Voluntary or Expected? Making Sense of Employee-Generated Learning: Insights for Formalization
When employees create learning content for colleagues, are they helpful volunteers – or is this becoming an unwritten expectation?
Topic
This thesis explores how employees at Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) experience their engagement in informal Employee-Generated Learning (EGL). At SBB, EGL has not yet been formally introduced as a Learning and Development (L&D) approach, but employees already create and share learning content for colleagues. The study uses organizational and compulsory citizenship behavior (OCB-CCB) as a sensitizing lens to examine this extra-role work and perceived voluntariness. It investigates how motivational, social, and organizational conditions shape engagement and what these experiences imply for possible formalization of EGL at SBB.
Relevance
EGL is gaining attention as organizations seek alternatives to traditional, formal, and top-down L&D models. It positions employees outside L&D as creators of instructions, tutorials, and training sessions for colleagues, complementing centralized learning provision. Despite growing practitioner interest, research still offers limited insight into how employees experience such engagement, especially when EGL is not yet formalized. By focusing on SBB, this thesis highlights motivational, cultural, and organizational conditions that matter when organizations, especially L&D and managers, consider whether and how to formalize EGL.
Results
The findings indicate that engagement in EGL is conditioned by purpose, enjoyment, autonomy, and expert identity. It is also shaped by team culture, social acceptance, recognition, and continuous learning norms, and is enabled or constrained by time, tools, and managerial support. Perceived voluntariness shifts over time between voluntary, self-expected, others’ expectations, and formally assigned engagement. Along this continuum, tensions related to role expectations, formalization, resources, and organizational culture arise and indicate where to focus when formalizing EGL.
Implications for practitioners
- When EGL is informal and emergent, organizations should favor enabling over coercive formalization: keep EGL voluntary at the organizational level, while teams decide who contributes and how.
- Human Resources should strengthen the sharing culture by communicating the purpose and relevance of EGL, and recognizing participation informally rather than embedding it in performance reviews.
- L&D should enable sharing beyond local teams through a stable platform, simple templates, and coaching, so employees can contribute without heavy processes.
- Managers should allocate time and budget, address negative effects such as job creep, role ambiguity, or citizenship pressure, and, when necessary, formally assign tasks.
Methods
To explore how employees experience informal EGL at SBB, twelve semi-structured online interviews were conducted with employees from different business units who had created and shared learning content alongside their core roles. The study followed an exploratory qualitative single-case design and used Gioia’s inductive coding methodology to move from detailed statements to broader themes and aggregate dimensions. This approach resulted in a nuanced process model of engagement conditions, shifting perceptions of voluntariness, and tensions relevant for potential formalization of EGL.