Dive Brief:

• Under the belief that employees are owners of their own learning, the L&D team at Spotify calls themselves The GreenHouse Team, responsible for creating an environment where learning is nurtured yet allows employees (gardeners) to take charge of what they want to learn (grow), it explained in a recent blog post.
• Like a community garden, employees are expected to learn from and teach one another. L&D supports peer-to-peer learning where employees are in charge of driving their personal development, as well as the development of their colleagues.
• To provide the seeds for learning, Spotify deploys an online platform for employees to share knowledge, create communities and post any type of learning material they think would be beneficial to their fellow “growers.” It believes the social aspect builds trust that the materials offered will be relevant, because others found them beneficial, and gives employees ownership of their learning (growing) path.

Dive Insight:

The traditional classroom-type training paradigm has quickly been replaced at many companies by a less rigid, more responsive means of upskilling and training employees. Employees are looking for content that is relevant to the work they’re performing, delivered in real time so they can apply their education immediately. When application to the job is clear and use of the material is instantly beneficial, learning retention tends to be higher.

By allowing employees to share content they find relevant to their daily work, coworkers may be more easily able to find learning materials quickly that easily answers their questions. This type of shared learning may be even more relevant for remote workers, who aren't always in the midst of in-office initiatives.

The more social the training processes and community, the better, research has revealed. Employees are more apt to complete learning modules if peers and colleagues are interacting — good news for companies that are committed to upskilling and training. Unfortunately, some reports estimate that up to one-third of U.S. workers undertook no training or upskilling at all in the past year.