We all know that learning never stops even after we finish our schooling and formal college education. We might be in top positions in renowned firms, professionals with years of experience or a fresher; we all need to keep learning and growing.
While it is worth having a ‘Student for life’ outlook, it is especially important to be open to more learnings in your workplace. It is not just learning about your core job and its responsibilities alone but also something beyond that. Something that can add value to you as an individual, help you progress and enhance your skill sets and more importantly help your grow both professionally and personally.
Brian Tracy, the Canadian-American motivational speaker says ‘Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field’. It is very true that one cannot have an I-know-it-all approach when it comes to learning. There is always more to learn and sometimes even unlearn. There is always a better or refined way of doing things that you may not have been even aware earlier. Hence, being open-minded and having the continuous learning attitude is vital.
Personal growth in the workplace can help you to have a successful career and continually demonstrate to your employer that you have the willingness to learn and enhance your skill sets. It helps you reach your full potential and helps you become the best possible version of yourself. The employees who put efforts to consistently work on themselves tend to be more successful in their career. This will not only help you professionally but can have a positive impact on all walks of your life. Along with building your self-confidence, setting personal-growth goals can help you have a sense of direction in your career. Once you establish what you want to work toward, you can prioritize activities that help you accomplish your long-term objectives.
Along with company-specific goals, employers should urge employees to set personal goals for themselves and provide support in every way possible. Most companies these days are taking several initiatives to promote a learning culture among its workforce. It is important for leaders and managers to identify and understand the learning requirements of the individual team members and take necessary action on the same. The L&D departments are specifically focusing on organizing such beneficial training programmes and courses for their employees. They should also empower employees to embrace lifelong learning and promote self-directed learning.
Since the pandemic times, the online learning is on the rise. There has been a great increase in the number of individuals seeking out opportunities for learning online through their own initiative. Training Platforms like LinkedIn learning, Udemy and Unacademy are offering some great self-learning courses and employees are benefitting from them. Some of the companies are offering licenses to these platforms free so that their employees have the opportunity to learn more.
With time, 50% of employers will speed up the automation of tasks, while over 80% are set to expand the digitisation of their work processes. In other words, some jobs will disappear, and new jobs will surge. All these shifts happening so fast require employees to take greater control over their learning journey and at the same time leaders need to act fast to ensure workers have the right kind of support.
Ultimately, it is not only the companies who benefit out of this, but lifelong, self-directed employees are the ones to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
It is important for everyone to set learning goals. You must know what you want to achieve, what you need to learn to reach your goal, and how you can go about learning it. As Steve Jobs rightly put it – “Learn continually – there’s always one more thing to learn”.