Learning & Development in a startup business
When is the right time to start your company’s learning & development programme?
The CEO excitedly ripped off the packing tape and eagerly opened the cardboard box. Inside were the three new books that had been ordered online the day before. In these books lay the secrets to success in business, or at least that is what the reviews on the back promised. But they weren’t for the CEO, they had already read them, these copies were for the team. They proudly walked over to the bookcase to add the latest arrivals. But the shelves were empty. All the books placed there only two months before were now gone!
When you start your new business you have a lot to put in place. Company name and registration, branding, social media, bookkeeping, website, find customers, build your products or services are just part of an endless list. So why add a learning and development programme to that list as well?
It’s easy to assume that learning and development programmes are just for big companies. The reality is that they are for every company. You just need to build one that’s right for your business. But why?
We’ve seen the benefits for ourselves both when growing our business and when working with our clients on their immersive learning projects.
Continuous learning and development within a business brings many benefits. Better trained employees, more focus on meeting the needs of our customers, more creative R&D and a happier work environment are just some of the benefits we’ve observed for ourselves. Likewise our clients have observed these benefits through increased staff retention, greater innovation in their products, more engaging content to share with customers and much more.
Hopefully we didn’t need to convince you too much about the benefits of learning and development … but you are probably still wondering why its something you should think about as a new startup.
The simple answer is that embedding learning and development in your business from the start creates good practice and in turn this becomes your company culture. Learning becomes a habit for your people and then the benefits of this become an intrinsic and authentic part of your business.
Sounds good, but there’s a catch we hear you say.
“Where do we find the time to build a learning and development programme with all these other important things to do?”
The answer is to start small and easy. Do easy things that make a big impact and then grow the programme as the business scales. To make it easier we’ve compiled some proven ideas that you can take and start using today.
Show Leadership
Learning isn’t something that’s reserved for your team, its also for the leadership as well. Why should your people embrace a culture of learning if its not seen as a habit of the leadership. So show some leadership and talk about your own learning as well as sponsoring the other initiatives.
Gain Momentum
One of the aims of your Learning and Development programme should be to encourage and facilitate self-directed learning across the business. This will mean that your employees can take responsibility for their own life-long learning and not require you to be consistently reminding them of the importance of training and personal development. However, not everyone in the team will be used to self-direction so you’ll need to get some momentum within your programme to facilitate and encourage it. You’ll also need to be able to demonstrate the benefits of your programme and that can’t be achieved if there is no activity taking place. This means that your leadership efforts become even more important to create initial momentum and allow the programme to become self-sustaining in the long-term.
Start with Small But Powerful Ideas
If you are a start-up or small business then its important not to go too big too quickly. If you do you’ll suck up time and resources that should be spent getting your business up and running. So its important to find easy wins that get the programme going but don’t require large amounts of effort to deliver. Here are some ideas we’ve had success with at chronyko.
A Trip to the Museum or Gallery
In a small business you probably take time out to celebrate the early successes, going out for drinks or a meal as a team. Why not add a trip to an exhibition or event that’s relevant to your business beforehand. You don’t even need to worry about it being directly related to what you do. It encourages your people to go an explore a new subject in a relaxed social setting and you never know what creative idea it might spark in your team.
Have a Lending Library of Books
Take some time to pick out some books that are relevant to the skills and knowledge needed in your business. These can include domain specific areas or broad topics such as leadership and communication. Use the experience of the leadership team to curate the library to make it valuable and relevant and make sure not to fill it with old books that need a new home.
Start a Book Club
Picking up books about running a business can seem intimidating to people who’ve never read them before. So buy a few copies and then organise meetups to discuss the contents. If your leadership team make a point of attending some of these they can be fun and informal way of sharing knowledge and experience stimulated by topics encountered in the books.
Play an Escape Room
Book a game at a local escape room and go play it as a team. When you’ve finished go grab a coffee and review your performance. Talk about team dynamics, roles and communication under pressure. Use the results to identify areas to work on as individuals and as a group. After putting some of the ideas into practice go play another one and compare the results.
Create an internal L&D channel
Create a new channel on slack or Microsoft Teams that can be used to share relevant ideas and resources to support learning across the team. Post links to videos and articles and share your own personal experiences and eureka moments. Share a diverse range of content and then let everyone pick and choose what interests them.
Side Projects
Encourage everyone on the team to find a side project on that aligns with both individual and business goals and give them a little time at work each week to work on it. Then set aside a half hour each week for a couple of people to present back to the team about their project and the progress they’ve made. Offer structured feedback as a group on both the project and how it was presented.
Integrate immersive learning
As the company and the team grows you should continue to invest in the programme. New employees joining the workforce are asking for more from company learning and development programmes. This is the perfect time to introduce immersive learning to your business.
Immersive Learning (def) — The use of immersive techniques, including storytelling, theatrical performance, technology and puzzles to develop and exercise skills.
By applying just some of these concepts to a learning initiative or activity has been shown to increase engagement and deliver better outcomes. You can create your own immersive learning activities or go to a provider who can help you select some or even develop them to specifically meet your business priorities.
Think big
As your company scales you should continue to grow your learning and development programme so it aligns with your strategic goals. If you’re interested you can read more about immersive learning programmes.
Our advice is to start a learning and development programme early and you’ll see the benefits it brings multiply as your business grows. Remember the CEO from our story?
Just then Alex opened the door and began striding purposefully towards the bookcase with a dog-eared book in hand. She looked down at the empty shelves and let out a sigh. “Damn it, all the books are still out on loan,” she said. The CEO turned towards her and smiled. “These three just arrived”, they replied, “looks like you get first pick!”
Martyn is a founder of chronyko who have over 10 years experience creating and delivering immersive learning solutions.
