally, it gives you something to refer back to if the process isn’t working, or if someone comes up with a better way of doing something. When one employee makes a process more efficient, update your documentation so that everyone can reap the benefits.
Other kinds of documentation, such as skill matrices and self-assessments, provide your team with ways to find gaps in their own knowledge and in the organization’s knowledge. They’ll also be able to find the subject matter experts within the organization if they need help with anything. These documents work to support the idea that development and learning aren’t supplemental to the job but an integral part of it.
Businesses grow when the people that comprise them grow. Successful businesses take time to establish plans, structures, and procedures that enable growth rather than just hoping it happens on its own. The same is true for employees. Learning and professional development doesn’t often happen on its own, so put the structures in place that incentivize learning and development so that the people responsible for growing your business are equipped to grow with you.
