There's No Present Like the Time: How 3 Companies Set Aside Time for Learning

Consider the typical workday: Employees start with the best intentions, hoping they can set aside 20 minutes for learning, only to be bombarded by email, Teams messages, and we-need-it-by-yesterday deadlines. By the end of the day, the only thing they want to learn is where to order a pizza. 

Don’t get us wrong, workers value learning. According to Glint research, 94% of employees see the benefit of making time for learning, even though only 49% make the time to do it. And LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report has found that three of the top five reasons people look for new jobs are because they want more chances to stretch, grow, and develop new skills. 

It’s finding the time that’s often the problem. 

Some companies, however, are making learning a priority by slotting it into the calendar (or even redefining what learning time means). We spoke to three of them — and one skeptic — to get an idea of how companies can support employees’ growth and development by giving them the gift of time. 

Suffolk Construction: Ensuring safety and standards with constant learning 

For Boston-based Suffolk Construction, learning isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s essential. It helps ensure that employees stay current with the latest technology, building techniques, and safety regulations needed to finish big projects like skyscrapers, apartment buildings, hospitals, and airports. That’s why Suffolk prioritizes learning for its 2,600 employees across the United States.   

An employee’s first year alone is full of learning. The company’s onboarding includes a three-day program called “We Are Suffolk,” which immerses new hires in the organization’s culture and values. New employees also convene in Boston (the company has 10 offices around the country) to meet senior leadership, build new relationships, and gain knowledge about the company’s history, strategy, and current and future business plans. And employees who work in field operations attend a virtual six-week Operational Excellence Academy, which meets four hours a week and focuses on two different topics each week. 

Further into their careers, Suffolk employees often attend the Management Excellence Academy, a two-day program that helps new managers develop key management skills or one of several different programs for rising or executive leaders. But Suffolk also makes room for continuous, mobile-friendly, and on-demand learning. “We have new technology that’s introduced on a regular basis, technologies and software that didn’t even exist when I started here three years ago,” says Dan Collier, Suffolk’s senior director of talent and leadership development. “As those things become available, people have to be given time to learn.” 

LinkedIn: Walking the walk with InDays  

LinkedIn is a huge proponent of learning and development. So it makes sense that once a year, the company offers its employees a dedicated day to learn. The event is part of LinkedIn’s InDays, a monthly program that gives employees a day to invest in themselves, with each month devoted to a theme. In March, for example, employees are offered a chance to volunteer, while in July, they’re encouraged to play. But every September, when many kids around the world return to school, InDay is devoted solely to learning. 

The company has made InDay a “no-meeting day” so employees can slot virtual or in-person learning into their calendars. Last year, the company hosted Career Week leading up to InDay, and employees could engage in career-themed learning paths recommended by the company’s global head of learning and talent development, Linda Jingfang Cai. Or they could sample local and regional events such as a Career Lab workshop, a speaker's event with Seth Godin, or even a hip-hop dance class or American Sign Language lesson.

“We offer programming around the globe at a regional and local level to allow employees a chance to step away from their inbox,” says Nawal Fakhoury, LinkedIn’s director of employee experience, “and do something they’ve been meaning to do but haven’t carved out the time.”  

Shutterstock: Redefining what "learning time" means 

When Shutterstock released its new development guidelines in January, one thing stood out: Every employee needed to complete at least 24 hours of learning and development per year. On paper, two hours a month doesn’t sound like such a huge lift. But in reality, it could have been a challenge for many employees. 

That’s why Deborah Wilson, Shutterstock’s former global head of talent development (who has since moved to lead HR at Understood.org) and her team took an expansive view of what “learning time” meant. Yes, it includes required L&D, such as compliance and DEI training. But it also includes any other experience that helps an employee grow. If someone on the marketing team sits in an hour-long meeting with the finance team and learns about a new topic, they can count that toward their hours. Likewise, listening to a podcast or reading a book counts too. 

To track hours, employees self-report during quarterly feedback sessions as part of their performance reviews. And at the end of the year, they submit a written overview of how they fulfilled their hours. “This first year, it’s less important what type of learning employees do,” Deborah says. “Some colleagues asked if they could count our annual hackathon and we said, ‘Of course.’” 

Final thoughts: A CLO weighs in with a different perspective

While these companies are to be celebrated for supporting employees’ growth, at least one learning leader questions the wisdom of prescriptively slotting learning time on the calendar. “The theory is always well-intended,” says Christopher Lind, chief learning officer at ChenMed. “That is, the idea of ‘If we schedule time for people to learn, we’re communicating it is a priority, and then people will go learn.’” 

But Christopher thinks this logic can have unintended consequences because it “reinforces the idea that learning is an event (digital or analog) that you go consume and then magic happens.” He believes that learning takes place all the time, which, in many ways, is consistent with the philosophy of the three companies above. “The biggest thing,” Christopher says, “is fostering a mindset that it’s not about dictating when or how people are learning, but that they’re growing everywhere and always.” At a number of companies where he’s worked, Christopher has pushed the theme that “learning is working and working is learning.” 

“It made learning feel more natural,” he adds, “instead of this task that had to be completed on top of employees’ already overwhelming workload.”