A culture that supports learning

YakTrak’s latest series about retention in contact centres examines the key drivers of retention. Here we focus on learning and how developing a learning culture at your contact centre can help improve employee experience.

We’ve all had or heard of the experience of starting a new job that makes big promises but doesn’t deliver. A key promise might be the learning and development opportunities on offer, but the reality turns out to be an organisation that is too busy to do it.

In today’s “employees’ job market” your people can pick and choose the companies they work for. Companies that don’t offer (and deliver!) a better employee experience through initiatives such as learning and development opportunities will lose out and struggle to attract the talent they need.

The benefits of a culture of learning

Research shows that people often leave an organisation because of the relationship they have with their leaders. If your leader seems engaged in your development and takes an interest in you, it sends a clear message that your organisation cares about you. A generalised perception however is “My leader doesn’t care about me, I only hear from them when something goes wrong.”

YakTrak promotes regular contact even when things are going well, along with daily reminders to connect with team members about their development.

Not only does a learning culture increase employee engagement and improve retention, it will also increase productivity and business outcomes.

By embedding a culture of learning and employee development, you’ll see:

• people taking control of theirpersonal development objectives
• improved trust inleadership as team members receive regular feedback and take part in consistent development conversations
• increase in coaching uptake as team leaders are inspired to coach and team members are inspired to learn
• higher levels of employee engagementthrough improved employee experience initiatives
• increased visibility forleadership over the coaching and development activities of their workforce.

9 steps to develop a culture of learning

A culture of learning is one that values and encourages ongoing learning. As a leader, you can’t always control what your organisation sets as a priority, however it is possible as a leader at all levels to make some small changes to start developing a culture of learning. Here are some ideas to get you going.

1. Make learning a core value of your team – develop a set of team values that includes a commitment to ongoing learning and development.
2. Model everyday learning in your team – talk about it and demonstrate it.
3. Prioritise learning and set aside time to do it – add time in your calendar for each team member for coaching and learning. What goes in the calendar gets done.
4. Encourage learning in the flow of work – in today’s busy call centres, finding ways to incorporate learning every day will require creative solutions. It doesn’t always have to involve taking the team off the phones.
5. Set learning goals that align to each individual’s career aspirations – invest the time in helping each team member develop individual learning goals.
6. Focus on changing the behaviours that drive performance – your team members will feel encouraged when they learn new behaviours that deliver noticeable results, creating a positive feedback loop that will lift performance and improve employee experience.
7. Hold your team members accountable by monitoring and measuring everyday learning – set goals then check in regularly to track progress.
8. Reward learning behaviours – turn principles into practice by publicly celebrating the achievement of learning goals and knowledge sharing across teams.
9. Use the right tech solution that is fit for purpose – make it easy to manage and track your organisation’s learning initiatives.

How YakTrak can help build your culture of learning to enhance employee experience

Help your workforce to deliver their best with YakTrak’s people development system. YakTrak supports a culture of continual learning while providing management with critical insights over the development of employees.

YakTrak holds leaders accountable for investment in people to be a daily activity. It encourages regular interactions between leaders and team members, setting a regular and consistent cadence for coaching and feedback. It also sends handy notifications to remind you to follow up on development sessions and goals.

YakTrak provides clarity around performance expectations by encouraging goal setting at every level, including the:

• coach (leader of leaders)
• team leaders
• frontline team members.

YakTrak encourages learning in the flow of work, and advocates people getting together more regularly via:

• huddles
• team meetings
• morning stand-ups.

YakTrak offers better management of people development by bringing together all forms, workflows, and people development documentation into YakTrak. The YakTrak platform can:

• Replicate any coaching or conversation methodology so language is familiar for team members.
• Improve version control and share forms across multiple users including third parties.
• Easily update workflows to manage compliance, conduct risk, people development and HR processes.
• Provide reporting and audit trails as proof of remediation for regulatory bodies in conduct risk breaches.

 “Life before YakTrak was spreadsheets, SharePoints and editable PDFs… and it was really as disjointed as it sounded.”
– EnergyAustralia

Don’t let a lack of learning culture damage your organisation’s employee engagement. If you would like to learn how YakTrak can help foster a culture of learning at your organisation, get in touch today.

Photo by Anna Shvets via Pexels