From VR to kaizen, three organisations share their workplace learning strategies

Occu­pa­tion­al learn­ing offers employ­ees the chance to expand their skills, build con­fi­dence and devel­op their careers. It also offers ben­e­fits to the busi­ness in terms of more engaged, knowl­edge­able and pro­duc­tive staff. 

How­ev­er, analy­sis by the Learn­ing and Work Insti­tute found that employ­er invest­ment in train­ing has fall­en by 28% since 2005, with UK busi­ness­es spend­ing only half the EU aver­age per work­er.

Learn­ing and devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­ers have described the tra­di­tion­al expec­ta­tions of lead­ers, where learn­ing is treat­ed as a sec­ondary pri­or­i­ty, as the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing their pro­fes­sion, with 78% of peo­ple sur­veyed by the Char­tered Insti­tute of Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment describ­ing it as a posi­tion that’s dif­fi­cult to chal­lenge.

Find­ing new and inno­v­a­tive ways to bring learn­ing into the work­place is there­fore key to chang­ing per­cep­tions. As Learn­ing at Work Week kicks off, three organ­i­sa­tions share their advice for devel­op­ing a future-fac­ing learn­ing and devel­op­ment pro­gramme.

The kaizen philosophy of continuous learning

Dig­i­tal con­tract­ing soft­ware busi­ness Sum­mize shirks away from the tra­di­tion­al one-size-fits all approach to learn­ing. 

Its CEO Tom Dun­lop took lessons from his expe­ri­ence as a bad­minton play­er for Team GB to intro­duce the con­cept of kaizen – a Japan­ese con­cept refer­ring to con­tin­u­al improve­ment. When he was a pro­fes­sion­al sports play­er, there was empha­sis on find­ing the mar­gin­al gains that would help him to con­tin­u­al­ly devel­op his per­for­mances on the court. 

“I’d always be analysing how I could get a lit­tle bit bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion because the mar­gin between win­ning and los­ing was so small,” he says. “A small change in diet or a change in train­ing rou­tine might be the dif­fer­ence between win­ning or los­ing a cham­pi­onship.” 

Dun­lop says he has car­ried this mind­set into his busi­ness set­ting by con­stant­ly try­ing to find ways to become more effi­cient and pro­duc­tive. He has also trans­lat­ed this Kaizen approach across the busi­ness. Sum­mize employ­ees are encour­aged to sug­gest ways they can improve by 1% each month and find the mar­gin­al gains that can help grow the busi­ness.

“I didn’t want to cre­ate a work­place cul­ture where peo­ple were expect­ing to be told what to do all the time and where they feel they don’t have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to con­tribute or make improve­ments them­selves,” Dun­lop says. “We want­ed our team to feel like they’re con­tribut­ing to the vision of the com­pa­ny. The Kaizen con­cept of con­tin­u­al improve­ment real­ly fit that pro­file well.”

As an incen­tive, those that come up with the best per­son­al or busi­ness-relat­ed improve­ments each month are reward­ed with a bonus, equiv­a­lent to 1% of their salaries. In order to sup­port peo­ple in reach­ing their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al devel­op­ment goals, staff are also giv­en a bud­get of £400 a year to spend on learn­ing with the free­dom to invest it in any­thing from train­ing cours­es to fit­ness class­es.

“Every­one has dif­fer­ent objec­tives,” Dun­lop says. “Some peo­ple want to learn things that are com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed to their job but devel­op them per­son­al­ly, which makes them feel reward­ed. We want to pro­vide flex­i­bil­i­ty for peo­ple to learn and devel­op in the areas they’d like, rather than just man­dat­ing train­ing on a par­tic­u­lar top­ic because the com­pa­ny thinks it’s a good thing to invest in.”

Using tech for training

Maud­s­ley Learn­ing, the train­ing arm of South Lon­don and Maud­s­ley NHS Foun­da­tion Trust, spe­cialis­es in train­ing for men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, which pre­vi­ous­ly relied on actors to cre­ate train­ing sim­u­la­tions. It is explor­ing the use of VR tech­nol­o­gy to train front­line NHS staff, with its chief oper­at­ing offi­cer James Pathan say­ing the tech­nol­o­gy allows the organ­i­sa­tion to deliv­er “exper­i­men­tal and immer­sive train­ing at scale” — some­thing that wasn’t pos­si­ble with oth­er train­ing meth­ods.

Maud­s­ley Learn­ing believes VR train­ing  can improve access to train­ing for peo­ple work­ing in a sec­tor where it can be dif­fi­cult to take time away from the clin­i­cal set­ting for such exer­cis­es.

Pathan says: “The the­o­ry behind the use of VR is that it allows us to run expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing at scale, which then starts to bring the cost down per head and gives more staff the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have real­ly high-qual­i­ty train­ing and not just be giv­en a one hour lec­ture or e‑learning exer­cise.”

Anoth­er advan­tage of using vir­tu­al real­i­ty for learn­ing, accord­ing to Pathan, is that it improves the abil­i­ty of peo­ple to retain infor­ma­tion because of its immer­sive nature.

“In learn­ing the­o­ry, we see that expe­ri­ences which trig­ger an emo­tion­al response pro­duce much high­er reten­tion rates,” he says. “We’ve start­ed to see 30% to 40% reten­tion of infor­ma­tion with expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing, com­pared with more sta­t­ic exer­cis­es such as peo­ple read­ing off slides.”

The VR sim­u­la­tions are one ele­ment of the trust’s diver­si­ty and inclu­sion train­ing, which it is run­ning as part of a research project with King’s Col­lege Lon­don. There are plans to begin deploy­ing head­sets on the wards for peo­ple to prac­tise their skills.

Pathan believes this strat­e­gy could also be used in the cor­po­rate set­ting to help improve engage­ment. “If every office or every meet­ing room has a VR head­set that any­one could use at any time, it would allow peo­ple to access learn­ing ad hoc when­ev­er they need it.”

Sending staff back to school

At 22 Bish­ops­gate, the team behind the 62-floor com­mer­cial Lon­don sky­scraper of the same name have devel­oped a learn­ing and devel­op­ment pro­gramme for employ­ees of the build­ing to advance their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment.

The School of 22, which was devised by head of oper­a­tions Annie Pan­teli, offers mas­ter­class­es in a range of sub­ject areas, from emo­tion­al intel­li­gence to sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“We want­ed to give peo­ple access to options they may not nor­mal­ly take up in their work­ing roles,” Pan­teli says. “The school was designed to pro­vide peo­ple with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn and sup­port their per­son­al growth.”

The pro­gramme, which start­ed in Decem­ber last year, will see all 160 peo­ple in the com­pa­ny booked on to com­plete the learn­ing and devel­op­ment course by Sep­tem­ber.

Pan­teli believes that cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment free from judge­ment and test­ing is key to mak­ing the School of 22 a suc­cess. “We real­ly want­ed to dis­tin­guish between learn­ing and train­ing,” she adds. “This opens people’s minds to the fact the cours­es will ben­e­fit them as well as the com­pa­ny they work for.”

The school theme also extends to extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties includ­ing a sports day, vol­un­teer­ing days and a “prom” for those who com­plete the pro­gramme. This was impor­tant because it helps to “recog­nise and reward” people’s con­tri­bu­tions and atten­dance of the cours­es, accord­ing to Pan­tel­li.

“It pro­vides a real incen­tive for peo­ple to join,” Pan­teli says. “The val­ue of human con­tact and inter­ac­tion is clear­er now than ever before and it’s real­ly con­tributed to our cul­ture of hap­pi­ness with­in the team.”