Importance of continuous self-learning at the workplace

Learning is essential for our existence. Just like food nourishes our bodies, information and continuous learning nourishes our minds. Lifelong learning is an indispensable tool for every career and organisation.

Today, continuous learning forms a necessary part in acquiring critical thinking skills and discovering new ways of relating to people from different cultures. To live a life without continuous learning is unthinkable. Whilst it is up to everyone to become a lifelong learner and keep up to date with what’s happening in their industry or profession to remain employable, it’s also up to L&D departments to help individuals develop the new skills of independent continuous learning.

Many individuals now recognise the need to spend time each week on some planned learning, not just relying on the natural learning that happens as they do their jobs but making a conscious effort to spend some dedicated time learning for their own purposes.

This could be to solve a performance problem, be updated with what is happening in their industry or profession or to acquire additional knowledge or skills to prepare them for the future.  Several ways are explored; from taking an online course, consuming some online resources, interacting with others in their professional social networks, subscribing to publications specific to your areas of interest or attending training courses and events.

Continuous learning in the workplace involves viewing your experiences as potential learning and re-examining assumptions, values, methods, policies and practices.

7 ways lifelong learning will benefit you;

• Remain Relevant – To function effectively in this rapidly changing world of technology, you need to learn new things to remain relevant. Continuous self-learning will ensure you are not left behind.
• Prepare for the unexpected – Lifelong learning will help you adapt to unexpected changes. By continuing to learn, you’ll more easily step out of your comfort zone and take on new opportunities.
• Boost you profile – When you’re always learning, you’ll keep improving, will grow in your career and start to receive recommendations from colleagues and managers.
• Competence leads to confidence – Learning new things gives us a feeling of accomplishment which, in turn, boosts our confidence in our own capabilities; you’ll also feel more ready to take on challenges and explore new ventures and opportunities that come your way
• Sparks new ideas – Acquiring new skills will unveil new opportunities and help you find innovative solutions to problems. This could earn you name, fame and money as well.
• Change your perspective – Continuous learning opens your mind and changes your attitude by building on what you already know. The more you learn, the better you’ll get at seeing more sides of the same situation – helping you understand more deeply.
• Pay it forward – Continuous learning isn’t just about you. Lifelong learning helps develop your leadership skills which then translates into promoting lifelong learning in other individuals too.

At Hexaware, we strongly promote continuous learning through our online learning platform HexAcademy and the Instructor led sessions planned and executed by our L&D experts.

HexAcademy, an initiative by Hexaware’s TED team, an online LMS portal launched on March-18, serves as an effective eLearning portal for employees to acquire and retain knowledge as well as skills for professional & personal development.

Phase 1 of the project involved introduction of an off-the-shelf content library to jumpstart the e-learning initiative in our organization. This first step created a climate for corporate learners to look forward to workplace learning.

In Phase 2, we continued our efforts to improve the tool use through automated TNI gathering functionalities, identifying courses relevant for the individual/department, offering skill-based training & adding in-house eLearning material that were developed based on instructional design requirements and the needs of the learners.

Presently, employees at a global level have access to this learning platform and we have a count of around 5000 odd learners taking up self-learning month on month contributing towards both self and organisational development.

The team is now in constant pursuit to improve this service offering with automated and micro learning methodologies being sought to improve the user learning experience online thereby leveraging continuous development to encourage continuous learning at the workplace.

“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any area of interest, both professionally and personally. Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise”

– Dennis Waitley