Learning At Work Week

1st April, 2024 5 min read

The LAWW theme for 2024 is Learning Power. What does this year’s theme mean to you? And can we use it to galvanise learning all year through?

Are you gearing up for Learning At Work Week in May? Would you like to?

Each year when Learning At Work Week (LAWW) comes around I have conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, I’m delighted that there’s an opportunity to shine a light on the benefits of workplace learning; on the other, why limit us to Learning At Work Week? What about the concept of Lifelong Learning? What are we all doing the rest of the year?

Of course, I realise that LAWW is a marketing opportunity. A chance for organisations to focus on the benefits of learning. And the Campaign for Learning should be congratulated for this annual jamboree promoting and celebrating learning at work. I encourage organisations to participate (and we can help - more about that later).

But still, I have this nagging thought. What about the rest of the year? So I have come up with the new idea of ‘LAWN’ - Learning At Work Now. If I were heading up a learning department, in either the private or public sector, I would want a regular ‘LAWN’ event, at least once a month and probably every week. And I’d be promoting LAWN activities throughout the year. It’s what we’re doing right now that matters. And ‘now’ is something that’s always with us.

Learning is a habit (see Tip no.6 in my previous blog Marketing Your Learning). It doesn’t need to take up loads of time and indeed, ‘little and often’ is a great way to introduce a regular approach to learning experiences, whether they be self-directed or facilitated in some way.

It’s good for us to get into the regular habit of promoting learning too. Plan a regular series of bite-sized learning interventions to enhance and complement your larger learning initiatives and programmes. These then become part of the fabric of your corporate culture. It’s just what happens, every day – ‘now’. And if everyone is expected to participate and contribute it begins to snowball. Use social channels to encourage your learning champions to share what they’re doing and the benefits they’re getting. How is it making the work easier or more productive? What are they achieving that’s new? How is it making them feel?

The phrase ‘Learning At Work’ has a double entendre which is useful for our purposes. Great things can happen when Learning is at work - especially when it becomes part of our everyday work experience.

Even if we don’t realise it, we are of course learning new things every day. And enabling each individual colleague to acknowledge this through a semi-formal expectation of ‘learning time’ has so many benefits. Morale, team working, trust, commitment and so many other values vital in an effective organisation bloom as a result. There is no such thing as ‘no time for learning’, only a disinclination to put learning at the top of your agenda. As I explain in my blog ‘When people don’t have time’, ultimately people do what is beneficial to them, so making learning desirable, valued and genuinely useful to them is essential.

This year’s LAWW theme

Let’s use this year’s Learning At Work Week as a springboard to learning now (remember LAWN) and every day throughout the year.

Each year The Campaign for Learning chooses a theme. This year it’s Learning Power. The idea is to link the benefits of continuous development to ‘change, grow and achieve our individual, team and organisational goals.’

You’re encouraged to use a variety of approaches to explore these underlying topics with your people. You might choose to focus on one aspect of the theme or run a series of learning events or experiences covering a variety of topics relating to Learning Power. You can use as much or as little of the ideas presented as you wish. I’m a great fan of variety and versatility as anyone who has spoken with me about our WATCH & GO® resources knows, so it’s great that you’re encouraged to do Learning At Work Week in any way that suits your particular purposes.

Every year, we provide a selection of our digital learning resources to support our clients’ promotional activities. We select a mix of videos, podcasts, learning guides and interactive Skills Challenges activities to support a ‘watch, listen, read, do’ approach.

As in previous years, the overall Learning At Work Week theme is divided into three sections:

  1. Power to Grow
  2. Power to Connect
  3. Power to Engage

For 2024 we’re offering a mini toolkit of nine resources. There are three titles for each of the recommended sub-themes for Learning Power - we’re providing one video, one podcast and one Skills Challenge activity for each one. We’ve mapped three of our titles to the descriptions provided for each of the ‘power’ topics. These are:

Power to Grow

Power to Connect

Power to Engage

This mini toolkit is available for the whole of the month of May. And of course, if you’d like to talk to us about providing bite-sized learning experiences for all your people throughout the whole year, I’d love to chat with you. Do get in touch.

Learning At Work Week website (from The Campaign for Learning)

https://www.learningatworkweek.com/

Scott Bradbury blog page

https://www.scottbradbury.co.uk/blog/

Free trial request for WATCH & GO® resources

https://www.scottbradbury.co.uk/free-trial/


Catherine de Salvo
2 April 2024

You can contact Catherine at catherine@scottbradbury.co.uk or via LinkedIn