Richland Library provides over 400 evolving and high quality public programs and classes each month. We wondered how we could maximize these offerings as opportunities for staff learning. Lead by our Learning Philosophy’s tenet, “We are more intelligent together than apart,” we crafted the “Staff It Up!” Challenge to facilitate learning from each other, offer staff exposure to more learning concepts, as well as create a new form of customer engagement by encouraging staff to be co-learners alongside community members. Not only did we learn new ideas, we learned more about our customers and experienced our programs through their eyes.

Over a four-month time period, colleagues were encouraged to learn alongside customers by attending any program(s) of their choosing and all public programs and classes were open to staff. All were opportunities to learn differently, broaden skills and awareness. Barriers for attendance were removed; namely, employees were allowed to attend programs and classes at any time — all of it considered “work time.” Employees were encouraged and incentivized to be a part of the “Staff It Up!” Challenge. We employed an internal communication plan to promote the concept that included the hashtag #StaffItUp, setting a fresh tone to staff training system-wide.

The "Staff It Up!" Challenge provided opportunities to share learning. Participants shared "takeaways" with their immediate department. Stories and photos are accessible in our staff learning site. Sixty-four staff participated, attending forty-four programs at nine library locations. Staff know more about each other and expressed that this new approach was fun and useful. After personally experiencing these programs alongside both colleagues and customers, staff can better understand the library’s profound impact from a different point of view. This experiment created new opportunities and context for learning. #StaffItUp continues as all library programs are now available as staff learning opportunities.