How Learning and Development can help your Business: 5 steps strategy

To meet business goals, managers are looking for opportunities to improve their employees’ performance. Generally, the solutions are around the idea of motivating people to do more of what already has been done. Wrong! Here's why...

Because this is why we see people stressed, overwhelmed, and pushing their limits into unhealthy routines. We all know that more is not also better. 

I remember the time I was running a medical clinic. We had three salespeople that were responsible for bringing new clients, and every time we want to increase our income, we would do “pushings”. Meaning… we would plan a meeting to give a big boost of motivation so they would stretch to bring more sales.

As you can imagine, this approach gave us good results in short term, but not in the long run. So what is worth investing in efforts?

Let’s analyze it from this angle: business is brought by clients. And, the clients are brought by employees, right? Therefore, logically thinking, what is worth investing in is PEOPLE, in giving them support to develop their abilities.

Another point to look at is how we get the outcomes: Intention > Action > Results

As I say all the time, the results are the consequences of our actions. If we want better results, we need to improve the way we act, our competencies, and skills.

Now it's time to come on the stage of the Learning and Development role!

When we talk about people development, learning is much more than just attending courses, workshops, or seminars! These are just a few tools for developing people. There are a lot of others, very effective also: coaching, mentoring, eLearning, micro-learning, shadowing, peer learning, community learning, reverse learning, delegation, shared experiences, and so on…

So how can we choose from all these tools the best ones that have the maximum impact on developing skills? Well, this is the area of expertise of L&Ds.

A learning and development professional is responsible to build a bridge between the business, learning tools, and employees.

The purpose is enabling companies to evolve and grow, by motivating people to take ownership of their own development and adopt a culture of learning.

An L&D excels at identifying the future skills the business requires and creating agile-blended programs based on learning experiences to meet the diverse needs of the people.

In other words, L&Ds job is to answer and to implement the solution for CEOs/ leaders/ HR managers’ question: How can I develop my workforce and grow my business? 

Steps to Implement Successfully a Learning Program

A learning and development program represents the master plan of the employees’ development, that support their career and personal growth. It assists the company to identify key roles and grow its talent to fill skills gaps.

Analyze the learning and development needs

The starting point of the L&D will be to understand the company strategy, its abilities, and knowledge needs in order to identify learning priorities. This analysis uncovers the gaps between actual and desired performance. Usually, this implies an initial brief with the CEO, managers, and HR.

A learning professional first will learn about your goals and then assesses how best to get there.

Design a learning proposal

The second step is to build up a learning and development program that addresses gaps and fulfills skills, talent, and future leadership needs in the specific business area. Here is very important to take into consideration the internal and external environment, the business services, and learners' needs.

The ultimate company’s goal dictates the best solution. This means making sure that the learning objectives, content, structure, activities, and measurements are all aligned with that goal. Sometimes, the best solution won’t be training — and a learning professional shouldn’t be afraid to tell you if that’s the case!

Present relevant solutions, using primarily internal resources of the company and in many cases external also. If the negotiations are successful, go to the next step. If not, re-adapt the solution or exit.

Develop the learning program

Next will be the creation of content, choosing the tools to use, and thinking about experiential activities where employees can continuously learn to reach their learning goals.

L&D will need to consider a couple of things here – the budget, the size of the teams, which internal resources are available; to plan and organize the delivery, when and where, what content, and what materials will be needed to make the program successful.

Implementation

We come to the point of implementing the learning program. Two important details:

* Many organizations do a great job of designing and conducting successful training and learning plans, even following up and measuring results. However, they miss the importance of preparing the organization for change and learning. People need to understand why this is important both for them and for the organization.

* A good communication plan, send the right information to the employees, gaining alignment within the leadership team, and making sure to have the right tools to lead the change, can save the company from losing time, money and all the effort involved.

Monitor and evaluate the implementation

The final step is to evaluate the success of the learning program. Through different kinds of assessments, it is possible to determine whether the employees were able to retain and apply the skills and knowledge, as well as what competencies and business objectives they can work on developing further. 

The most successful employee learning and development programs are usually the ones that encourage continuous education and growth.

Sometimes, on the way, roadblocks to learning need to be identified and eliminated or mitigated — such things as resistance from an individual or a group of participants, inadequate support from the organization, and/or not having the right equipment need to be prevented.

Instead of sum up

L&Ds mission is to create the context for people to develop.

They are partners, meaning that they have an interest in you, your business, and ultimately your success.

Take advantage of their expertise and count on their abilities to contribute to your business growth.  

Companies that have dedicated employee learning and development programs see not only a sharp increase in profits but also have a high level of staff retention, which is vital for sustained business growth. According to a study conducted by Gallup, replacements can cost a company around 150 percent of a staff's annual salary.

Put on your business strategy a goal for employee development. Think about! We, human beings, have in our nature the urge to evolve. If we find within our company this possibility, it motivates us to stay. If not, we will find it in another context. Most people will work hard for you – and feel more loyal and committed – when they see that you are investing in them.

Before you go...

I would love to hear about companies that truly invest in people development, so please write a comment with such examples. It can be a good learning opportunity for us.

How is your learning and development strategy? What is easy, and what do you find difficult? How people react to it?

If you don't have a learning strategy you can try following these steps and tell us how it goes.

PS: if along the way you feel the need for support, giving some advice doesn't cost anything.