A strong learning culture has become a defining advantage for organizations that want to grow talent, retain high performers, and keep pace with constant change. But learning culture is often misunderstood. Many companies still rely on disconnected learning events—an onboarding program, a lunch-and-learn, or a one-off training, rather than designing a true learning journey that supports employees from their first week through long-term growth.
In a panel discussion on continuous learning and the employee lifecycle, three leaders, Dr. Eli Bendet-Taicher (Global Learning and Development leader at Wix), Gisele “Gigi” Fox (Chief Learning Officer for GE Healthcare Imaging), and Nicholas Lawrence (Executive Director of People & Culture, Chik-fil-A Restaurants), shared a practical view of what it takes to move from sporadic training to a sustainable system. Their experiences span software, healthcare, and frontline service, yet they converge on the same truth: building a learning culture is less about “more training” and more about designing how learning happens, when it happens, and who owns it.
What follows is a structured, actionable interpretation of their insights, faithful to what they said, so HR and L&D leaders can build learning that actually sticks, scales, and supports performance.
From Hosting “Learning Events” to Facilitating a Learning Journey Across the Employee Lifecycle
A learning culture starts when organizations stop treating learning as a checklist and start treating it as an ecosystem. The panel emphasized that many companies do onboarding well, but learning becomes fragmented afterward, and training appears in random bursts rather than as a coherent path tied to real work.
Learning Is a Journey, Not a Series of Isolated Programs
Dr. Eli Bendet-Taicher opened the conversation by pointing to a common gap: organizations often deliver learning as “sporadic events” instead of mapping the full employee journey, from recruiting to the day someone leaves the company. His core challenge to HR and L&D was straightforward: if learning is truly continuous, it should be designed as continuous.
In practice, that means thinking beyond onboarding and asking:
- What does an employee need to learn in the first 30 days to be effective?
- What do they need at six months to build confidence and independence?
- What helps them grow into leadership, mobility, or deeper specialization?
A learning culture becomes real when learning pathways are visible, repeatable, and connected to performance, not when training is simply “available.”
Consistency Matters, Especially in Global or Complex Organizations
Gigi Fox shared a clear example of why learning needs structure. When she joined GE in her role, the position was new because learning experiences were inconsistent across regions. In the U.S., training teams and resources were strong. In LATAM, there weren’t any trainers. In the Asia Pacific region, there were gaps in expertise and budget. The result was uneven capability-building inside the same organization.
Her response wasn’t “do more training.” It was to create visibility, consistency, and efficiency through a lean methodology so that learning could be sustainable and scalable. Over time, that included dashboards, data, and a system that could keep running even if she wasn’t there.
"If learning depends on a single person’s drive, it won’t scale. If learning is embedded in the organization, it becomes part of how the company operates."
— Gisele “Gigi” Fox, Chief Learning Officer, GE Healthcare Imaging
That point is central to building a learning culture: if learning depends on a single person’s drive, it won’t scale. If learning is embedded in the organization, it becomes part of how the company operates.
Design Learning So It Can Run Without You
One of Fox’s strongest leadership principles was the idea that HR and L&D leaders should build systems that can function without them. Her framing was practical: developing people is not just about helping them grow—it’s also about creating a structure that survives leadership changes.
A learning culture is reinforced when:
- learning journeys are documented and measurable,
- learning paths are clear and easy to navigate,
- and employees can move forward without confusion about what to do next.
Fox described a real scenario: salespeople had to “go find the training” across multiple LMS environments. She referenced having five LMS systems at once, creating confusion about where to go and which course sequence to follow. The fix was a clear learning path for the first year—what to take, when to take it, and how to track progress.
Reduce New-Hire Overload With Just-in-Time Learning and “Learn How to Find the Answer”
A learning culture doesn’t mean overwhelming people with content. In fact, the panel was direct about the danger of information overload, especially in onboarding. Their shared message: the best learning happens closer to the moment of need.
Just-in-Time Learning Beats “Dump Everything Up Front”
Fox offered a memorable contrast between school-style learning and adult learning. In school, people cram, pass the exam, and forget. In adult work life, people learn differently: when something breaks, they search for the solution and follow the steps in the moment.
She argued that L&D teams sometimes forget this and revert to “firehose” onboarding. The problem isn’t that onboarding includes too much information; it’s that much of it arrives before employees have context to use it.
Her example from a prior role made the point concrete: a customer care training program ran for four weeks in a classroom, and after the training ended, the drop-off was dramatic. She described keeping only about 10 out of 100 after people took real calls. Her conclusion was blunt: if the first real customer interaction happens after weeks of classroom instruction, the training may not prepare people for reality.
So she changed the formula:
- Day one: welcome and orientation basics.
- Day two: on the floor listening to experienced employees.
The goal was not to perfect knowledge before work begins, but to expose people to reality early and build capability progressively.
Continuous Learning Means “Teach Them to Navigate,” Not “Teach Them Everything”
Dr. Bendet-Taicher reinforced this with the example of Wix, where product complexity makes it impossible to retain everything taught in early training. In roles such as customer support or customer success, employees need to understand a broad product surface area. But trying to teach everything up front creates an illusion of readiness, followed by knowledge decay.
Instead, he described a shift toward teaching people to find answers independently using the company’s resources. The objective becomes:
- understanding the concepts,
- knowing where information lives,
- and building the confidence to search and solve.
He even connected this to his personal experience in academic training: you may not remember everything immediately, but when you return to a topic with a real purpose, you recognize it and know what to look for. In the workplace, that recognition and search capability can be more valuable than memorization.
Build a Learning Mindset: “You Don’t Need to Remember Everything”
A learning culture is partly psychological. The panel returned to the mindset shift employees and leaders must make:
- Learning is not a one-time event.
