What is your learning day ?

Did you know that your company probably has a “learning day”?

At Collegial we did some research and realized that a clear majority, almost 75%, of our customers have a learning day, that is, a specific weekday when the employees do learning. This without the company itself having decided or communicated a specific day when learning is encouraged, the “learning day” being just an emergent behavior in the company. Without planning or decisions, one specific weekday becomes the default day for learning activities.

The Data

Let's have a look at what we found. Which weekday is the learning day for our customers?

As we can see, 55% of our customers seem to learn towards the end of the week, and no customer has Wednesdays as their learning day. We should also note that 27% of our customers have a non-specific day as a learning day, where the learning is spread out evenly over the week or where the learning day shifts from week to week.

An example

Let's have a closer look at the pattern of what a learning week can look like. As an example, we can show our own learning at Collegial, which has this consistent pattern week over week. 

How you can use the learning day

• Understand your learning day
  Figure out when your learning day is, even if you don’t think there is one since there is no official decision. Have a look at your data, you might be surprised and may find other interesting patterns.
• Use it for timing communication
  Time your communication on learning based on your learning days, for example if you have a smaller bump Monday with a learning day Friday, use the Monday for communication.
• Use it for timing releases
  Time the release of new learning content with the learning day. You have the best chance of getting new learning traction if you time it correctly. That is, if Thursday is your learning day, new content should go out on Thursdays for maximum effect.
• Protect the learning day!
  Ensure that the learners have enough time on the learning day to keep learning, since you have a captive audience on that day. Ensure that the learning day does not get diluted. Encourage less meetings and maybe even protect a time slot on the learning day. Communicate this to your managers as well.
• and take all this with a grain of salt!
  Or rather, understand that our findings only cover formal learning. The data we’ve captured mostly covers formal learning and we should be aware that this might not apply to informal learning, which still is the majority of learning and just as important as formal learning.