Sport and Physical Activity

The continuous learning journey

Becoming a learning organisation

The People Culture Skills (PCS) framework, largely driven by the Sport and Physical Activity Strategic Priority team, has also taken Active Essex on a journey to lift the lid on their own organisation.

In 2024, a conscious effort was made to spend time reflecting, learning, and challenging one another, ensuring the best foundations for fostering a robust learning culture across the team was established. Through the PCS work the team have encouraged organisations to look within and reflect, and this also sparked the notion that it was important to do this themselves.

Therefore, over the past year the team have played particular attention to using consistent messaging and supporting team members to learn, flourish and enjoy being accountable for the responsibilities of their role. More deliberate and skilful meeting structures, meeting discipline and methodology has helped set the tone for the learning culture that aims to be embedded across the entire team at Active Essex.

 
I’m hugely proud of our leadership and the team for getting behind this. We’re working towards a culture that enables our people to thrive. It means we can be alongside people saying “we know it’s hard, if it was easy we would have fixed it by now” - we’re going through it too.
Hollie Wood, Active Essex Relationship Manager
Hollie Wood
 

A small, committed team called “The Learning Huddle,” has been instrumental in shaping the learning journey and areas of focus, helping deliver structured reflection, collaboration, and learning in safe and trusting environments.

Within this work a comprehensive learning and development guide that ensures a systematic approach to enhancing the team’s skills, knowledge, and competencies, was created, resulting in better work performance and culture. This prioritises staffs own learning development, encourages them to be curious in their intentions, and share challenges and lived experiences, therefore making them feel empowered to thrive in the workplace, and commit to ensure any development opportunities are relevant and needs led.

 

4 aspects of learning that the Learning Huddle wanted to address, were:

  • A culture, whereby everyone feels safe, valued and respected.
  • Place values at the cornerstone of behaviour and decision making.
  • Career development pathways are established into, through and out of the organisation.
  • Treasure the skills sets within and across the team, to offer continuous learning opportunities to everyone.
 

Interactions across the team, has hugely changed over the past 12 months, whether that be online or face-to-face, but particularly at full team meetings. Everyone learns and wants to contribute in different ways, so a conscious effort helped to ensure the environment allows everyone to feel brave, have their say, and learn in their own way.

From setting the tone with a welcome task and a mixture of learning probes, to the right space for everyone and various speakers/voices heard, it's been a really positive transition where it is clear to see a real difference in how staff 'show up' to meetings. This time has been prioritised and helped people be more curious and vulnerable in sharing challenges and lived experiences.

 
The metaphor I feel we’re trying to achieve, as a learning organisation, is that of a rock-climbing centre. Each climbing hold represents different career pathways—side steps, back steps, or forward moves. The common shared purpose is not for everyone to reach the summit, but for everyone to progress up or along the climbing wall at their own speed, enjoying the teamwork, and the view below.
Jason Fergus, Active Essex Director
Jason fergus
 

Key learnings

It's important to take time to reflect and understand the learnings from work undertaken, to focus on ways to improve in the future.

Best practice

Whole team buy-in

Everyone must commit to use learning library, frameworks and stretch groups.

Ownership

Ownership

Every staff member has their role to play in creating a learning organisation.

Priorities

Conflicting priorities

With still some need to drive this centrally, it can be hard with conflicting priorities.

Variety

Learning needs

Each role should have clarity on what their learning needs are for their job profile.

 

Another key element that makes up the ingredients for a great learning culture to be created is the ability to ensure the team can input into the design of the organisation as it grows and develops. The Active Essex Stretch groups were set up to ensure a continuous journey was very much centred around this staff input, but feedback concluded that staff felt overwhelmed with big tasks at hand. Therefore ‘huddles’ will be created to ensure staff feel they can work towards and complete smaller tasks that contribute to a larger outcome, and will include ‘huddles’ such as meeting structures, celebrating inclusion and diversity, team communication, an employee’s first 100 days and learning opportunities.

Strong learning foundations have already been created and the team must now use the learnings and regular feedback from the team as a catalyst for continuous development as Active Essex enter another exciting new chapter.

 
 
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