4 Key Barriers to Effective Workplace Learning (And How to Overcome Them)

Every workplace holds great potential for honing our professional knowledge and skills. In fact, most of our expertise is developed through our engagement with everyday work practices, though we may not be consciously aware.

While more progressive organisations have started to appreciate the importance of fostering effective workplace learning as a strategic function for business success, several barriers tend to limit its effectiveness.

In this article, I will discuss some of these challenges and offer strategies for organisations to overcome them.

Barrier #1: Lack of Learning Readiness

Our attitude towards learning can significantly influence how we choose to engage with opportunities for learning at work. Hence, even if companies are willing to create and provide learning opportunities for their employees, it does not mean all of them will be ready to learn.

Take for instance, an employee may refuse to take on a new and challenging project that has rich learning potential simply because he is unwilling to invest his time and effort to learn. In contrast, others who feel they are already highly experienced and competent in their current work may reject any opportunities for further learning.

Barrier #2: Knowledge Hoarding

Workplaces are competitive in nature. As a result, some employees may be hesitant to share their knowledge and experiences with colleagues, fearing it may affect their standing at work and career progression.

Unfortunately, when employees start to hoard their knowledge, organisations will miss many valuable opportunities for learning, innovation and growth.

Barrier #3: Heavy Workload

Workload is another common factor that could limit the effectiveness of workplace learning.

When employees are constantly overwhelmed by their workload, they will not have time to reflect on their work and explore new work practices, such as reviewing past projects to identify lessons learned and find ways to improve future projects.

Barrier #4: Limited Learning Opportunities

For some organisations, the work environment itself may also limit the development and growth of their employees, even if they have the time and are willing to learn.

For example, in certain businesses, some employees may be assigned to specific sites or projects over an extended period. This type of work arrangement may, however, cause their knowledge and skills to stagnate as they will have limited exposure to other forms of work tasks, processes and problems.

How Can Organisations Overcome These Barriers?

Strategy #1: Co-create Workplace Learning Experiences with Employees

Research has proven that employees are more likely to engage in opportunities for learning when they are involved in shaping their learning experiences.

What organisations can do is to have open conversations with employees about the knowledge and skills they wish to develop, how tasks should be designed and what forms of support they need to learn effectively. 

Strategy #2: Recognise and Reward Knowledge Sharing

Organisations should actively recognise and reward their employees for putting in the effort to share their knowledge and experiences with other colleagues. For instance, companies may organise a 'Knowledge Champions' programme to recognise and reward employees who have contributed towards the development of others in the organisation.

Such initiatives can make employees feel valued for sharing their knowledge and experiences and strengthen the learning culture of organisations.

Strategy #3: Assign ‘Protected’ Time for Learning

At times, it might be challenging to determine the right amount of workload for employees as it is something highly individualised and dependent on contexts.

However, companies may choose to assign protected time for employees to step away from their regular work routines to participate in development activities at the workplace, such as postmortem evaluations, action learning or communities of practice.

Dedicating time for employees to learn can help organisations underscore its importance for the business. As an example, Google has a '20% time' policy that encourages employees to spend 20% of work hours exploring new ideas or pursuing side projects that may benefit the organisation. This initiative has helped the company foster creativity and innovation and led to the launch of products like Gmail, Google News and Google AdSense.

Strategy #4: Implement Job Rotation for Broader Exposure

Finally, studies have also shown that job rotation is an effective way for employees to develop new knowledge and skills.

Organisations that wish to extend opportunities for employees to learn at work may, therefore, periodically rotate some of their employees across different job roles, locations or projects to broaden their exposure to diverse work routines, practices and challenges.

Conclusion

Both organisations and employees play a vital role in fostering a workplace that values continuous learning, innovation and growth.

By understanding the key barriers and applying the strategies discussed, organisations will have a better chance to improve the effectiveness of workplace learning so that employees can better support the business goals.

To learn how to organise your everyday work activities and interactions to form a workplace learning curriculum, please download a copy of our whitepaper through this link: www.wip.global/whitepaper.

About the Author

Darren is a learning strategist and career practitioner passionate about helping organisations and individuals unlock their potential and achieve peak performance. As the Founder of WiP Learning & Consultancy, he partners with visionary leaders to build learning organisations that foster continuous learning, innovation and business transformation.

Darren holds a Master of Learning and Professional Development (Distinction) and a Bachelor of Science (1st Class Honours) in Entrepreneurship and Management.

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