The Absolute Criticality of L&D for Your Organization

Many organizations do not have proper Learning & Development departments set up. Most leaders don’t fully recognize L&D as a necessity. Here’s why having a proper L&D department is absolutely critical for any organization:

1. Change Management: Are you launching in new markets? Changing your workflows? Do you have new processes or systems in place? Do you plan on changing or updating your services or products in any way?

• Every small change impacts employees from top to bottom, whether you see it or not. Initiating an impact assessment led by L&D could help you see which employees will need awareness of these changes vs. full on training, along with a timeline and order of communication of these changes.?
• L&D can help design impactful job aids, workshops, self-paced videos, or even Q&A sessions for employees to better understand the changes taking place in a learner friendly way.
• Knowledge management (updating old processes or documents with the new, despite how small the change) can go a long way if your organization is constantly innovating and iterating (hint: you should be doing this!).

2. Management & Leadership: You surely have heard the saying “people don’t leave jobs; they leave bad managers.” Bad managers happen because managers don’t get enough training on how to be a great one. L&D can help.

• Build a cadenced leadership development opportunity for all managers. Topics and issues can be prioritized by what you gather from direct reports, leadership, other employees, and HRBPs on the ground. Not only will you have more engaged and properly trained managers leading teams, but you will also make employees feel heard and seen.
• This will also help rock star ICs feel eager to be a manager. Often times, this pool gets so large that you may even develop an aspiring managers program for these folks.

3. Career Pathing: Do you have a succession plan for every employee at your company? If not, what is their incentive to stay?

• L&D can help build career pathing through competency-based leveling work for all employees, while providing bespoke training for cross-functional work, stretch assignments, or even simply upskilling.?
• Succession planning while providing the right training for employees’ next career move will motivate employees to learn and elevate their skills. This will also help managers and employees to align on goals, vision, and career paths.

4. Talent Management: How is your eNPS across the org? Are employees disengaged and feeling disconnected?

• In every organization I’ve worked for, employees want more human connections outside of their department bubbles. Employees want to know how they’re contributing to the larger process or system, how they are impacting the work of others, and better understand what others are doing.?
• Utilize your L&D team to host coaching circles, coffee chats, peer mentorship programs, or leadership panel event series for more intimate connections and regular conversation. This will spark more innovation and natural mentorship across your teams as well.

5. Employee Onboarding: First impressions last a lifetime. How is your current onboarding for new hires? Do you send swag and call it a day? Are new hires set up for success in their first week, month, year?

• I’ve built hands-on onboarding programs that include both self-paced courses (for some necessary breathing room and comprehension time), as well as in-person connections with fun icebreakers, games, and quizzes (for that human interaction and engagement).
• Goals of onboarding should be to: warmly welcome the new hire, help new employees know their exact role and schedule, fully understand how they fit into the larger organization and its people/processes, and most importantly, set them up for success for a long tenure at your company.
• In the onboarding programs I’ve built, I’ve ensured that every manager and newly hired employees have at the very least one 1:1 set up on a weekly basis, with specific tasks around: identifying career goals together, communication expectations, personal preferences on recognition, and work styles. This will guide managers to help onboard the new hire smoothly with better vision alignment.

6. Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: Is DEIB on your mind? Is this topic the elephant in the room during leadership conversations? Don’t just shout out Black History Month in February and call it a day (though avoiding this topic altogether is the worst case scenario).

• L&D can work with HR data to measure current DEI data and employee sentiment around the issue, and build scaffolded DEI programs starting from small incremental changes for the organization (including hiring best practices, inclusive language, psychological safety within teams, and creating ERG groups).
• A huge perk of implementing DEIB work within your organization other than elevating your diversity and sentiments of belonging is that your employees will begin to feel more pride and excitement about working at your organization. This will increase both productivity and connectedness across functional teams.

If you’re looking to strategize any of the above topics or grasp the notion of building a Learning & Development department, please feel free to DM me. I’m looking for my next career home and would be delighted to connect!?

If you’re not looking for a Director or VP-level L&D personnel like myself, then I still have great news for you: I have a ton of talented names looking for their next journey. Reach out to me to learn more!

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