Fostering Inclusive Learning Opportunities

Learning within the workplace should be as natural as having your morning tea or coffee.

It should never be a chore or fixed to one learning style. It should be flexible, adaptable and enjoyable. We all learn in different ways, and an inclusive learning culture should empower individuals to learn at a pace and in a way that best suits them.

As Vice President of Talent and Development at AstraZeneca, it’s important to me that every one of our 80,000 global employees have what they need to be able to learn and grow every day. It’s relatively easy to give people access to the right technology and tools to learn but creating an inclusive learning environment where everyone feels empowered to drive their own development is a bit more complicated.

Fostering the right environment for learning

The most engaging learning experiences come when we have easy access to meaningful, relevant content in a psychologically safe environment. Some people confuse psychological safety with being comfortable, but I think it’s actually the opposite. It’s about being able to be vulnerable, to take smart risks and develop our resilience. Learning opportunities, whether they are formal or informal, help people to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zone and this so often stems from experimenting, asking questions, and even from failure.

Inclusiveness is key to a learning culture’s success, and there’s a clear link between psychological safety and learning. Timothy Clark references four key components in his framework of psychological safety; it’s about feeling (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to challenge the status quo, all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalised, or punished in some way.

When you feel included, safe to learn, confident to contribute and able to speak your mind, you’re more likely to engage in the learning process. That might manifest in asking your manager about development opportunities you want or need, or putting your hand up for that new project, secondment, or mentoring experience. Learning must be accessible and relevant to all, so it’s important to ensure a sense of belonging and a shared vision. Ultimately, people can achieve more when they feel respected and are able to bring the most authentic version of themselves to work.

Creating an inclusive learning culture

An inclusive learning culture should encourage, facilitate and support individuals in their learning journey so that they can strive to be their best selves and reach their goals. Creating this environment can be a challenge, but I’m proud of the learning offerings and eco-system we’ve built at AstraZeneca. We have a wide variety of development programmes and mentoring schemes, which are accessible from any device to meet employee needs.

We work hard every day to foster a culture of lifelong learning – one that encourages the behaviours that fuel growth and makes learning as accessible as possible. At AstraZeneca, we encourage our people to explore using the 3E’s (Education, Exposure, Experience) to shape and inform their development approaches and build daily learning habits. Every business needs to build its own unique learning culture, but fundamentally it needs to deliver development opportunities to every employee, no matter their job role, background, existing skills, or experience.

For me, it boils down to these three elements:

• Do employees feel empowered to take control of their own development?
• Do employees feel safe to speak their mind, take informed risks and express their needs or desires for their growth?
• Do employees feel able to help others achieve their goals?

We look for people with curious minds, creative ideas and a thirst for knowledge. People who are ready to learn from their colleagues who might have different experiences or skills to their own. Embracing and celebrating our differences allows us to view things from an alternative perspective and learn from each other, so we can reach our full potential – that’s how an inclusive culture facilitates growth.

The role of leadership in learning

The importance placed on inclusive leadership plays a key role in how we help people to reach their full potential. Managers and leaders have a fundamental role to play in creating psychologically safe and inclusive learning environments within the workplace, as well as encouraging the behaviours that are necessary for lifelong learning. We can only make the most of individual strengths and skills when leaders value, seek out and leverage differences.

One of the key areas we have focused on at AstraZeneca is developing coaching and feedforward skills across our organisation, which help to deepen the environment needed for psychological safety and building individuals’ strengths’. We have also evolved our performance development approach, moving from annual to quarterly check-ins to allow more frequent conversations about personal development that will provide stretch and growth for our teams. More regular, quality conversations mean that employees can have open discussions with their managers about their evolving career goals to get honest feedforward in real-time, focusing on their strengths and areas for improvement.

Everyone has the potential to be a better version of themselves and should be able to learn something new every day whilst contributing towards their organisation’s purpose – in our case, pushing the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing medicines to patients and striving towards their own individual goals.