Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning

Now, some of employees’ openness to informal learning might depend on their industries or functional areas, Talanca said. At Novartis, the scientific research groups often share ideas and information, while the sales organization is not as receptive to collaboration.

“We believe that that’s mainly because, in the sales organizations, sales representatives in effect compete against each other, so there’s not incentive for them to share,” Talanca said. “But research is a very collaborative, focused effort where you have significantly large teams trying to bring the drug to market. And that informal learning really is a big part of how those teams operate and how they become successful.”

Regardless of these functional differences, however, organizations should strive to inspire workers to help themselves accomplish their goals.

“Management has to recognize that the top-down days are over,” Cross said.

Another key part of fostering successful informal learning involves executive-level buy-in. Talanca said the C-suite must demonstrate to employees that sharing ideas and working together is not only acceptable, but it is encouraged.

Once an appropriate company culture is in place and management is on-board, organizations then must provide tools to facilitate informal learning among employees.

Lambert categorized these knowledge-sharing tools into three distinct areas: The first set of tools refers to “those tools that organize the informal learning process,” he said. In other words, the internal communities of practice and online discussion forums “give [employees] the ability to filter and understand some of the informal learning opportunities that are available to them.”

The second set refers to such Web 2.0 tools as blogs, wikis and Web conferencing, which can be incredibly useful in keeping content up-to-date, especially in today’s fast-paced world, Lambert said.

The third group “would be those tools that allow people to build communities, find experts and create experts” — this includes social networking, he said. “This can be the idea of allowing people to self-designate as experts in a particular topic and, importantly, allowing other people to rate them. [And a user] can create a network of [his] go-to people, [his] personal network.”