HRD conference Love of learning

On Valentine's Day, our colleagues Heleen and Deborah attended the congress "Love of Learning," an HRD congress on learning in organizations. From science, philosophy and technology the trends and developments in the field of learning were explored. Not everyone learns in the same way and not everyone enjoys learning equally. How do you tackle this in your organization? We tell you more about the content of the day and what we learned from it.

The main issue of the day was: how do we make people fall in love with learning so that they want to continue learning for life? Before there is love, people must first fall in love, Robert-Jan Simons stated during the opening session. But how do you do that? A number of plenary sessions and workshops tried to find an answer to this question from different angles. Because there are many ways to make people like learning. And that is important if we want employees to keep developing to remain employable.

Brain, experts and love - Marian Slob

During the second plenary session, Marian Slob made the connection between brain science and love. Because although we know a lot about the brain and how people learn, these are general truths that ignore individual differences. That is why it is important to continue to look at others with a loving eye. One particular learning solution need not soak in everyone in the organization. How do you deal with that? So our knowledge, the way we offer it and the way we expect people to learn and interact with it can become a normative framework. And people who don't meet the norm then quickly seem to be left out.

So as people and as an organization, keep looking carefully at what tools you are using. Keep trying to reshape them and keep giving yourself and others opportunities. Keep seeing potential and space, because we can have all the knowledge in the world, but each person is still unique. And it is always a unique person with whom you are dealing in your work.

Learning in times of change - Katelijn Nijsmans

Katelijn Nijsmans looked at learning with us from the perspective of brain science in one of the sessions. What does an individual need for lifelong learning within an organization? Our brain is built to avoid danger as much as possible and to seek reward as much as possible. When you come face to face with a tiger, a biological stress response occurs that makes you want to flee to get to safety. This survival reaction is so paralyzing that there is little room for other thoughts.

Fortunately, you don't encounter tigers at work, but safety can be compromised in other ways that make learning or change nearly impossible or at least meet resistance. Consider the sudden change of tasks, rules surrounding your work that keep changing, a supervisor who often snaps at you, or uncertainty about your contract. These situations can cause everyone to feel unsafe. By providing clarity, for example, you remove the threat. You can also create safety by providing a quiet work environment. Give an employee time to learn. In this way you create a safe environment in which your employees are not only able to learn, but above all want to learn. Because only then can you develop further as an employee and as a company.

Drawing power for maximum learning impact - Irene Kroon

This workshop was about amplifying your story through drawings. Whether you are giving a presentation, leading a meeting or creating a training: drawings increase the impact. 'But I can't draw at all,' you may think. And while that may be true, with the simple steps of the drawing alphabet, you can do more than you think. With a circle, square, triangle and some lines you can draw most things. It all comes down to daring, doing and perseverance. And remember that a picture does not have to be perfect. It even turns out that imperfect pictures are more effective, by up to 29%. They stick better because the human brain is used to wanting to finish that which is not perfect. So a picture like this makes you think about it longer. And that is what you want when people learn something. So more drawings, just with the word. Also nice for animations in our e-learning! So we are going to experiment more with that in the near future.