- Performance improves through iteration.
- Searching and applying are skills.
Dr. Bendet-Taicher noted that modern tools, including AI, reinforce this reality: employees can access information faster than ever, but they still need to ask good questions, locate reliable internal resources, and apply answers correctly. For HR and L&D, that suggests a new training priority: don’t only teach content, teach retrieval, problem-solving, and resource fluency.
Make Managers the Engine of Your Learning Culture With Daily Coaching and Real-World Repetition
Across industries, the panel agreed on a foundational truth: a learning culture does not reside solely in the training department. It lives in daily leadership behaviors, especially coaching.
“Every Day Is Training”: Frontline Learning as a Leadership Responsibility
Nicholas Lawrence framed continuous learning in the simplest possible way: every day is training, every day is orientation. In his environment, frontline service with constant real-time work, formal training can’t cover every scenario. The difference is made by leaders who coach in the moment.
He shared a story about a training manager hearing repeated complaints: “This person needs retraining.” For Lawrence, that misses the point. Managers shouldn’t treat training as something that happens elsewhere. Coaching is a core part of leadership, not a task to offload.
Leadership Is “The Same Conversation a Thousand Times”
Lawrence also highlighted a reality that can exhaust leaders if they don’t accept it: leadership requires repetition. He described it plainly: leadership is the same conversation a thousand times. Whether it’s reinforcing a service behavior or re-teaching a task, leaders have to stay steady and avoid burnout when someone needs the same guidance again.
That isn’t a flaw in the learning system; it’s part of how humans build habits.
In a learning culture, HR and L&D support managers by:
- building coaching frameworks,
- giving managers observation tools and feedback language,
- and reinforcing that repetition is not failure, it’s the process.
The “Emotional Intelligence Gap” Training Can’t Fully Solve
Lawrence drew a useful line between tactical skills and emotional intelligence. You can teach someone how to make a milkshake. But you can’t fully script how to read a frustrated customer, respond appropriately, and adjust with empathy and common sense.
That “real-world” component is why manager coaching matters. Learning is not only procedural—it’s behavioral. A learning culture strengthens when leaders model the behavior they want and coach on the edge cases that formal training can’t anticipate.
Career Growth and Executive Development—Structure, Mentoring, Coaching, and the Challenge of Senior Buy-In
The discussion moved beyond onboarding and manager coaching into the most challenging stretch of the learning journey: mobility and executive development.
Set Realistic Expectations for Mobility and Readiness
The group addressed a familiar tension: newer employees want rapid growth, but organizations still need consistent performance over time. Dr. Bendet-Taicher described an internal mobility policy at Wix: employees must have been with the company for at least 1 year before moving. The reason is that practical organizations invest heavily in people, and teams need stability.
Lawrence offered the performance lens: completing a checklist doesn’t equal readiness. What matters is consistency over time—proof that performance holds under different conditions.
His analogy made it memorable: one hour at 900 degrees versus four or five hours at 300 degrees. Fast intensity doesn’t always produce quality. Slow, steady development often does.
Mentorship Works When It’s Structured and Monitored
Fox shared an example from a previous company: a formal mentorship program pairing 50 senior leaders with high-potential talent. The program wasn’t informal networking—it was structured. Mentors and mentees met at least once a month for two hours, mentees received assignments, and HR monitored the program.
That structure matters. In a learning culture, mentorship isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s an engine for development, succession readiness, and accelerated learning through exposure.
Director-to-C-Suite Learning Is Different and Often Requires External Coaching
When the conversation shifted to director and executive development, the panel acknowledged the core difficulty: this group is most likely to resist training. As one participant noted, director-level leaders often feel they already know what they need to know.
The solutions discussed were practical and experience-based:
- External coaching and consultative conversations can be more effective than formal classes.
- Conferences become meaningful when paired with deliverables (what did you learn, what will you apply, what could move the needle).
- Executive-level programs work when they feel tailored, exclusive, and relevant.
Lawrence described executive coaching as “undercover counseling” and emphasized the loneliness of leadership at the top. He compared it to elite performance coaching: even top performers need coaches.
Fox reinforced that in her experience, executives lined up for coaching sessions “like they were seeing a doctor.” Meanwhile, a rigid curriculum often failed to engage them. The learning format has to match the audience.
Make Learning Cross-Functional to Increase Value and Connection
One of the most practical takeaways for HR leaders was the value of cross-pollination. Fox described how senior leaders benefit from exposure beyond their own function—finance learning from marketing, HR learning alongside finance, and so on. The payoff is both individual development and organizational alignment.
A learning culture becomes more powerful when learning also builds relationships—because relationships speed up collaboration, problem-solving, and execution.
CONCLUSION
A learning culture isn’t built by adding more training. It’s built by designing a learning journey that matches how adults actually learn: in context, over time, with coaching, and with clear pathways that reduce confusion. Across software, healthcare, and frontline operations, the panelists returned to a shared set of principles—make learning consistent and visible, avoid overwhelming new hires, teach people how to find answers, and treat managers as the daily drivers of development.
Equally important, the learning journey can’t stop at onboarding or mid-level leadership. Executive development requires different approaches, structured mentorship, experiences that feel relevant and high-level, and coaching that supports leaders in the realities they face.
If you’re evaluating your own learning strategy, start with one simple question: Does learning in your organization feel like a connected journey or a series of isolated events? The answer will tell you where to focus next. A small shift toward clarity, coaching, and just-in-time support can move you closer to building a learning culture where learning truly is continuous.
Contributors
- Dr. Eli Bendet-Taicher, Global Learning and Development Leader at Wix
- Gisele “Gigi” Fox, Chief Learning Officer for GE Healthcare Imaging
- Nicholas Lawrence, Executive Director of People & Culture, Chik-fil-A Restaurants
