Creating an Effective Learning Culture

by Richard Gourlaycompetitive advantage, Uncategorized 06/03/202606/03/2026No Comments

In today’s workplace an effective learning culture is not a “would like to have” it is becoming a “must have” to successfully compete for many businesses for both talent and customers.

A learning culture creates not only a better place to work, but also reduces key staff turnover, while driving productivity and growth.

This is why workplace learning is at the top of the do list in 2026 for HR managers and L&D directors.

The importance of developing a workplace learning culture today’ has never been more important to leadership teams or more able to be delivered.

Let me share a few thoughts about why and how this can be achieved.

The Challenges for L&D in 2026

The Workday Global Workforce Report identifies key HR’s challenges for 2026

Many still view HR through lenses of hiring or firing role, but today its value is in helping shape an organization’s workforce for success both now and in the future.

Modern HR and its L&D professionals are data interpreters, change facilitators, and advisors, connecting people strategies with business outcomes.

Their work is a driving force in how effective companies are at adapting to rapidly changing markets and emerging opportunities through people development.

Talent acquisition and retention: Attracts talent to not only fit current roles but also support future growth, while creating an environment that motivates employees to stay and build careers. Workday global workforce report
Keeping pace with rapid skills evolution Udeny 2025 Global learning skills trend.
Making Learning Strategically Effective – Does learning make a tangible difference to the organisation results
Integrating New learning Wisely – 94% of learning leaders see digital learning as central to their strategy – Elucidat Digital learning 2025

Delivering personalised learner centric experiences – engagement needs to be a key focus for learning and measured

Attracting and Retaining Top Talent

The CIPHR report from 300 companies in January 2026 reported their biggest challenges: that 85% of companies report skills shortages, 87% reported struggling to find the right talent and 79% reported building capable managers where major challenges.

Skills Shortages

Struggling to find talent

Capable Manger Challenge

Today’s top talent expects competitive pay and benefits but also meaningful work and connection to the organisations forward strategy. Being engaged from the start is now the expected normal. This trend originally documented by Dan Pink’s in his research on motivation at work called Drive defines the new way today’s employees look at employment opportunities. Employees perform when they are left to develop mastery of their subject. That culture shift leads towards ROWE work environments (Results Only Work Environments). Which many companies now adopt headlined by global brands Facebook (Meta) and Google.

That means that LD need to develop employee retention and engagement within the workplace for earlier, than was traditionally thought.

62% of organizations struggling to find qualified workers, impacting sectors like construction, manufacturing, and health. This gap, which has more than doubled since 2017, is hindering growth, driving up wage costs by billions, and delaying projects.

Key Sectors of the UK Skills Shortage

Impacted Sectors: Construction (52% vacancy issues), manufacturing (42%), and health/social care (40%) are heavily affected.

Economic Consequences: Skills shortages are estimated to cost the UK economy £39 billion annually, according to The Open University Business Barometer 2024.

Root Causes: Key factors include a post-pandemic rise in economic inactivity (e.g., long-term sickness), an aging workforce, and the end of free movement following Brexit.

Response Strategies: Businesses are increasing salaries (67%), hiring at lower levels, or struggling to adopt new technologies like AI, The Access Group notes.

Future Outlook: Skills England is being established to address these gaps, with projections suggesting 20% of the workforce could be under skilled by 2030, according to Grant Thornton UK.

Attracting and Retaining Top Talent

Workday Global Workforce Report 2025 shows that are losing top talent. 75% of industries are experiencing voluntary turnover of high potential employees.

Voluntary Turnover of High-Potential Employees 75%

75% of companies loosing voluntary High Potential Employees

That talent drain holds companies back, while driving wage inflation and slows company growth. This talent loss reduces organisation’s ability to grow and develop. The big challenge is that employees are not just going to the competition. Research shows that talent is not just going to direct competitors over 40% of it is moving across sectors.This gap, is hindering growth, driving up wage costs by billions, and delaying projects.

FOMO to FOBO

Why are key people leaving companies? Well pay is not the highest factor for employees today. You’ve heard of FOMO – FEAR OF MISSING OUT has a new L&D big brother FOBO. The McKinsey survey 2025 identifies that 45% of employees are worried by FOBO, affecting mainly younger employees with digital skills and outsourcing.

