Conventional wisdom says that 70% of professional learning comes from on-the-job experiences. So as long as you go to work and do your job, you’ll learn what you need, right?

Well, not necessarily.

While you will certainly pick up things from your experiences, you may be learning the wrong lessons; you may be learning the low-priority things rather than the important ones; you may end up with some pretty big gaps in your knowledge. Or, you may be learning exactly what you need…but you have no way of measuring that. Effective learning does not usually happen by chance.

Think about when you were in school. You could have wandered from classroom to classroom, sitting down and listening and then going off to another room, another teacher, another subject. You would have learned some things over the years, but you would not have gotten a true education. Without any goals or structure, you could easily collect random bits of knowledge that wouldn’t be of much use, and you would have missed out on the opportunity to develop yourself in a way that helps you move forward.

So why do so many people assume that on-the-job learning can happen randomly?

This is an all too common attitude. When a manager feels like a team is understaffed and they cannot afford the time to send people for training or engage in coaching or mentoring, a typical response is “they don’t need classes, they’ll learn on the job.” That’s fine, but only if there’s some structure around that learning, and when someone is using this as a cop-out because they are pressed for time, then setting specific development goals and following up will be low on their list of priorities. Some organizations have a “management trainee” or “young professionals” program without any specific development opportunities; the assumption in this case is “they’ll learn on the job,” but by that logic, so will everyone, so how are the people in this program any different from every other junior staff member?

Of course, some managers – especially in small startups where everyone feels pressed for time – leave it up to their employees to figure out how to learn on the job. There’s a certain logic to letting employees take charge of their development, but they at least need some goals, or they may end up learning stuff that is of no use.

On-the-job learning should not really require a syllabus like a semester-long university course does, but it still helps to put some structure to it, both in the planning and the execution. Some ides to consider include:

Create a development plan. This should be obvious, but plenty of managers don’t do this. It doesn’t have to be a step-by-step guide to learning, but you should identify the hard and soft skills an employee needs now, and what they will need in the foreseeable future if they are new to the job, focus on how they will develop in this role, and if they have been doing it for a while, start looking at what it will take to get to the next level). Even if you expect your employees to take charge of their development, you should work with them to at least identify the priorities.

Give them work that builds the skills they need. If you want them to learn client-facing skills, assign them work that has them interact with clients. If they need to develop their leadership ability, have them lead short-term project teams. If they need to get better at making presentations, have them make presentations. Once you have some learning priorities, have them work in a way that achieves those priorities. If they don’t, then they have no chance to learn.

Check in. A teacher reviews homework and gives exams; you don’t need to be so formal. However, you should have regular conversations with your employees to ensure they are learning what you expect them to learn. You need a way to measure their progress, or you are may reach a point where you expect them to be knowledgeable and they have no idea what you’re talking about. It helps if you have some performance indicators along the way that can help you to know if they are learning, and also putting that learning to use.

Get them some help. A lot of learning comes through the interactions they have with others; are they meeting the right people? Help your new employees develop the network that will help them learn more and do their job better. One technique is for a new employee to show up on Day One and already have introductory meetings on their calendar that you have arranged with the people they should know. Yes, you may want people to take responsibility for their own development, but without some help from you at the start, it can take a long time for that to happen on its own.

If the vast majority of learning is supposed to happen on the job, we really ought to make an effort to ensure it actually does. Rather than expecting people to just naturally learn what they need, try adding a little structure to their work experiences so you get the full learning value and see an improvement in their performance.