Hattie, Author at Guider

Building Bridges: Uniting Formal and Informal Learning Through Collaboration and Mentorship

This week, Guider teamed up with 360 Learning to delve into the pivotal role of mentorship and feedback loops in corporate learning.

360Learning CLO, David James and our CEO & Founder, Nick Ross, shared their learning and development expertise and how organisations can harness the power of collaborative learning and mentorship.

Here, we’ll share some of the top insights that will transform your approach to employee development and business growth:

Unlocking the Potential of Continuous Learning
The Synergy Between Mentorship and Feedback Loops
The Importance of Formalising Informal Learning

About 360Learning

Our partner, an innovative online learning platform, empowers organisations to design, deliver, and track learning experiences and engaging training courses. Having revolutionised employee upskilling for more than 1700 L&D teams, 360Learning assist businesses looking to enhance employee development and foster a culture of continuous learning.

About Guider

At Guider, we are on a mission to make it easy for enterprises to establish, expand and monitor mentoring and peer-learning programs, enabling organisations to reach their L&D, retention and DE&I goals. Employees are matched based on chosen skills for self-service mentoring, providing a voice and giving the choice to mentees.

Unlocking the Potential of Continuous Learning

David shared insights from his time as L&D specialist at Disney, leading with a stand-out statistic that only 14% of learners see real value in the conventional annual training day, yet 63% thrive through continuous informal learning.

Continuous informal learning occurs in many forms, such as peer learning through mentoring or coaching, collaboration in breakout rooms, and learning in the flow of work. This aptly reflects our knowledge that mentoring increases employee well-being; and that those with a mentor are happier than those without.

These findings underline the need for businesses to democratise learning, and give the power to employees to choose when and what they learn, also known as a bottom-up learning approach.

Top-down and Bottom-up Learning Techniques (360Learning)

The Synergy Between Mentorship and Feedback Loops

Some of the greatest world leaders have had mentors (Forbes), and research shows that 89% of those who have been mentored will go on to mentor others.

So it goes without saying that mentorship is a powerful tool for the creation of feedback loops. This refers to facilitating effective, self-sustaining learning environments that enable and encourage your employees to learn from one another – a ‘pay it forward’ attitude.

This poses the question; why aren’t businesses harnessing the power of mentoring and why aren’t they tracking it?

The Importance of Formalising Informal Learning

As practices occur between peers sporadically and informally, organisations lack visibility of the effects, unable to monitor the positive impacts had on wider organisational goals.

Nick shared his expertise, highlighting the need for businesses to establish a formal approach to mentoring and collaborative learning, providing some staggering statistics in the benefits of mentoring:

70% of Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs.
Businesses with an established mentoring solution experienced 84% growth.
Businesses with mentoring solutions had an impressive 72% increase in productivity.
In females and minority groups, retention and promotion rates measure 38% for those with a mentor, verses only 15% for those without.

Using mentorship programs such as Guider provides a simplified, scalable way to formalise collaborative learning that keeps users engaged. We provide real-time data insights tailored to individual and industry requirements and goals.

Where do your employees look for upskilling or peer learning?

If you’d like to learn more, speak to an expert today.

Additional resources

About Learning Live
Top 5 Challenges Faced by Learning Development Leaders
Our Highlights
Peer-to-peer Learning to Bridge the Gap

Learning Live, hosted by the LPI, attracted some of the world’s best Learning and Development leaders to hear from guest speakers such as Gary Neville, Kelsey Kates, Head of Live Learning Experiences at Google, and Pashini Reddy, Head of Learning at KPMG Academy.

Topics covered ‘neuroscience behind L&D tech’ to ‘Metaverse’s new dimensions and impacts on digital learning’.

Organisers ensured to tailor the agenda to today’s landscape by asking Head of Learning attendees about their current challenges, outlined below.

Top 5 Challenges Faced by Learning Development Leaders:

AI and learning in the flow of work
Building an organisational learning culture
Supporting learning in a hybrid workforce
Improving mental health and wellbeing
Measuring ROI and learning impact

This exclusive event was brimming with take-home messages and actionable next steps. Here are our favourites:

Our Highlights

Knowledge is highly personal, so AI must facilitate learning, without removing ownership of the learning process from the individual.
New technology is the solution for businesses to achieve and monitor organisational objectives; short and long-term.
Hybrid workforces require embedded systems that encourage and incentivise human interaction – even virtually!
Businesses need to practise active listening. New technology should give employees a voice and create open discussions to improve well-being, belonging and employee satisfaction.
Learn your baseline. To measure success, businesses need to be sharp in knowing their current stats; retention rates, loss of talent, and demographics across leadership roles.

Peer-to-peer Learning to Bridge the Gap

Self-directed learning enables employees to take charge of their education, avoiding top-down, passive teaching and switching to conversational and constructive goal setting between learner and guide.

Businesses should encourage peer-to-peer learning approaches such as mentoring, coaching and sponsorship to promote meaningful connections, especially in hybrid or remote work environments.

Creating connections based on chosen skills can have an immense personal impact on both mentor and mentee. However, peer learning strategies can and should provide a practical framework to solve over-arching organisational goals.

Guider offers a centralised tool for peer learning with completely customisable programs to align with your L&D and DE&I goals.

If you are looking to learn more about how mentoring can benefit your organisation, speak to an expert today to find the perfect program for you.