When we spend the first quarter of our lives in formal education, starting your career can feel like a breath of fresh air. After years of sitting in classrooms and all of the stress that comes with school, it feels like you can finally take complete control of your life! Undoubtedly, this is an exciting time for anyone, but it also comes with difficulties.
Building a successful career is no small task, but if you find a job you enjoy, you’ll be well on your way. Developing a solid work-life balance and finding a workplace that focuses on employee satisfaction will probably help too! To build a successful career, however, you must keep learning and continue “learning throughout your career.”
Leaving the formal classroom is not the end of your education, and if you treat it as such, you might miss out on a lot of what life has to offer. This concept holds true across all walks of life, but especially in the workplace! Without growing and learning within your career, it may begin to feel stagnant, you could be passed over for potential promotions, and you could risk burning yourself out.
Besides, learning outside of the boundaries of school is much different than studying for tests and frantically writing essays; it’s practically stress-free! There are no learning deadlines to meet and no classes to pass or fail, just the simple pursuit of knowledge. There are plenty of reasons to continue your learning journey into the working world, and we’re here to help you get started.
This article will dish out the details on how to add learning into your daily life, even as you take on a full-time job. There will always be challenges, and it will likely take plenty of adjustments to figure out your best plan, but once you get into the swing of learning at the workplace, you will see why it is so valuable.
Ready to learn?
How Does “Learning” Help?
If you didn’t enjoy your formal education process, we understand why you’d be hesitant to continue it into your career. However, the two are nothing alike, and that’s primarily thanks to their unique end goals. In school, the driving end goal is graduation. You learn material based on what you will be graded on, and it is a very cut and dry process. In your career, the end goal is plain and straightforward; job expertise, satisfaction, and potential career advancement.
To phrase it another way, you should try and learn throughout your career because it can give you a better chance of finding happiness at work! Don’t quite see the connection? We’ll break it down for you.
The thought process goes something like this:
- As per the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, research shows that happier employees work faster, are more productive, and feel higher levels of job satisfaction than their unhappy counterparts.
- Finding happiness in the workplace depends on many things, but rewarding work is one of the most assured paths to success.
- To find work rewarding, you need to connect to your job and have a passion for your work. Unhappy employees often feel bored, confused, or underappreciated at work.
- While at first, it might be enough to like your job, that alone won’t make it rewarding. If you do the same job for ten years without any change or growth, you’re probably not going to be one of the happy employees in this article.
- With this in mind, learning is clearly one of the best ways to connect to your work, create meaning within the job, and keep you feeling good about your choices!
The First Steps
We have a few suggestions that might help you find a starting place, but remember, this is your journey, and only you can determine how impactful it will be on your life and career. You should take some time to try some of our suggestions, but ultimately, it depends on your effort to make the whole process worthwhile.
Determine Where You’re At
A significant first step towards learning in any work environment is figuring out what you already know! Regardless of whether it’s your tenth year at a company or your first week, take the time to examine where you are at with your current knowledge base.
You might be surprised at the amount of new knowledge your job has already provided when you stop and reflect! Even more importantly, you can get an idea of what direction your continued learning needs to take.
Get Your Feet Wet
Thankfully you are no longer in the classroom, and now you can be more hands-on with your learning! If there is a particular skill you want to learn or aspect of your career you want to know more about, you can almost always learn through practical experience.
You also have the benefit of experienced coworkers and bosses that may help you in your development! We constantly hear from company leaders that they want to encourage more employee engagement, so asking a supervisor for mentoring or extra help is worth a shot!
Creating Meaning and Satisfaction
Once you’ve generally figured out where you are in your career education and have started to gain some experience, it’s time to add meaning to all of your choices. After all, education isn’t very effective if you don’t care about what you are studying! You could learn as much as you want about your job, but it simply won’t be as effective if you aren’t truly passionate about it.
Remember that happy people at work aren’t just happy because they do the same thing every day! Employees feel joy when they are successful, and they can accomplish goals that they genuinely care about. When you invest your energy and time into your career and learn about all the aspects of your job, you’ll understand why this step is so important.
The Bottom Line
Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee a successful career, but we hope our tips can put you on the right path to living a life of continual learning! At LACOSTA, we emphasize the importance of learning in the workplace by providing all of our team members with training and development opportunities throughout the entirety of their careers.
Giving our team members the support and encouragement they need has helped us keep our turnover rate extremely low and job satisfaction high! Reach out to us today to discuss a LACOSTA partnership, or check out our blog for more tips and tricks in the business world.