FOBO or the Fear Of Becoming Obsolete, is now identified as a key driver for skilled people to move to better development and opportunities.

FOBO means that while we all know that the grass is NOT always greener on the other side of the fence, employees today are not taking the risk in missing out. Employers at the cutting edge of any sector are drawing in talent like never before. Today, AI investment is the buzz that is driving not only investment but also drawing people into this new world. AI is being led by companies with cultures that enable employees to be more engaged, more focusing on continually learning.

Build Competitive Advantage: Attracting and Retaining Top Talent

Companies today are struggling to build and sustain competitive advantage. Loosing good people due to FOBO is hugely damaging and for L&D and yet The Workday Global Report also points out that 94% of employees would stay at a company if it invested in their learning.

94% of employees would stay at a company if it invested in their learning.

UK employer investment in training fell to £53.0bn in 2024, a significant decline from £59.0bn in 2022 and down 18.5% since 2011. Expenditure per employee correspondingly dropped to £1,700, a 29.5% decrease since 2011, making it one of the lowest levels in over a decade. While some of that decline is a shift to online learning rather than in person learning, many larger public sector organisations have pulled back on investing in their people. The Learning and Work Institute reports that around 40% of employers offer no training at all.

According to the Workday Global State of Skills report, the majority of business leaders are worried about skills shortages in the next three years.

Only 32% believe their organizations currently have the skills they’ll need in the immediate future.

Only 54% of leaders have a clear view of the skills within their organisation. That is a major issue in competitive global markets.

With that snapshot now in your mind this is why building a learning culture within your organisation really matters.

Benefits of An Effective Learning Culture

What are the benefits to having an effective learning company? Creates improved performance

There are many benefits in creating an effective learning culture, here are just 6 that make the point so well-

Innovation: They are 92% more likely to innovate.
Profitability: They are 17% more likely to be a market leader.
Skills: They are 58% better prepared to meet future challenges.
Time to Market: They are 34% better at responding to customer needs.
Quality: They have a 26% greater ability to deliver quality solutions.
Productivity: They enjoy 37% greater employee productivity.

Other key metrics which companies with a learning culture consistently delivers.

They have on average 59% lower costs of recruitment and retention

Absenteeism is around 40% lower.

And 72% Higher employee engagement

Source The Access Group

So how do organisation start to develop a learning culture?

First Steps Towards Creating High Performance Company

High-performing companies are shifting their focus from roles to capabilities.
Mapping Critical Skills rather than job titles
Creating clear progression pathways to retain and develop talent

Organizations that fail to plan for future workforce needs often find themselves reacting to crises instead of leading through change.

Most HR leaders recognize the criticality of better and more holistic planning, but Gartner reports that today only 15% are engaged in it at a truly strategic level.

Making it an HR priority and planning effectively in collaboration with other stakeholders across the company will be a strategic differentiator in the future, both for optimizing budgets and resource allocation and for retaining top talent that drives performance.

By forecasting demand, analysing skills inventories, and running scenario planning exercises, HR leaders can align their company’s people strategy with long-term business goals.

The question for 2026 is no longer:-

“How do we recruit better people?”

It is:-

“How do we build and protect the skills our business depends on?”

Creating a learning culture is a competitive advantage not only in winning the right new talent into a workplace but also in retaining it.

A learning culture creates and sustains a competitive advantage in the workplace.

Requires a clear vision and support from the leadership team to make it happen.

Understand the benefits from doing it and the risks from not adopting it.

Develop a whole team culture to make it work.

L&D Creating an Effective Learning Culture

A true continuous learning environment isn’t created by hanging motivational posters or offering the occasional webinar. It’s baked into daily workflows.

Hallmarks include:

Provide company wide learning – developing everyone simultaneously – move the whole not the few

On-demand, ongoing training: Learning is accessible anytime, not relegated to annual workshops.

Microlearning integration: Short, focused bursts of training that fit naturally into busy schedules.

Leadership advocacy: Leaders model curiosity and growth, encouraging teams to follow suit.

Engaging Content – Genuine learning not simply tuckbox compliance with pathway options towards specialisations

Modern LMS platforms can help address these challenges by making learning more flexible and accessible. Quick, ongoing updates and bite-sized training modules transform the experience — shifting from overwhelming to manageable.

