Reports¹ suggest that getting Executive buy-in easy but creating a learning culture and championing it is difficult. Finding the right Champion is half the job done!!

A recent workplace study report released by LinkedIn Learning provides quite a few insights on the creating a learning culture at the workplace. Creating a learning culture is no more an HR agenda but rather a business agenda where there is a clear linkage between the talent skill sets and the long-term organization strategy,

In a dynamic environment, like what we are experiencing now, organizations need to evolve and put their talent on a journey to upskill and reskill. LinkedIn Learning Report suggests 51% and 43% L&D professionals plan to launch upskilling and reskilling program in 2020, respectively. This is quite a significant focus considering that Covid-19 has only accentuated the need to upskill and reskill the talent to adapt to the changing work and business environment.

In such a scenario, the learning needs to shift from a push-based intervention to a pull-based intervention where the learners are demanding the skills required to support their career aspirations. Creating a learning culture continues to remain a challenging task for the L&D professionals. While a nudge or push from Executives and Senior Leadership lends support in this direction, it is however short lived and soon fades from the memory of the talent. The question therefore arises as to how can we make it more sustainable?

Influencers in your organization can provides a few answers to these queries.

In an earlier blog we mentioned that 3% of influencers have the potential of reaching 80% of your talent. It is these influencers that we need to harness to create a culture of learning. The hidden influencers may not be your Executive leadership team – who on most occasions are perceived to be influencers by virtue of their formal authority. For creating a sustainable culture of learning, we need to leverage the informal networks and informal authority of the hidden influencers who can effectively nudge the learners to adopt and complete a course online, pick up new skill and drive the upskilling and reskilling agenda.

Hidden influencers can become your Learning Ambassadors who can help in enhancing learner engagement, adoption and completion of online courses and driving your upskilling and reskilling agenda.

Once we know who these hidden influencers are, it becomes easy for the organizations to tap their network by positioning them as Learning Ambassadors. These Ambassadors can be used for internal communications as well as delivering learning interventions. Engaging Learning Ambassadors and Executives to deliver the courses enhances learning experience and engagement because of relevancy and proximity of learners.

While we may continue to struggle in making learning a priority for Managers, organizations may tap the potential of influencers in creating a culture of learning and driving their upskilling and reskilling program.

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