Top 5 Learner Engagement Strategies for Building a Learning Culture

Explore key learner engagement strategies you can start implementing within your organisation to grow learning culture.

Is learning an active part of daily working life for everyone in your organisation? Is it a continuous process that’s integrated with work? Do people feel safe to try, fail and learn from it?

If this isn’t the case, then you’re not alone. According to Gallup, 59% of employees are not engaged in their workplace, while  18% are actively disengaged. When we consider that 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company if it invested in career development, it’s clear that L&D plays a crucial role in staff retention and engagement. 

Learner engagement goes beyond sign-ups and completion rates.Transforming workplace culture takes time. Let’s explore some strategies you can implement to start building a thriving learning culture in your organisation.

What is a learning culture?

A learning culture is an environment where employees are encouraged to continuously develop their skills, knowledge and capabilities as part of their working life. It has a direct and meaningful impact on several critical areas including retention, profitability, productivity and wellbeing.

A learning culture isn’t something that can be built overnight – culture is implicit and can be defined in an organisation as “the way things get done” or “what people see people doing, hear people talking about and see people celebrating” (Deloitte).

First, we need to put in place the building blocks to promote learner engagement and start fostering a learning culture for the future.

Step 1: Support a growth mindset

At the core of a great learning culture lies a growth mindset, which is the belief that talents and abilities can be cultivated over time through dedication and hard work. Developed by Stanford professor Carol Dweck in her book Mindset, it encourages individuals to:

• view failure as a learning opportunity
• welcome constructive feedback as a tool for improvement
• seek out challenges as a way to grow

This contrasts with a fixed mindset, where individuals see abilities as innate and unchangeable. By fostering a growth mindset, you can create an environment in which employees embrace challenges, learn through feedback and persevere through setbacks.

At the heart of the growth mindset is learning to overcome the fear of failure and feelings of inadequacy in the face of challenges, and instead recognise an opportunity to learn.

For example, you could encourage your employees to reframe failures as learning opportunities. This is done at Google, where teams use “blameless post-mortems” to analyse what went wrong during projects. This helps them focus on growth rather than assigning blame, creating a culture of psychological safety that eliminates fear and promotes innovation.

Dweck’s research on the growth mindset found that organisations fostering this belief reported higher innovation and employee engagement – which, in turn, helps to promote a positive learning culture.

One of the key concepts of a growth mindset is seeing other people as inspiration rather than competition, which is why collaboration is vital. Groups, networks and communities in your learning management system can help individuals tap into the knowledge of others rather than feel intimidated by it.

Remember to celebrate effort, not just outcomes. Recognise and reward employees for their willingness to learn, take risks and adapt to challenges – again, reward mechanisms in your LMS can help to support this.

Step 2: Make your leaders learning champions

Do your leaders champion learning in your organisation? Do their behaviours and attitudes set the tone for how learning is perceived and prioritised across the organisation? 

Lau et al. (2019) found that teams led by learning-oriented leaders performed significantly better than those that weren’t. When leaders demonstrate a commitment to their personal and professional development, they inspire their teams to follow suit, creating a ripple effect of continuous improvement and innovation.

Microsoft is an excellent example of this. Upon becoming CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella redefined the culture by embedding a growth mindset throughout the company with the help of its leaders, whom he encouraged to prioritise learning and experimentation. Under his leadership, Microsoft became a learning organisation that embraced failures as lessons and promoted cross-functional collaboration. The result?

Microsoft’s market capitalisation grew from $300 billion in 2014 to over $2.5 trillion in 2023. Satya’s mission was to transform everyone into ‘learn-it-alls’ instead of ‘know-it-alls’.

Here’s how you can leverage leadership for learning:

• Encourage leaders to lead by example – Promote leadership participation in learning and development programmes. Leadership-focused learning events provide an opportunity for leaders to share their personal growth experiences and lessons learned.
  
• Embrace mentoring – Assign leaders to mentor employees, encouraging knowledge-sharing and fostering relationships that prioritise development.
  
• Incorporate learning metrics into leadership KPIs – By tying leadership performance evaluations to learning initiatives, you can ensure your leaders actively promote and engage in learning programmes.

