What Is Learning Agility? How to Improve It (2023)

These seven parameters will help you understand how fast and efficiently your employees can absorb and apply new knowledge:

1. Learning Speed: Learning agility is often marked by the pace at which an individual ingests new information. It manifests in their ability to comprehend and implement new skills in their tasks promptly. At the workplace, a team member’s speed in adjusting to new software, mastering a new procedure, or understanding a new business plan can serve as an indication of their learning agility.
2. Flexibility: Adaptability is how readily an individual can shift their mindset or tweak their strategy in response to changing situations. In a work setting, an employee’s capacity to alter their tactics in line with new company policies, market tendencies, or customer behaviors can be a reliable indicator of their learning agility.
3. Experimentation, innovation, and risk-taking:  A key component of learning agility is the readiness to take calculated risks, innovate, and experiment with fresh ideas. This can be measured at the workplace through an employee’s inclination to offer unique problem-solving approaches, their eagerness to take on challenging projects, or their propensity to suggest creative enhancements to existing processes.
4. Interpersonal responsiveness: Agile learners exhibit stellar interpersonal skills, including empathy, active listening, and effective communication. At work, an employee’s knack for fostering positive relationships, functioning effectively in diverse teams, and adapting their communication style to different personalities can signify elevated learning agility.
5. Collaboration: Agile learners appreciate the power of collaboration. They seek diverse viewpoints and excel at working with others towards common objectives. An employee’s willingness to cooperate, their ability to leverage their colleagues’ strengths, and their knack for cultivating a collaborative work environment can serve as markers of their learning agility.
6. Seeks information and feedback: Learning agility also involves an active quest for knowledge and feedback. Agile learners routinely seek fresh information, pose insightful queries, and are open to constructive criticism. In the workplace, this could be seen in an employee’s habit of attending professional development workshops, their receptiveness to peer feedback, or their regular requests for performance reviews. 
7. Reflection: Lastly, a defining trait of agile learners is their capacity for introspection. They excel at internalizing experiences, learning from their wins and losses, and applying these insights to enhance their future performance. At work, an employee’s tendency to critique their work, pinpoint improvement areas, and take initiatives to hone their skills can be a measure of their learning agility.

Evaluating these facets in employees can provide a comprehensive picture of their learning agility. These insights can guide HR and management strategies, shaping recruitment, training, and talent development initiatives.

With a DAP like Whatfix, enable your employees with interactive guidance and self-help support to promote learning in the flow of work.

With Whatfix, create in-app tours, step-by-step flows, task lists, smart tips, pop-ups, field validations and more – all help to nudge your users to take the right action and adopt the right processes. Self Help provides on-demand self-support for your employees.