Continual learning a missed trick

Most people realise that continual learning throughout life is a good idea. Trouble is that so same people can't be bothered doing it. There are so many things to do in a day where the hell are you going to fit learning something in.

At my work for Applied Language, a translation agency, we have a range of offices around the world: UK, USA, Bulgaria, Guatemala and France. Keeping all these people at the top of their game, in the company culture and continually learning is a tough job. Especially as we are a relatively small company only 44.

One of the many ways we achieve all three of thee things is by book competitions. Now this starts to sound very old and kind of school like. Well in a way it is. Every few months we read a business book.

We've done:

1. Eat that Frog (time management)
2. Fish (attitude)
3. Broken Windows (little things help)
4. and we've just done Who moved my cheese (coping with change)

We distribute the books several weeks before the competition to give plenty of time and then hold the quiz online using Survey Monkey.

All the entries are scored and the employee with the highest mark wins £150 ortheirr national equivalent.

All the staff take part from the MD down.

We're now taking this a step further and buying audio books as we've already given all the staff MP3 players.

This is a really easy way to achieve inter-department/country competition and continual learning.