The Importance of Learning Agility in The Workplace

Learning agility learning strategy
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    Agility is a skill that is crucial to professional success. A recent study by Korn Ferry showed that executives with high levels of learning agility are 5 times more likely to stay highly engaged and that companies with particularly agile individuals have 25% higher profit margins than their less agile coworkers. 

    But what exactly does learning agility mean, and how do we acquire it? This post will walk you through the definition of learning agility and provide you with real-life examples that can help you overcome your workforce development challenges. 

    The Learning Strategy For Success

    What is Learning Agility? Learning agility is a word often used in a professional context, and can be described as a mental trait whereby an employee can learn from experiences, and apply their new knowledge to new and challenging situations. 

    People who are learning agile not only have the ability to learn new things, but also the ability to unlearn unproductive habits and think outside of the box. 

    People with high scores on learning agility often:

    • Learn quickly in unfamiliar situations
    • Ask questions and desire feedback
    • Are good at discovering patterns in an unfamiliar situation 
    • Seek out new challenges

    These personal skills can be applied to entire learning organizations. Below are some examples of what learning agile businesses do to develop new skills, boost employee engagement, and stay constantly curious. 

    Employee Engagement Across Organizations

    Professional Agility and Organizations: Agile organizations don’t just look to their internal network when analyzing trends and data. Rather, they expand their perspectives to include emerging trends and peers outside of their organization. 

    For example, in 2008, Google and Procter & Gamble organized an employee swap to promote learning agility within their company. Both companies encouraged their marketing and HR employees to work at their respective peer organizations for two months and observe differences in managing operations, employee productivity, and corporate learning strategies. 

    Once the swap was completed, key stakeholders from each company brought back new ideas to their teams. Cross-sharing events like this can provide your business with the opportunity to see your company’s challenges from a new perspective, and learn from the success of others.  

    Spearheading a business swap also illustrates your company’s commitment to continual learning and a willingness to adapt. To develop new skills within your workforce, consider working with a peer business, and having employees explore departments outside of their area of expertise. 

    Technology and Skill Development

    Change Agility and Technology:  Only 10% of companies have reported significant financial benefits from their investments in artificial intelligence technologies. So what is this 10% doing and how do we do it too? 

    Research conducted by the MIT Sloan Management Review explained that these successful companies possessed learning agility. In other words, they actively changed their learning strategies to facilitate organizational learning with AI. 

    A learning agile company will consider all of the possible ways humans and machines can interact, instead of just focusing on one. 

    For instance, an AI system might encourage a computer to make a suggestion and a human employee to decide whether to move forward with it. Other situations might ask that humans generate solutions and AI to judge the quality of the solutions. 

    Organizations that challenge themselves to navigate multiple modes of interaction are shown to be six times as likely to see a significant financial benefit to AI technologies in comparison with organizations that focus on just one mode of interaction. 

    Learning Services For All

    Mental Agility and Continuous Learning: Learning agile companies foster a culture driven by continuous learning and curiosity. Successful senior leaders often share their commitment to learning with employees by directly reaching out and incorporating curiosity building into the workday. 

    Perhaps your employees are curious about tech. Take inspiration from Amazon, which implemented the Amazon Technical Academy. The Academy provides employees with both support and a challenge by helping non-technical staff improve their tech literacy and familiarize themselves with software engineering.

    A company that embraces learning agility not only help their employees thrive within their current roles, but encourages them to work upwards. Consider working directly with employees to build personalized development plans, as opposed to using the same model for everyone. This way, workers will be able to see what kinds of training they need. 

    WeLearn’s Learning Development Blog: Ready, Set, Go!

    Agility helps learning organizations continually evolve in our increasingly globalized and digitized landscape. As long as you keep an open mind and are willing to learn, you are on the right path to making your workplace more adaptable and ready for positive change. 

    What are some examples of learning agility you have seen in your workplace? What changes would you like to have in your learning organization that could better foster learning agility? Express your ideas, concerns, and hopes with us here at WeLearn’s Learning Development Blog, because together we can create a smarter, better workforce.

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