Director Mentoring 6 Great Reasons to Be Mentored by Richard Gourlay

by Richard GourlayDumfries and Galloway, Innovation, opportunity, start-up advice, Strategy, Uncategorized 03/12/201901/09/2025Comments are Disabled

Richard Gourlay Director Mentoring

Being focused and clear on where you are going is vital as a director. Clarity of direction with a clear focus with your business puts leaders in control of their business. Being in control ultimately ensures leaders are successful. But taking control is one of the biggest issues leaders face. Knowing where to start, and even how to start making positive changes to your business can be a real challenge.

Leaders Mentoring Needs

Successful directors must be able to create and make change happen. Making change is essential to make their company able to meet demands and expectations of its customers. So leaders must become change makers within their organisation to make it and keep it successful. Knowing how and when to make what changes is the many skills which leaders need to develop. Being able to see the need, communicate it and deliver change is a major skillset senior people need to develop. Leaders have to be able to move outside their existing comfort zone in taking people through change..

Successful change makes a real bottom-line difference to your business success. But to go through change is often painful and difficult. This is where an experienced mentor makes a real difference.

A good mentor is someone who has not only been through change several times, but someone who also has seen it across multiple markets and with different types of people. A good mentor gets to know you as a person and gets to understand the real challenges the mentees are facing. That’s why leaders find mentors who support them achieve their goals. Richard Gourlay has been mentoring leaders for over thirty years.

The difference between Telling Mentoring and Coaching

Mentoring is the process which supports leaders develop their skills by working with them in developing the mentees skills. Mentoring is a specific set of development skills where a mentor shares their knowledge, skills and/or experience, to help another to develop and grow.

To see how mentoring sits between telling and coaching, see the graphic below. Mentoring is more effective than telling as it enables leaders to develop their skills through their real-life experiences. By talking through situations leaders learn and develop their skills, rather than being told what to do. Coaching on the other hand walks people through situations and provides guidance on specific issues. The greta advantage of mentoring is therefore that the mentee learns how to deal with business challenges rather than being coached through situations. About Richard Gourlay Mentor

Over the last 30 years I’ve worked with hundreds of business owners. Working with micro-businesses through to international PLC’s and I’ve identified that there are some key common factors that successful leaders do which ensure their success, while other business owners struggle to keep their heads above water. What I’ve learnt is that there are simple and logical steps that successful people undertake. These steps which make that something different in what they do delivers real results in taking the guess work out of their business success. This is the basis of effective mentoring.

I’ve spent years refining those key steps into a programmes of business mentoring for senior people. My mentoring programmes support personal growth. Mentoring creates bite-size action planning that develop people in their role. My director mentoring programmes enable people to develop their personal and professional skills. We develop key outcomes into sessions which develop a clear programme of development. Each programme starts by identifying mentees core strengths and areas to work on. This is then developed into a bespoke plan of what they need to do differently to be even more successful in their role.

My Director mentoring programme

Taking the guesswork out our business success requires people making simple steps over time. Mentoring support is usually a monthly process of development. Each step is small and measured, typically spread over a monthly. People are held to account to make the change they want to see. By making each step happen leaders grow themselves and their team as their confidence and competence grows. Our bespoke programmes enable business owners to work ON their business effectively rather than just spending more time IN their business.

Below are some of the key things to consider in taking the guess work out of your business success:-

1. Mentoring: Know What to Work ON

Knowing what you need to focus on makes a huge difference in where to invest your energy and resources. I’m a huge fan of the leadership culture of working ON it not IN it. If you are not working ON your business then how is it going to improve? It is the leader who must make the business stronger.

How will you, or your business be ready and able to face tomorrow’s challenges without making change happen? But you need to know what is important to work on within your business, and why! That’s where mentoring supports you grown and develop as a leader.

2. Directors: Why you are working ON your business

The only certainty in business is Change. Today that has never been truer. The pace of change in every market has, is, and will change at an ever faster rate. Changing market conditions, to customer demands, through to employee expectations have all created additional extra pressures on leaders to respond quicker. Accelerated changes within the business environment require leaders to adapt quicker and more effectively.

How should you respond to those changes? Fast enough and effectively enough to take full advantage of those changes, without loosing site of where you are going and why. If making change is a challenge or if you have ever wondered how to make positive changes, then my mentoring programme will enable you to understand why and how to make change happen. Working on your business is the most valuable actively any leader can undertake and puts you in the driving seat of your business.

