How IBM Builds a Culture of Continuous Learning

Learning and development is an important part of the strategy of HR leaders as they face the future of work and engage employees. Determining how to create the right parameters for training and knowing how to create a team of continuous learners is top of mind for L&D leaders today.

Recently, Sonia Malik, Global Program Lead, Education and Workforce Development at IBM, talked to HR Exchange Network about trends in learning and development and the culture of lifelong learning. Malik will be sharing her insight at "An Approach to Continuous Upskilling and Reskilling" during the HR Exchange Network’s Corporate Learning Spring online event.

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HREN: What is a growth mindset?

SM: It’s the ability to take on new challenges and learn new things without getting intimidated about failure. Having the willingness to learn, fail, learn, repeat.

HREN: What are some of the actionable steps that HR leaders can take to create the culture of lifelong learning?

SM: There are a couple of ways in which it can be done. One is for leaders to demonstrate the growth mindset and lifelong learning behaviors. The second is really providing an infrastructure and the ability to become a lifelong learner. You can’t say we want you to learn stuff and not provide access to infrastructure, content, or time to learn.

Then, one of the most important pieces to me is clearly demonstrating the why of learning. I’m a huge fan of the Gartner work on the agile learning curve. How do we tie the learning curve to the earning curve? Driving that recognition and acknowledgement to people is how they are going to progress and be lifelong, employable individuals. Tying that learning curve with that earning curve and personalizing the learning journey for individuals are keys to establishing that learning culture.

HREN: How can employers demonstrate concern for individual employee’s learning?

SM: After the pandemic, we’ve seen that employees want employers to have an interest in their personal development. If you look at any employee engagement survey today, the interest in “me and my career” is one of the most telling employee satisfaction indices. I think it tends to be low across the board because it’s only now that employers are starting to take a personal interest and that they need to have that career development conversation.

Making sure the employee fits in with the organization is important. Establishing the link between the learning curve and earning curve is important. You should reward and motivate along the way, and you can do that in a variety of ways. You can do that with recognition. At IBM, we do it with badges and recognition of different levels of learning. Every IBM employee must complete 40 hours of learning in one year. That’s the bare minimum. If you complete 80 hours, you become a super learner. If you finish 120 hours, you get the bronze. There’s this constant reward program to motivate employees to learn more and be recognized along the way.

HREN: Do they have guidelines about what to study or is this open-ended learning?

SM: I won’t say it’s open-ended. Obviously, you want to align the learning with the skills you want the employee to develop so they can be successful contributors to your organization. There’s some organization-dependent learning.

Otherwise, you can pretty much do anything. If I’m interested in data science and I want to learn how to apply data visualization methods for my personal use, I can take a data science course and track those hours, even though from a work perspective I have nothing to do with data science. On the other hand, there are some pieces of learning that are mandatory. Cyebersecurity and data privacy are mandatory.

HREN: What do you see as the biggest L&D trend of the next few years?

SM: Being able to offer learning that from a delivery modality works for remote learners and learners in the office is one. Being able to blend the face-to-face and remote experience is going to be huge. As the concentration span of us as humans becomes shorter and shorter, the need to deliver learning in small, consumable chunks becomes higher. There is a need to develop a wide variety of skills, so doing skills-based learning, rather than role-based learning, becomes critical. Being able to allow people to personalize their learning journeys is critical.

HREN: How are you preparing workers for the future of work?

SM: We are really focusing on the foundational skills. We believe if you have a solid base on the foundational skills, you should be able to pick up anything. Technology is going to change. If you look at the shelf life of skills today, it’s down to three years. So, every three years, 50% of your skills are going to become defunct. The only way we can counter that and make people ready for the future is to make sure they are lifelong learners and have a solid base in the soft skills, so they can be adaptable, resilient, creative thinkers, and problem solvers, so they can pivot and learn new things.

Don’t miss Malik’s session and others at the Corporate Learning Spring online event. Register for free.