Be an Advocate for Informal Learning

Being a great mentor includes fostering an environment that values and nurtures learning. This means advocating informal learning. And there are myriad ways to make learning a natural part of the work world.

A major consulting firm found that professional reading among employees increased when the firm installed magazine racks with professional journals in the lavatories. The firm’s president discovered that surprisingly few journals were absent-mindedly removed, and employees began contributing their own copies of journals to which the firm did not subscribe. Comments like “Did you read that article about …?” were frequently interjected in staff meetings, which further reinforced the amount of informal learning through journal reading.

Company magazines, newsletters, and bulletin boards can also be a good source of learning for employees. Let your protégé know about valuable Internet links to tag as favorites for continuous learning. An insurance company found the most popular articles in its company magazine were interviews with executives, managers, and employees dealing with what their area was engaged in at the time. Done with clever layout and graphics, “to all employees” media can serve as a valuable but inexpensive way of fostering employee learning. The unit or company intranet can likewise be a great boon to learning.

Another approach to informal learning is cross-unit sharing. A large research and development company effectively employed this process. Once a month a work group met for breakfast with a group from a different part of the company. People downlink were provided access via the company intranet. Each unit would take thirty minutes to describe their function and current projects. The remaining thirty minutes was devoted to informal conversation among the work groups in a cocktail-party fashion. The company found the monthly hour-and-a-half breakfast gathering an effective way of increasing employee breadth and decreasing interunit conflict. A bank used a similar arrangement but added a tour of the respective work areas to the cross-unit sharing process. Allotting staff meeting time for people to report on what was learned at a major conference or following the completion of a workshop or course signals that learning is valued.

Learning that ends when the protégé bids adieu to the mentor is likely retained only until the protégé reaches the elevator. Given the shaky tentativeness of new learning, it is up to the mentor to come up with ways to help shelter, support, and nurture it until it “takes.” Knowing how to eliminate barriers and erect supports to buttress the learner until habits are cemented and competencies are hardwired can go a long way to help the learning-transfer process for your protégé. Most important is to create a climate that prizes not only ongoing learning but also risk taking in the protégé’s trying out new knowledge and skills back on the job.