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Katarina Pietrzak
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Continuous learning is a must to face the increasing pressure of change
Digitalisation, electrification, globalisation, green transition. Megatrends are no longer just words in a PowerPoint presentation about the challenges of the future. They are here - and they are putting pressure on communities, governments and businesses to change. The solution lies in a radical strategic skills shift that changes the way we think about learning. And a whole new approach to skills development programmes.
- We know a great deal about how adults learn new skills and competences best, but much of the skills development that is undertaken and available on the market is not based on this knowledge. Instead, it is still based on how schools are organised, ideas about pedagogy and how children learn. This means that the impact of initiatives is very small," says Katarina Pietrzak, a researcher and strategist on lifelong learning issues at RISE.
Megatrends have created a 'perfect storm' of pressure for change
She says the pressure for change has created a perfect storm where the need for lifelong learning and innovation has grown exponentially with each megatrend. So it's not enough to send people on training or measure skills development in terms of courses completed.
"We need to shift the focus from the delivery of knowledge by an instructor to the learning process itself. We are talking about collaborative and collective learning, where we increase the capacity of employees to absorb new information. Only then can we be prepared for the changes our organisations and societies are going through."
Katarina Pietrzak notes that there is no specific model for skills transfer that can be used as a blueprint.
But there are some things that are crucial, whatever model you use:
- Employees must be motivated to learn.
- Learning in a safe environment.
- Everyone is involved in the learning process.
- All this, in turn, requires leadership for learning.
"It is the leader of an organisation who must ensure that there is time for learning, that there are structures for sharing knowledge, and that informal learning is made visible. If organisations are slimmed down so that people never meet, or only a few parts of the organisation are involved in thinking about how learning should be organised, then in practice a structure has been created that discourages learning and rationalises away learning opportunities."
Learning in many organisations will follow the same path as digitalisation
The desire to learn more about the challenges you are already facing
When RISE is part of an organisation's capability transformation, the first thing that comes to mind is joy and anticipation. Katarina Pietrzak describes a desire to learn more about the challenges they are already facing.
"But then the joy is often extinguished by reality. How are we going to keep up? How are we going to fit it all in? That's when leadership has to make learning a priority. Make sure it takes time and that there are incentives for people to develop."
As a role model, Pietrzak points first to the municipality of Skellefteå, which is a co-researcher with RISE in the Learning by RISE project. The municipality has more than 8,000 employees, and because of all the facilities that are being built as a result of electrification, it has to grow in a way that no municipality has ever done before. It requires a whole new way of thinking about things like skills, housing and school organisation. RISE is working with the local government, the local government office and the pre-schools.
"Another example is the family business Gnosjö Automatsvarvning, which has hired a teacher who is responsible for everyone's learning. During the pandemic, they completed a total of 2,000 hours of skills training and grew from 30 to more than 60 employees. Everyone now has one hour of structured learning a week."
"For some it's language development, for others it's mechanical engineering. While other companies ask 'how can learning take place when we are in the middle of delivery', they see that there is no alternative to continuous learning."
Structured learning increases informal learning
When there are well-designed learning opportunities, informal learning also increases. People move from thinking about when they will have time to learn to actually learning. "When we meet, we force ourselves to think about what we have learned and what we need to learn.
Katarina Pietrzak understands that it can be difficult to measure the impact of this kind of skills transfer, but says that you can't know what someone has learned just by measuring the courses they have attended. RISE also has expertise in finding measures for what is difficult to measure quantitatively. RISE also works with a variety of methodologies to support organisations in need of strategic competence transfer.
"In many organisations, learning will go through the same journey as digitalisation. From something that was added on top of regular operations and was a matter for a single unit, digital is now a core activity for everyone. Learning is just a little further back on the same journey," concludes Katarina Pietrzak.
COLLABORATION FOR CONTINUOUS LEARNING - AT ALL LEVELS
When RISE works with an organisation on skills transition, it approaches the issue strategically, tactically and operationally. One example is the work with Skellefteå Municipality. The Municipal Administration acts to manage social change at a strategic level. The Municipal Management Office translates the strategies into actions, which can be described as tactical work. RISE also works with those in the organisation who are to implement the measures operationally.
Working with RISE, the pre-school staff, for example, process learning theories, use tests to measure impact, and move from 'this is what we usually do' to 'this is what we need to do'. In the case of preschools, this might be about how to develop skills in the long term, or about language development.
CONCEPT ADDS LEARNING SKILLS TO OTHER COMPETENCES
The Learning Lab is one of the concepts for learning that has emerged from the work with Learning by RISE and involves adding learning expertise to other expertise. In a Learning Lab, people from all relevant sectors come together with each other and with RISE's various researchers and experts to experiment and test how organisational learning can be strengthened. Several Learning Labs are now planned on different topics, where expertise on how we learn best is added to the subject to be taught.
