Social responsibility 70% practical application 20% dialogue with others 10% formal training Knowledge and learning To continue to grow as a company, we must prioritise the continuing professional development of our employees. This means maintaining our internal training management system as a platform for the professional and personal development of every individual staff member; but more importantly, it means focusing on our knowledge management strategy, since this underpins the way we organise, create, use and share knowledge within our organisation. In order to continually improve our knowledge management, we ask ourselves the following questions: – How do I identify existing knowledge? – How can I build on and expand this knowledge? – How can I secure, share, analyse and organise this knowledge? – How can we use this knowledge to benefit our business? – How do we best use this knowledge in practice in our everyday activities? The fundamental aim of effective knowledge management is to have ‘the right information in the right place at the right time’. If we can achieve this, we go a long way to keeping our business competitive and maintaining our position as an attractive employer. Likewise, alongside effective knowledge management, a constructive learning strategy plays an important role in our business’ success. The Blum approach to learning can be summarised as follows: “I learn while working and work while learning.” This motto underlines both our vision for the learning process and our expectation that our employees take responsibility for their own learning. For us, learning and development are part of the same process. In our everyday work, we all have opportunities to learn and, in doing so, we continue to develop both as people and professionals. Often this learning happens without us even noticing through our interactions with others; other times we may choose to take formal training to develop specific personal or professional skills. The benefits of learning on the job are often underestimated, but in fact this approach has a much greater impact than formal training. If employees are willing to take responsibility for their own development and seek out opportunities to exchange knowledge with others – either in person or through digital channels – then learning and working go hand in hand. All these on-the-job interactions help employees to identify their strengths and weaknesses and develop their individual skills, which ultimately benefits our business. In fact, as the following diagram shows, around 70% of learning occurs through practical application, i.e. on the job; dialogue and interactions with colleagues account for another 20% and only around 10% can be attributed to formal training. 68 © Copyright by Blum
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