The best time to learn is now - here's why

In this blog, we share some of the reasons we believe learning is important and look into what holds people back from prioritising it within their daily working lives.

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Learning is often placed on the back burner once you step foot into the working world - and we don't mean the learning on the job, rather learning through training or group workshops. When did you last step away from your daily demands, and make time to come to a space with an open mind ready to learn?

Here's just some of the reasons we believe learning is important and what holds people back from prioritising it.

Invest in your growth

You might say "I do not have money for this!", but we should mention, as a small social enterprise, neither do we! One approach we've adopted and would encourage you to look into is skills swapping. It allows us to bring in external knowledge and perspective, all while connecting and supporting other non-profits or small businesses doing important work. Within our internship programme, our Collaborators often swap intern days for running training sessions for our community. Likewise for the training we provide, we are open to swapping training offers with other inspiring organisations.

When we invested in learning for our team, the value outweighed the cost each time. If just one person from your team attending the training gains one new transformational technique or tool, it is usually worth it. As a team, we recently attended two sessions on Practical Communication for Teams by Outlandish, our team member Prisca said "These workshops gave us the opportunity to practice voicing personal and work-related experiences and thoughts, ones we perhaps were likely to overlook and bury. We found that when our team was in a space where everyone was free to mess up, get lost, or re-phrase, many pivotal conversations came out of this, both for us as individuals, but also us as a team." Being brave and bringing real-life scenarios and previous experiences into the safe space of a training session really pays off. But the learning doesn't stop at the end of the session - take time to practice any new processes to solidify these in your mind, and encourage others to practice with you.

Nurture your team

Are you building people up for their future, or their future within your organisation? As well as focussing on vital soft skills, such as giving feedback or dealing with conflict, in our internship programmes we have also introduced training which gives our young people a chance to look into new industries or roles, such as PR, project management or design thinking. Our current Intern Jane said "I've never had ongoing training like this in another job and I really like it. I think they're helping me build really good skills, and some have been really helpful for poking my head into different industries without needing skills, and without committing to work in that area." Could you attend or suggest training that doesn't tie directly into your sector, but would be a good opportunity for your teammates to grow?

As well as providing variety, we gave our talented interns the freedom to shape their learning by supporting us with organising and running a programme of events. With their input and ideas, together we've created a range of webinars, workshops and panel discussions which the young people were interested in not only attending but being part of the conversation. We believe that this approach is not limited to internships and can be implemented into any workplace, as long as learning has equal value and priority to the day to day work.

The way we communicate about learning is often also skimmed over. Many people have too much pride to admit the lack of knowledge in an area and ask for additional training, or have too much fear of asking for too much. Some employment contracts, for example, mention training cost repayments in case an employee leaves before a year passes. Our team member Sonia said "In previous workplaces, the offer of training mentioned repayments which really put me off, as at that point I wasn't sure whether I wanted to stay in the role for a whole year, and I didn't want to be in "debt" to the employer in case things didn't work out." Such rules and wording set a tone and they might be worth revisiting if they sound familiar. If learning isn't mentioned at all, perhaps your team might not know what options there are, or what you would fund? In our internship programme, we've been transparent about where our limitations lie as a small social enterprise when it comes to the number of workshops we can run, the fees we pay our trainers, and our openness to try new avenues.

Take the pressure off

We all put a lot of pressure on ourselves to act a certain way, to have the answer, or for others to have all the knowledge. Every aspect of life is pressurised, whether it's deadlines, client calls or nursery pick ups, but learning shouldn't be. We'd like to share a realization one of our Collaborators, an experienced facilitator themselves, shared with us after attending our Becoming a Confident Facilitator session. "I nearly didn't come, because I was going "I've done loads of this, what am I going to learn".. annoyingly big headed.. and I've learnt loads. Having the space to just listen to somebody else do the session, and not doing the session was SO fun!" said Rosie, Co-Founder of Organised Fun.

You might think that as you have worked in your sector for many years, you or your team already know it pretty well. But its worth poking your head out to see if there is something else you could put in your toolbox, even if you just discover something small like an answer to the problem lurking on your Trello board. If anything, make it your time to socialize. You'll often end up chatting in the breakout room about things outside of the task you've been set as a group. Such events provide respite for those whose physical health conditions where they simply might not have enough energy to socialize after typical working hours, or for those struggling with mental health, as they take off the pressure by providing a plan to follow and an activity to complete together. If there are some people you don't see on social occasions, the chances are you'll probably catch them on training sessions.

Additionally, these sessions allow people to be on the same level. There's often a hierarchy between employees and employers, or even between employees on the same team - these tend to pressure individuals to act "professionally" when interacting with each other. Depending on the topic, training sessions provide a level playing field for all individuals, as everyone is joining the space without knowing where the conversation will go, or what will be needed of them.

Have a think about just how different your team or business would be if the same emphasis on learning we had in our education you carried on into your work, perhaps with less pressure on exams and more importance on growing your skillset and mindset. If there is one thing to take away, it would be to talk about and encourage learning. We're social creatures after all, and with this small act people around you will soon recognise the value - you might even empower them to embark on a new path. In case you don't know where to start, here are the training sessions we provide for teams, and here are open to all sessions: