Learning Ecosystem at a glance:
its importance in the enterprise segment

Organizations grow when their people are improving. Just like in an ecological system, what keeps it alive is the organisms’ constant movement and how they adapt to the changes around them. One’s growth impacts the others, as its demise could also influence everyone.

In the enterprise context, it revolves around a system sanctioned by learning, or simply, as it is now called in the corporate segment, learning ecosystem. Like natural ecosystems, a learning ecosystem has inputs, throughputs, and outputs operating in open exchanges. It is a system seamlessly flowing in a cycle of knowledge being put in, shared, and utilized properly to produce desired results such as improvement and growth. 

Such improvement and growth stem from learning, in which development begins. Employees become more motivated and powerful when they feel growth and sense how it directly affects the overall success of their company. The opposite of which, in turn, could mean failure for the organization.  

In a 2018 research compiled by Global Industry Analyst Josh Bersin, he revealed how learning inside the constraint of a corporate structure begets positive impact, particularly to the employees themselves. “Those who spend time at work learning are 47 percent less likely to be stressed, 39 percent more likely to feel productive and successful, 2 percent more ready to take on additional responsibilities, and 21 percent more likely to feel confident and happy. And the more you learn, the happier [they] become,” it outlines.

What has shed light on newborn importance to workplace learning and development are the unbridled changes in the innovation segment. In a 2017 report by Fosway Group, 67 percent of the changes in work environments have been brought about by the leaders’ adherence to learning and having their employees become part of this drive.  Powered by market disruption and continuous improvement in technology, the entire global corporate landscape has already been altered for the better.

As shelf-life for skills constricts, organizations realize that learning must be injected not only into their policies and operations but also mainly to their culture to keep up with these changes and to stay in the game. Thus, the creation of a learning ecosystem becomes a necessity.

But this is not just about empowering the employees, the effectuality of a learning ecosystem begins with the leaders’ adherence to it. “High-growth individuals who embrace new learning make the organization smarter and contribute to its growth, but they can’t do it alone. They need their managers to have a reciprocal interest in individual growth and create a learning ecosystem to foster it,” Whitney Johnson of Harvard Business Review writes in her article emphasizing the importance of such a system in the corporate setting.

The trend now is that organization leaders are willingly exposing themselves and their employees to challenging opportunities lest their knowledge of their industry and their employees’ roles become stale or their skill stagnate.

A learning ecosystem is designed to enhance and support learning within the organization to empower its leaders and employees. It may come in all forms of improvement-focused methods, including those that happen outside the corporate training spectrum. It can be through software wherein learners use to facilitate learning. It could also come in the form of an application that contains industry-centric knowledge and information, or a platform on which learning is managed according to the organization’s needs.

The presence of learning methodologies in an organization enables the creation of an energetic and inspired community of employees and learners. It bridges generational gap, which results in a more dynamic relationship among employees. Since everyone learns from each other from a single source tailor-fit from the organization’s existing culture, learning differences are easily blurred out.

Learning ecosystem is essential in leveraging multiple personal capabilities that leverage corporate capabilities. This sense of community helps drive the broader strategic objectives of a corporation.

In this age of interconnected world, it is important that organizations themselves encourage learning within their constraints. The proper distribution and utilization of knowledge may break or make its longevity, competitiveness, and relevance—thus, its future and success.