Introduction
Education in the workplace is the answer to a society that is constantly evolving. Employees choosing to upskill themselves remain professionally agile and engaged. Education not only paves the way for surefire career advancements but also enables businesses to capitalize on employees’ newfound credentials in a tough economic landscape.
Continuing education ensures that teams and individuals improve skill sets in their current job or gain new skills in preparation for a career change. In this respect, cutting-edge tools and technology have facilitated remote learning’s popularity. It’s now an accessible option for every sector to increase productivity, performance, and job satisfaction.
What is Continuing Education?
Continuing education is the process of constantly gaining new skills and knowledge. It is an ongoing activity that can take many forms, ranging from formal coursework to casual social learning. Further, it can occur on a corporate level or personally, as in lifelong learning.
In a fast-paced and ever-evolving business world, continuing education allows professionals to stay current with the latest developments, skills, and new technologies required for their respective fields.
How to Achieve a Culture of Continuing Education
Managers often find difficulties in trying to incorporate continuing education into their corporate culture. Many are unsure of where to begin or, worse, do not consider continuing education a top-of-mind priority. Nonetheless, there are tried and true methods that can be put into practice to make learning enjoyable, natural, and intuitive for everyone in your organization.
Provide Intuitive Education With Mobile Training
Guarantee constant learning for your employees by giving them access to training content and materials that they need to upskill and be better at their tasks. One way to ensure this is by investing in technology, like a mobile platform, that streamlines learning and development and enables on-the-go learning which allows busy professionals to improve their skills in a way that fits their schedules.
Find out more about Albert’s online training solutions, and how you can upskill your entire workforce straight from their smartphones.
Encourage Peer Learning
By having coworkers teach one another and learn from each other, you can develop a corporate culture that prioritizes information sharing and knowledge exchange. As managers, you should encourage your team to form partnerships where internal feedback is free-flowing.
Continuing education in this manner enhances team engagement and camaraderie. Additionally, it might assist shield your business from knowledge or skill loss if an employee quits or takes a long leave of absence.
Promote Management Participation
People look to their bosses for guidance, orientation, and inspiration. Managers have a lot of power in that regard and have great influence over their employees in how effective they are going to be at work. That is why management must be involved in the learning process.
Managerial mentoring has been shown to improve staff growth and motivation, and to establish a learning culture, they should aggressively push for ongoing education in the workplace.
By encouraging employees to participate in activities and opportunities that foster learning, managers can create an environment of support, respect, and progress within their people.
Discover 10 common management challenges and how you can overcome them.
4 Benefits of Continuing Education
The benefits of adopting a culture of continuing education are abundant and include:
Professional Advancement
Standing out from the crowd can be tricky in today’s highly educated workforce. Extra certifications could be key to working one’s way up the career ladder. Online learning platform Coursera recorded 20 million new student registrations in 2021. As a generational shift takes place in today’s workforce, a Ceridian study found that 93% of Millennials and Gen Z expect employers to provide better learning opportunities.
Increased Engagement
Happy employees are more motivated, engaged, and productive at work. Employees who work for companies that invest in resources for learning are 83% more likely to feel happier in their job, while 80% of people agreed that learning new skills would make them more engaged.
People are intrinsically motivated to learn, and this is reflected by an analysis of 3 million employee surveys, where learning and development opportunities were found to be the second most significant factor in determining engagement.
Read to learn more on how you can boost employee engagement among your staff.
Lower Employee Turnover
The connection between continuing education and employee retention was proven by a Consumer Technology Association report. 74% of businesses considered continuing education to be important for employee retention. On the other hand, 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development, while 40% of employees with poor training will leave the company within the first year.
Higher Salaries
The biggest extrinsic motivator for upskilling is, of course, money. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, educational attainment correlates with earning potential. Education allows employees to manage the skills gap between entry-level and mid-level positions, facilitating advancement with 78% of employers factoring continuing education into promotions. Education allows corporations to improve their productivity and reduce costs while giving employees a way to increase their income and advance within the company.
Conclusion
In the future, businesses need to foster a culture where everyone understands the value of training and development. A well-educated and engaged workforce helps companies to achieve long-term viability and profitability.