3. Director Mentoring: Where to Grow

Every business owner wants to grow turnover, profitability or customer base, but how is the important question. Where is tomorrow’s growth coming from and how can you access it effectively and efficiently? This step-by-step mentoring programme will show you where growth is going to come from and how you can effectively access it.

What is good profitable growth rather than just growth. An important distinction which leaders need to recognise that all growth is not good.

4. How to Make Change Happen

Doing what we’ve always done is the natural default behaviour that people fall back into despite best intentions. Change does not happen unless you make change happen. Mentoring, working with an external advisor is an effective way to develop yourself offline from your existing line management structure. Being able to discuss personal skills development with an external mentor allows people a “safe space” to bounce ideas around, share frustrations and concerns enables people to think through making change happen.

Change is always easy to talk about, but harder to actually deliver. Change is always necessary to achieve success. This step-by-step mentoring programme enables you to create the right changes, which deliver the right results for success. Every step involves a single simple activity which is supported by a template in a workbook to create your success.

5. Director mentoring Reduce the Risks

Taking your business from where it is today to where you want it to be tomorrow is essential to keep your business competitive and successful. But change involves taking risk, but there is an even bigger risk in not making change. Director mentoring programmes reduce these risks by evaluating and balancing the risk factors effectively. Each step is focused around making sensible pro-active decisions which have been tried and tested.

Being mentored by an experienced independent director allows you to talk through ideas and thoughts with a neutral advisor . An experienced mentor provides a sounding board for director decision making and will challenge your assumptions prior to you making a decision. This reduces risk and allows a director to talk through scenarios and likely consequences. This puts risk reduction and mitigation in place to manage and overcome those risks. Being mentored therefore provides confidence and certainty in decision-making.

Richard Gourlay is an approved MentorsMe mentor, click link to see Richard Gourlay MentorsMe

6. Director Mentoring Effective Way to Grow

Taking the risk out of your business success is all about taking small, simple but highly effective steps. Steps, sometimes small, but always forward move the business in the direction you want it to go. I have designed personalised mentoring programmes to fit every type of person and business by size and sector and at every stage of its development.

Short bite size learning, on face to face or remote sessions support leaders lead successfully. I design a mentoring format with clear models (including templates) suitable to each leaders specific needs. I then bespoke design it to enable you to achieve your success. Supporting your personalised mentoring programme are emails to help support you undertake each step and keep you on track.

So if you want to take the guesswork out of your business success? Then this effective mentoring programme is specifically designed for business owners from start-ups to established businesses owners to take the guess work out of your business success. Our mentoring programmes are a combination of online and face-2-face, depending upon your needs and location.

So get started today, make the first step and contact Richard Gourlay today to start your mentoring journey, just fill in the form below.

What makes a great BRAND

by Richard GourlayBusiness culture, Business Identity, Business mission, Business Values, Dumfries and Galloway, opportunity, Strategy, Uncategorized, Vision 29/11/201901/09/2025Comments are Disabled

What makes a great BRAND?

Despite what marketing people passionately believe most people don’t think about brands, they just get on with their lives. The coffee they buy, the supermarket they go to and petrol station they visit happen almost by accident. In Britain today we are too busy to think through these everyday inconsequential purchases, focused on saving time, not forgetting something or rushing from place to place on a tight deadline. So do brands matter as much as they used to and if so why and how? Brands matter where consumers can value them. In today’s wealthy world every product or service perceives itself as a brand, even if it is just a label. So what makes a great brand?

Consumer Choice

Let’s start with the basics, the consumer has choices. Endless choices if they choose to use them. But in many everyday cases as in my examples above, the consumer sacrifices those choices for simple expedience. The inability to see (or value) brand differentiation, between Starbucks and Costa, between Tesco and Morrisons between BP and Shell, and yet they each fight for space in consumers minds through tiny differences which if we stop and think about do actually exist and we the consumer do actively value.

