Make Learning Part of the Job (Not Another Thing on the To-Do List)

Tanya Hilts
Jan 2
2 min read

If you manage people, you already know this: your job isn’t just to keep the work moving. It’s to help your team grow.

And here’s the part we don’t talk about enough—most “learning and development” plans fail because they live outside the real work.

They become one more tab open. One more course to finish “when things slow down.” (Spoiler: things don’t slow down.)

If you want learning to actually stick, it has to be built into the rhythm of the week.

1) Try a simple “learning meeting”

I’m not talking about a big training day or a fancy workshop.

I mean a short, regular meeting where your team learns one small thing together and talks about it.

Pick a concept, framework, or skill that connects to current work
Keep it bite-sized
Make it conversational

Why this works: people remember what they talk through. When learning is shared, it turns into real language the team can use—rather than a PDF that gets filed away and forgotten.

A few ideas you can rotate through:

A new workflow that saves time
A client communication script
A boundary-setting phrase for scope creep
A mini tech tip (or AI/security best practice)
A “what we learned this week” debrief after a busy stretch

2) Reinforce it with tiny nudges

A learning meeting is a great start. But the real magic is what happens after.

Give your team gentle reminders so the learning doesn’t evaporate by Tuesday afternoon.

This can be as simple as:

A short email recap with one action to try
A daily Slack reminder (one sentence is enough)
A quick prompt like: “Where could we use this today?”

These nudges aren’t about nagging. They’re about keeping the idea close enough that someone actually tries it in a real situation.

3) Measure progress (without making it weird)

If you don’t measure anything, you’ll never know what’s landing—and what’s just noise.

Measuring doesn’t have to mean formal testing. It can be practical and human.

Try:

A quick check-in survey: What was useful? What was confusing? What do you want next?
A short self-assessment: “How confident do you feel using this?”
Watching for real-world changes: Are habits shifting? Are handoffs smoother? Are mistakes decreasing? Are clients noticing?

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is momentum.