Well-trained employees are essential for long-term business success. They make up the company and should also be a focus in further education. A popular method you might remember from school is learning partnerships. These also offer some internal advantages within the company. Find out now how you can implement learning partnerships in your company!
Self-confidence, personal responsibility, leadership behavior – all soft skills that make employees valuable to companies. To foster such skills, it is essential to continue educating employees. Therefore, you should provide employees the opportunity to form learning partnerships – this motivates them to learn in their daily work!
What characterizes a good learning partnership?
Learning partners exist in many areas. Whether at university, during school, or in the company – the principle is the same. A learning partnership can consist of several participants: as a duet or as a whole group – regardless of the constellation, partners exchange knowledge and experiences. Ideally, this means that experts share their expertise with each other and complement one another. Learning partners don’t even have to be in the same location. Methods like blended learning or Zoom calls allow professional knowledge to be imparted digitally!
For the human brain, there is hardly a better method than learning together. The learning material not only stays in memory better, but you also quickly realize what you have not yet understood.
According to a statistic, people learn around 70% by explaining it to someone else.
3 Scenarios for Learning Partnerships
For the concept of the learning partnership to succeed in your company, we present three scenarios on how learning partnerships can be implemented.
Tip: Learning partnerships work anytime and anywhere! In some constellations you need more technical support, in others less. The main thing is that all parties involved can learn something in the end!
Scenario 1: On-site Learning Partnerships in the Company
To promote personal exchange between learning partners directly in the company, all parties involved should agree on a joint meeting. Here, personal conversation is the focus and enables learning partners face-to-face learning. Learners talk casually about experiences and competencies. For this reason, the learning progress on-site is particularly visible: On the one hand, you can avoid communication difficulties (due to a lack of facial expressions and gestures) in a personal conversation. Additionally, it is easier to react quickly to spontaneous changes or new information. For example, due to an acute problem.
To document learning outcomes, it is always beneficial for learning partners to jointly document their learning progress. A shared online platform or a shared document supports the learning partnership. In this scenario, learning partners often act more spontaneously and independently of a strict training plan. This offers the advantage that acute problems can be quickly addressed.
Our blink.it Example: The Marketing Discussion Marketplace
We meet once a month in the marketing team, and everyone has the opportunity to bring up a specific topic or concern. When acute problems arise, we sit down together and try to solve them. This way, there is no need for a separate meeting, and we learn directly in the situation :)
Scenario 2: Blended Learning Partnership
Blended learning complements the learning partnership in your company! The combination of in-person and online learning units helps partners to consolidate what they have learned. This way, both partners can work on problems in person and review the documented results afterward through quizzes!
As an HR professional, you are also called upon here, as your role is to guide this learning process! Important knowledge content should be secured to support learners in the learning partnership. It is helpful if the online sessions are planned to build on the face-to-face learning units, giving partners the opportunity to deepen their knowledge further.
Scenario 3: Learning in Tandem – Learning by Doing
What distinguishes the learning partnership from other forms of learning? Learning with and from each other! For example, in a tandem: You probably know the learning tandem from language learning. Here, two partners learn a language together by going through a dialogue and practicing pronunciation in the first step. Both learners are also teachers, as they control each other and view a situation from different perspectives – this method is therefore so efficient! Learning partners can query and convey knowledge to one another.
As an HR professional, your influence is less on the learning itself in this constellation, but you accompany the learning process quietly. The method is most effective when partners exchange knowledge independently of specifications and can focus on an acute problem.
Advantages of Learning Partnerships for Employees and Companies
Cooperative learning offers more than just exchange between learning partners. Well-trained employees not only have a higher sense of responsibility but also work independently and autonomously. This motivates! Activities that you can do well are certainly more enjoyable than those in which there is a risk of failure.
Motivation and fun at work reflect in positive results. This benefits not only the customers but also the company itself. Because satisfied customers lead to the financial success of the company. Additionally, the company's image is positively influenced – all through employee training in the form of learning partners! Employees who are less tech-savvy also have a contact person to support them. Thus, both learning partners can share their know-how and benefit from it! How this happens exactly will be revealed in the next week in the second part of our learning partner series.
You see, there are various ways to implement learning partnerships. You also know the advantages that mutual learning among employees can bring. How you as an HR professional can support learning partnerships will be explained in the next blog article! To not miss it, you should subscribe to our blog for free.