So much more than First Impressions

So in today’s Britain, what is important about a brand? Is it the halo effect, the first impression, like the smile on the front of a car or is it something more, something deeper and more tangible? Ask the owners of Sunny D (the 90’s orange juice lookalike) and you will find that the halo effect does not last if your brand is not true to itself and to its consumers. Customers have to believe in a brand, it must tell the truth, be transparent and honest if it is to be successful. Gerald Ratner (former MD of Ratners the jewellers who said about his products “because it’s total crap”) also found out that in today’s world everyone must truly believe in the brand, not just the marketing department but the whole company has to believe it and most importantly practice the brands beliefs.

Clear Brand Strategy

Being clear and precise is also important in the company’s messages for a brand to succeed, a strong undiluted brand message must enthuse internally but must also consistently connect with customers through touch points, look at Innocent, Dorset Cereals or Apple as classic examples of touch point. They also demonstrate a clear story delivered with passion about who they are what they do and why they matter. This focused and consistent message is not just a marketing message but an ingrained set of values which consumers buy into with passion. These brands not only position themselves as premium players in their fields and earn more but they also continuously find new ways to spread their key messages to customers, they have a clear brand strategy to achieve it.

Everyone Lives the Brand

Another vital aspect of any brand success is that the people within that brand demonstrate what they preach, they live that lifestyle, support that brand and contribute to its success. It is their lifestyle, it is a part of the way they and their brand do business.

Great brands go beyond the brand to understand its real value to existing customers but also to tomorrow’s customers. Whether it is a family run local shop or a global supermarket chain great brands position themselves so they develop and hold a market position to develop long-term success.

Vision and Purpose

Great brands create, sustain and evangelise a culture which supports and drives their brand. Creating a culture which underpins an organisations vision and purpose is a key prerequisite for ensuring sustainability of a great brand. Sustainability of a vision can only be achieved if the organisation is supported by an underlying culture which fits with the brands ethos.

Great brands can only transpose from the innovative visionary founder if they create a supportive culture to sustain the brand. An effective and appropriate culture is one which supports the brand and ensures it is can sustain its market position over time. Great brands sustain themselves through a great culture.

The culture of a brand, otherwise seen as the handwriting of the organisation, enables sustainability of the brand over time. Culture today matters from how people work together through to acquisition of appropriate talent. The right people are drawn to a brand they aspire to be part. Business partners focus on brands with likeminded cultures andante to be part of a great brand. In the exact same way customers aspire to be associated with a great brand.

Great Brands are not Labels

Great brands drive markets. By challenging them through innovation and changing perceptions. Labels on the other hand feed off brands by picking of successful innovations for downstream ‘me too’ market following customers. Great brands invest high proportions of their resources in driving markets forward, through innovative products and services. Great brands are seen to out invest other players more double the the market average.

Creating innovative pipeline cultures thinking long-term make positions rather than short-term tactical single product successes. Labels focus on creating market winning season products, they act as followers often being low-cost alternatives to the brand leaders in any sector. Brands focus on the longterm innovation which shift the paradigm of relationship with the customer through the brand.

Great Brands Add Value

Great brands also develop their own uniqueness, not just the product or service but the whole package is how we do it around here. There needs to be not only consistency but the brand hand writing and value on how they do it. The best brands always develop singular simple signals for customers, cutting through jargon to create clarity without patronisation.

For brands to succeed in today’s global markets these golden rules have never been more important as consumers have never had so much information, but if you follow these simple rules of brand success you can develop and maintain a great brand.

Looking for Advice

If you want to develop your company’s brand and are looking for some advice on developing your company, its marketing, its sustainable competitive advantage then contact us at Cowden to see how we can assist you, or read more about us in this blog or at Cowden

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Cowden Consulting is a strategic planning and implementation business which works in partnership with customers to grow and develop their business, contact us to learn more.

Posted 1st December 2011 by Richard Gourlay

Location: Old Glenstocken, Colvend, Stewarty of Kirkcudbright, Galloway

Labels: brand brand identity brand strategy brand strength branding business success marketing strategy strategic direction strategy sustainable companies values vision

Content Strategy: The future of marketing

by Richard Gourlaycompetitive advantage, content strategy marketing, Marketing, Selling skills, Uncategorized 20/03/201504/02/2026Comments are Disabled

The future of marketing is all about inbound marketing: Content strategy

If you can see a trend you have missed it!

