Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges of low hierarchy and self-organised structures for employees’ learning and competency development at work. In the past decade, interest in employees’ and organisations’ self-directedness has increased. Self-organised structures are perceived as better able to answer to the quickly changing requirements of clients and business environments. Within these structures, employees are expected to take on more responsibility and maintain more control over their workplace learning, which means they must be self-directed and autonomous. An important question for this approach is how can workplace learning and employee competence development be enhanced.

Design/methodology/approach Two self-organised Finnish information and communication technology-companies participated in the study. With the help of data-driven content analysis, 36 interviews were analysed.

Findings Unclear roles, structures and areas of responsibility caused challenges during the guidance and support of learning, for long-term and sustainable professional development possibilities and in organising and prioritizing work tasks related to learning.

Practical implications In self-organised structures, there should be a means of the better supporting individual- and team-based learning. This will allow learning to have as much value as possible in the future and, therefore, be more sustainable. The findings are also important to be taken into account in managers’ and HR professionals’ education and training.

Originality/value The findings of this study can offer insights into employees’ well-being emerging from the possibility to learn and be supported in that learning especially in self-organised structures, which so far has been scarcely studied.