Promoting Workplace Learning: Challenges and Pitfalls

The promotion of well-being in organizations is inextricably linked to creating a culture in which people feel valued and can see their worth acknowledged in workplaces which provide opportunities for people to grow and develop. Of course, learning is something undertaken by individuals, but how organizations manage, encourage and ultimately capture the fruits of that process can either hinder or encourage workplace learning. There is something vaguely odd about the concept that an organization can have the adjective ‘learning’ attached to it, as a complex arrangement of buildings, people, machinery or whatever is surely unable to ‘learn’. But workplaces are, of course, essentially the sum of the people working there and this chapter will contend that organizations can be places of genuine learning, but need to revisit the thinking behind the concept if they are not only to maximize the enormous potential people have to offer, but also provide workplaces where people feel valued and where their sense of belonging is enhanced. The benefits of a happier workforce have been recognized by David Cameron (2006) who has advocated the drive to ‘ethical work’ in which it is possible to have workplaces which are highly productive, but which are also supportive of well-being. One of the reasons for his concern is that recent evidence suggests that, for many people, workplaces are not healthy places to be.