Step 3: Encourage peer-to-peer knowledge sharing

Social learning theory, developed by social cognitive psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1960s, posits that “people learn through observing, imitating and modelling others’ behaviour”. For example, if you saw someone using a weights machine at the gym that you weren’t sure how to work, you would use it in the way you’d just observed. No one would have told you how to use it – you’d watched and reasoned what to do. 

Social learning is an effective way to counteract the effects of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, which states that we forget most of what we learned within days if we don’t review it. Social learning promotes knowledge-sharing – and maintaining discussion of the learning content, helps learners review the knowledge post-learning.

In an age of hybrid and remote working, we are presented with a unique challenge: how do we encourage social learning and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing through the screen?

Firstly, learning management systems can act as your hub for discussion and collaboration. Tools like discussion boards and forums can provide a place for employees to ask questions and share knowledge, and gamification such as leaderboards can incentivise participation in learning activities. Some learning management systems will also allow your employees to identify subject-matter experts within the platform and connect with them to ask questions.

For example, we worked with RWTH International Academy to transform their Moodle LMS into an interactive hub for conversation and exchanging ideas. This array of collaboration tools, including chat, discussion forums and announcements, has improved learner communication and made the Learning Space an engaging, dynamic learning environment.

Social learning opportunities are particularly important for your new hires during onboarding – it sends the message that there’s a culture of open knowledge-sharing that’s conducive to an effective learning culture.

Step 4: Foster psychological safety for learning

How comfortable do people feel sharing ideas, asking questions and admitting mistakes in your workplace? The term ‘psychological safety’ was coined by the scholar and Harvard Business School professor Dr Amy C. Edmunson. She defined it as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes”.

When employees feel safe, they’re more willing to experiment, give feedback and embrace challenges. High levels of psychological safety are positively associated with learning behaviour (Edmunson, 1999), can promote creativity, and create an environment where team members provide feedback to each other (Edmunson, 2004).

Building psychological safety takes time, but there are steps you can take to start laying the foundations:

• Celebrate failures publicly – This might feel counterintuitive and a little uncomfortable at first, but encourage employees to share their biggest learning moments from their mistakes. This should start from the top – do leaders openly share what they could have done differently and what they’ve learned?
  
• Model vulnerability as a leader – Share your own challenges and how you overcame them. Highlight a time when you learned from failure and how it helped you eventually succeed. Reframe failures as learning opportunities.
  
• Recognise contributions – Highlight examples of team members who contributed ideas, tried something new or turned setbacks into growth opportunities. Changing perceptions takes time, but by creating a space to talk openly, people will feel far more comfortable speaking up and sharing ideas.

Step 5: Measure and reward learning outcomes

Measuring and rewarding learning outcomes is key to sustaining a culture of continuous development. When employees see their learning efforts acknowledged and valued, it drives motivation and reinforces the importance of learning to their professional growth.

Tracking these learning outcomes provides your organisation with actionable insights into the effectiveness of L&D initiatives. It ensures that learning initiatives align with organisational goals and deliver tangible results – and this is what the C-suite cares about.

According to a study by Gartner, a well-designed recognition programme can help drive an 11.1% increase in employee performance. Gallup also found that when recognition hits the mark, employees are five times more likely to be connected to the company culture.

Here are some of our top tips:

• Make recognition timely – Celebrate achievements as they happen to maximise impact and reinforce learning behaviours. Badges within your learning management system are a good way to provide instant recognition.
  
• Tailor rewards to individual preferences – Some of your employees might value public acknowledgement, while others may prefer tangible rewards like additional training opportunities.
  
• Incorporate learning into performance reviews – Regularly evaluate how employees’ learning efforts contribute to their roles and organisational success.
  
• Use quantitative metrics – Track measurable data such as completion rates, assessment scores and skills application (e.g. observed application of learned skills in real-world tasks).
  
• Collect qualitative feedback – Collect feedback from employees and managers on the relevance and effectiveness of training programmes.
  
• Implement learning analytics tools – Platforms such as Moodle and Totara can help you gather insights on learner participation, engagement and outcomes.

Ready to start building a strong learning culture?

We hope these tips have given you the inspiration you need to get started. If you want to explore how the right learning technology can support you in building the best learning culture, get in touch and we’d love to chat about what success looks like to you.

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