In a world of continual change seeing what is happening is often difficult to understand until the paradigm shift has occurred. Many companies are struggling to stay ahead or even in the game of online marketing. Many companies are moving towards online marketing content strategy or as marketing people call it inbound marketing. This major shift in culture and one needs to be fully understood.

I have just had an old-fashioned marketing communication from a well-known brand, asking me to make an immediate purchase offering me a FREE upgrade for a new phone, my automatic response is not to be interested, at all because they have not demonstrated that they understand my specific needs. That made me thinks and write this article to explain why in today’s online world that old marketing technique is now as un-effective as a double glazing salesman offering me 50% off!

It’s a complete shift not just an add-on

In a world where everyone is online all the time, the amount of information is drowning people, from Linkedin to Facebook and Twitter the rise of smart phone connectivity has promised much change to marketing but until recently only early adopters, high value and niche players could see what it meant to the marketing process.

Like many changes, it is not until the change becomes tangible does its impact become visual to many marketing departments that enables them to successfully influence a company’s marketing policy. This is considerably harder to convey when there is no tangible evidence of marketing results attributable to hard to track invisible marketing shift. Unlike the shift to direct marketing where direct connectivity between outcome and result can be seen through a transparent return on investment, online inbound marketing is struggling to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Pace is outstripping understanding

Currently content marketing relies heavily upon invisible and poorly understood online activities. Simply put, the rate of change is outstripping the knowledge base of the marketing industry, creating a gap between the understandings of marketing by decision makers. The routes causes of this is that not only are customers sourcing information in newer ways but the platform they are using, the Internet indexing is also changing ever faster, Goggle will make over 600 changes to way it scores content. Rapidly changing customer preferences, coupled with changing technologies and an ever changing platform results in the lack of certainty of what is working and why. By the time you’ve worked out what works it has already changed.

That speed is creating problems for social media to be able to convert this rate of change to make money. This continual change, both step and continual upgrading, makes it difficult for the industry to understand how to build sustainable pipelines of business.

Content Strategy also creates confusion.

Content strategy marketing process, one that now focuses on creating online and open platform engagement, online PULL; rather than internally controlled PUSH marketing methods, traditional marketers often struggle to understand the process let alone feel uncomfortable with the concept. This is not unreasonable, given the history of marketing in the last 50 years has always focused on the traditional pipeline of generating and then controlling customer decision-making, content marketing turns that on its head. People investing in inbound marketing are asked to spend money on losing control of the potential customer by letting them make an open decision about how and when they engage with your brand.

In the mid 1990’s I remember designing a website to support a brand. No one was interested until it was live and people could see something online. A director then said, “That’s great let’s print it off and send it to all our customers”

Dialogue NOT monologue

The inbound marketing process is about generating an open dialogue, rather than a structured marketing process. It lets potentials, prospects and suspects move in and out of your control while they select you, rather than being controlled by you.

The Content Strategy Process

Listening – Online is now the first port of call for 78% of web users.
Creating – Great content that answers need and demonstrates expertise.
Engaging – Is about being talked about and developing a dialogue with audiences
Transforming – Is about continual engagement, moving them from suspects to purchasers
Growing – Requires creating perpetual momentum developing new and developing loyalty

Source: www.tomorrow-people.com

Traditional marketing models of developing engagement such as AIDA are still highly valid but instead of just focusing on a immediate winning proposition through a grabbing hook, attach a liner and sink them in a simple linear model for winning customers. Content strategy marketing demands multiple engagement tools which include cross referencing other parties creating competitive collaborative working to generate awareness, giving away FREE content in white papers coupled with fast and slow acquisition tools in decision making.

The strategy needs to be explained better

Moving to a content strategy is about moving from PUSH to PULL, not about the Internet platform, it is about understanding the importance of open unrestricted dialogue rather than material generation and in reality it is not just about the Internet although this is where its impact is being seen today, but equally will encompass every marketing platform and process. The growth of mobile technology will further the pace and realisation of content strategy.

Like to learn more? Then see article What is Content Marketing or contact us at RichardGourlay.com or see our website or social media channels for more about Cowden::-

Richard Gourlay Website – Linked in – Twitter – Facebook – Blog

Richard Gourlay services: business planning, strategic planning, business development, strategic marketing, Return on Investment, director development, director mentoring.

Cowden is based in Galloway, Scotland and works with businesses throughout the UK.