David Jennings

What are the circumstances which help people in organisations to learn, and what are the circumstances that block or hinder learning? These are the factors that determine learning climate, and are addressed first in this paper.

There is a second concept - the "learning organisation" - which follows on from the learning climate idea. A learning organisation is one where the total learning is more than just the sum of what individuals have learnt on their own. Learning is more collective and is embedded in the way the organisation changes itself to meet the changing needs of its environment.

This paper is based on work done in the Yorkshire and Humberside region, mostly in the Employment Service. Eight hundred statements made by junior management and clerical staff in structured interviews were analysed to pick out common threads. These threads were then woven back into a questionnaire which was circulated, and is currently being analysed to generate a series of scales for measuring each of the factors which contribute to learning climate.

The statements made about helps and hindrances to learning were categorised into three broad groups:

• Management - referring to how the individual's line manager, or the prevailing management style in the workplace affected their learning and development
  
• Workteam - referring to how everyone else that the individual was in regular contact with at work affected their learning and development
  
• Systems and organisation - referring to how the requirements of the job or the way the job or premises were organised affected learning and development.
  

To draw more practical findings out of these groups, the statements were re-analysed. The factors and aspects of the work environment which interviewees said had supported their learning are listed in Annex 1. Many of these included statements referring to managers, teams and systems.

Many of the factors listed in Annex 1 overlap with the characteristics of the "well-designed job" in general (as identified by previous psychological research), so the measures of learning climate may be a good indicator of the overall "health" of an organisation.

However, one important issue which is specific to learning is that the way people described their own learning preferences supported the idea that each individual has a preferred style of learning. Some talked about being able to sit and watch others do a task, others about having time to think things through, others about being able to try things out and practise, and others about being able to see their job as a whole rather than a series of unrelated tasks.

This means that if a work environment is to support the learning of all its members, then there must be a range of learning methods and opportunities available to suit all needs.

Some of the interview comments in each of the categories provide a useful list of Do's and Don't's which - with top management support and commitment - could form the basis of Good Practice guidance. See Annex 2 for an example.

Early work on the learning climate questionnaire results suggests that it may be possible to quantify the components of learning climate.

The "learning organisation" idea is a complex one because it is bound up with so many other organisational issues.

The crux of the concept of the learning organisation is in what happens as a result of all that the individuals have learnt in their interactions with the environment. If the organisation remains essentially the same, with the same responses to situations as in the past, then the organisation has not learnt. If it uses the collective learning of its members and transforms as a result, so that its reactions to situations in the future are different, then it has "learned".

There is potentially a dynamic relationship between the organisations learning and that of the individuals within it. As individuals learn, they act as agents for organisational change; as the organisation learns it acts as an agent for individual change. The organisation provides the individual with an environment which affects their learning in two related ways. Firstly, the environment itself is a stimulus to learn, so a changing environment offers new learning possibilities. Secondly, the environment can vary in the degree to which it facilitates or hinders individual learning. This relationship can be summarised by the cycle shown below.

To become a "learning organisation", the organisation must be willing and able to change as a result of individual learning and for most, this is the difficult part.

• Individuals must be allowed some flexibility in what they do and how they go about it
• The organisations politics and structure must allow change to happen in response to individuals' actions. This implies that individuals have the freedom to question and publicly discuss issues and that they also have some say in what happens.
  
• The organisation must be willing to seek and take note of feedback from its environment by asking questions of the people and organisations it deals with. It should also be remembered that, like an individual, an organisation can purposefully change its environment. To do this, it first needs to get to know about its environment by seeking information on and from it.
  
• Individuals must be allowed to think things through for themselves and arrive at their own conclusions rather than being told what to think. This implies that there is likely to be debate, disagreement and possibly conflict. This must be tolerated and worked through constructively so that something can be learned from it.
  

These characteristics have a central theme of (encouraging) questioning. Thus the definition of a learning organisation given in an Open University management course script is an organisation "in which everyone cares enough to ask the questions they see". This not only incorporates the idea that the culture of the learning organisation is one in which questioning is the norm but also the idea that this is closely related to commitment to the organisation.

Annex 1

Sense of purpose

• A feeling of "working towards common goals" and of knowing what is expected both from an individual and a team point of view

Autonomy

• Some degree of control over how they organise their work and learning
• Opportunities to make decisions and initiate action for themselves

Consultation

• Being informed and involved in decisions which affect them
• Opportunities to express their views and having their views valued and taken into account
• Being encouraged to generate ideas for change
  
• Shared problem solving within the team
  
• People know that their ideas and views will be taken seriously and acted on where possible rather than only sought as a "token" consultation exercise

Relationships

• Managers and other colleagues who are supportive, caring and sharing and willing to help each other out
• People "get on" with each other
• If something goes wrong, people are not made to feel bad about it
• Potential conflict is resolved

Individuality

• Each individual's strengths are recognised and used
  
• Different needs are accepted and catered for, both long term ones, such as differing preferred ways of learning and working, and short term ones such as accepting when a colleague is having an "off day"

Feedback and rewards

• Short term feedback such as having mistakes pointed out
• Long term feedback such as regular reviews of progress - a feeling that manager and colleagues are interested in and value them and their work
• Rewards such as thanks, praise and recognition for good work, at the time rather than left to annual performance reviews.
• Being able to see some results from the job

Information

• Ready access to information, both written and verbal
• Effective systems for sharing information, knowing who to ask or where to look
• Written instructions clear and up-to-date
• Everyone willing to share the information they have

Opportunities and resources

• Availability of opportunities to learn and develop . This involves "extra" developmental opportunities such as project work, and also "everyday" learning opportunities such as being able to go and sit somewhere quiet to work through difficult tasks, or having the chance to practice new tasks or try out new ideas
• Availability of resources, such as someone to answer questions, access to the "tools" needed to do the job
• Formal training courses which come at the right time and are relevant to the job.
• Opportunities to discuss training needs before courses and consolidate training after them

Time

• Time to take advantage of opportunities and to learn effectively rather than "muddle through"
• Time to think, experiment, practice, to find out how the job fits in with other people's jobs
• Time to help each other out
• Time to talk things through with one's line manager or other team members

Premises

• Comfortable work environment with enough space to do the job properly and arranged so that individuals are not isolated from others
  

About Managers

it helps if

• our manager recognises that we all have different ways of doing things
• the manager here values people's strengths and tries to use them
• my supervisor sees my development needs as important
• my manager understands the problems of my job and has realistic expectations of me
• my manager acknowledges that sometimes I know more about my job than she does
• my supervisor knows how I prefer to learn new tasks

it hinders if

• I am sometimes put under pressure to do things which are particularly difficult for me personally
• the manager held preconceived ideas about some individuals' capabilities
• anything that didn't match her ideas about how the job should be done was wrong

About the Team

it helps if

• we all accept and make allowances for each other's difficulties
• less able team members are helped by others
• we all know enough about each other's jobs to know who is the best person to ask about a particular query
• I am not expected to be expert straight away when learning something new
• doing something different was not seen as a mistake, but as my way of doing it

About Systems

it helps if

• I can work at my own speed
• when I am learning something new I can sit with someone else for as long as I feel I need to

it hinders if

• there is nothing in my job to stretch my abilities

Copyright © David Jennings