Build a learning culture: Targeted vs. continuous learning

Everyone talks about building a culture of learning. (And we know we’re no exception.) But what does it really mean to get one off the ground? 

We break down continuous and targeted learning and explain how they work together to weave learning into your existing culture.

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When you think about upskilling, the first things that come to mind might be certification challenges or hackathons. But before you can make an impact with these types of initiatives, you need to establish a culture of learning. 

You don’t build culture from one-off training. You build it from sustained efforts over time. That’s why starting with continuous skill development is critical to a learning culture.

Continuous learning means perpetually learning new skills and abilities. In the workplace, it occurs when you integrate learning into your organization’s existing culture, processes, and work environment. Learning becomes a habit that’s part of daily work, not a separate activity. 

You might achieve this by providing access to learning platforms or dedicated learning time. What’s more, you don’t just offer these resources—you actively encourage employees to use them on a regular basis.

Learn more about creating a continuous learning culture.

As the name implies, organizations should implement continuous learning practices on an ongoing basis. They’re crucial to embedding learning into your organization’s culture and fostering an environment that celebrates learning.

Uncover the three key stages of organizational upskilling.

So how do you start integrating continuous learning into your organization’s culture? There are a few different strategies you can try, like creating custom learning paths or learning cohorts. Just don’t try to do everything at once: Pick one to start with, then gradually implement more. 

Here’s one strategy you can start with today: Team meetings. When managers dedicate 5 - 10 minutes to learning, they integrate upskilling into daily work.

To get started, build templates for team or 1:1 meetings. The goal is to create sample resources that help team managers facilitate conversations about learning. This might include prompts like:

• Share a skill assessment

• Share a tip about learning

• Share a time you used a new skill

• Ask lightning round questions like: What are you learning this week? What are you planning to learn next week? How will you apply what you’re learning?

Once you create templates, hold enablement sessions with managers to get them started.

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Once you’ve built a strong learning culture, you can start implementing targeted upskilling. These are your hackathons, certification challenges, and other larger activations.

Targeted learning is focused on building skills for specific projects or outcomes. These are comprehensive strategies with defined start and end dates. They usually tie directly to business objectives. 

For example, maybe your organization is preparing for a cloud migration. You need to get teams up to speed fast, so a cloud certification challenge is one way to build critical cloud knowledge.

Continuous learning consists of “always-on” efforts. Targeted learning, on the other hand, has start and end dates. Because of this, targeted learning strategies work best when you want to change learning behaviors or need to build specific skills for upcoming projects or open roles.

Targeted learning can take many different forms, from new hire onboarding to skill blitzes and certification challenges. Before implementing targeted upskilling strategies, think about your goals. What are you trying to accomplish with upskilling? What resources do you have? 

For example, you might want to improve new hire time to productivity so they can contribute to projects faster. But if you’re the only L&D professional in your organization, you can’t create custom onboarding programs for every new hire. Realistically, then, you might focus on one team or department, like new engineers. 

Learn how to build tech onboarding programs and measure the success of targeted learning with the Tech Upskilling Playbook.

While continuous and targeted learning are powerful on their own, they work best together. You unlock their full power when you use them in tandem to create a learning culture and develop skills aligned to organizational outcomes.

Leading organizations are already operating at this level. By pairing targeted and continuous learning, they’re drawing clear connections between business goals, technology initiatives, and learning and development investments.

Discover more resources to upskill your team.