L&D, Let's Go Beyond.
L&D is not showing much value
The workplace is changing and how! The corporate landscape is becoming more and more competitive, technology is evolving at breakneck speed, automation is everywhere and there are learning disruptions like never before. Neither the work nor the workers are the same anymore. With so many changes happening so rapidly, L&D has a lot on its platter for now! However, in the recent past, there have been some not-so-encouraging numbers on the L&D front.
For instance, according to LinkedIn’s 2017 Workplace Learning Report, only 8% of CEOs reported that they see the business impact of L&D programs, and just 4% see the ROI. Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace report pointed that as many as 85% of employees are not engaged at work. Towards Maturity’s 2017 report stated that only 15% of L&D professionals claimed they noticed positive changes in staff behaviour pointing that the extent to which learning is having an impact on subsequent actions is insufficient.
In fact, in most organisations, it is not uncommon for the L&D to not get a seat at the table. Often they are left out of strategic discussions too. When times get tricky for businesses, the training budget is usually the first to suffer. Unfortunately, L&D’s relationship with the management is more like a chicken egg story in a way. If L&D cannot prove their value, they would never be valued. The only way to truly increase support and investment in L&D from company management is to prove value. L&D departments need to be ready to rise to the challenge and show their worth.
However, L&D cannot function by simply taking orders from businesses and delivering some tactical solutions to meet business demands. We need to develop the mindset for driving strategy and leading change. In essence, we need to think bigger and broader. We have to truly commit ourselves to doing better. The idea should now be to focus on making a difference to the business through what we do.
In short, it’s almost like a wake-up call to the entire L&D fraternity that it’s time to make the most of every learning initiative to ensure that the results are better. It is necessary to take actions that will put the maximum focus on making a business impact.
It is now the time to actually ‘Go Beyond’ all that is just the usual!
What 'Let's Go Beyond' means
Simply put it is a journey from 'ticking the boxes' to 'adding value to business'. It may mean different things to different individuals or different L&D teams depending on their current situation and influence. Here are some possibilities:
Let’s Go Beyond Just ’pushing’ information to learners hoping to trigger a performance change AND support them to up-skill themselves in the changing environment in terms of the Learning Culture, Ecosystem, Leadership, Rewards and everything else that impacts performance.
Let’s Go Beyond Creating one-off eLearning interventions or standalone training initiatives AND consider crafting sustained campaigns and developing ecosystems of learning, including social and collaborative learning.
Let’s Go Beyond Rolling out quizzes to test learners AND consider systemic rewards and incentives to inspire the best in learners
Let’s Go Beyond Ticking the boxes to measure learner satisfaction AND focus on making a real business impact that dives deep into the organisational fabric.
Let’s Go Beyond The belief that all our learning needs to originate from the LMS AND make every experience count as a learning experience—even offline. (xAPI is a great tool waiting to be explored)
Let’s Go Beyond The buzz words that catch our fancy every now and then AND focus on what works best for a given challenge.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how you are Going Beyond to make a business impact in your organisation. Here are couple of examples of such Go Beyond & award winning solutions our team at Upside Learning has created for our clients - https://bit.ly/LnDLetsGB
Startup Conservationist, helping startups succeed, coaching entrepreneurs and future leaders, teaches entrepreneurship and design thinking
5 年Like every other support function, LnD proves its value when it is absent. Go beyond list is what LnD does or expected to do. But in reality the way employees learn has changed dramatically. Today I overheard two of the employees in the lift making plans to come early tomorrow so that one can teach some tech stuff to the other. No LnD involved or even required. So first of all, we need to redefine the "Beyond" and figure out if there is space? for LnD there at all.? Then we can see how to go there. Even the above mentioned reports are looking at LnD role in a very conventional manner, with the objective of promoting and positioning their own solutions.?
I agree on a few points especially that the results expected by the company from L&D is never achieved. The reason I say this is because a business will need multiple solutions from a single training session, which is not an easy task to achieve. The participants also do not capture all the relevant points and concentrate on points that they think will help them. The end result is that you get a good output from half your audience. The analysis results in 50% target achievement, which is not what the company expects. Employees play a big part in such training programs, there are those who actually learn and put into practice what they gained, and then there are some who question the point of usefulness of such programs. I believe L&D professionals will need to up their game in order to get the best results, finding new ways to captivate the audience, better analysis of the training requirements and better identification of training needs. The next step in L&D will more likely be individual focus rather than group sessions.
Learning Design Senior Manager
5 年I might be playing devil’s advocate here but I have always questioned the validity of those reports—first, the sample size is too small and isn’t representative of all industries. Second, the companies that participate in these surveys are already doing a bad job at L&D. Third, the responses are not always true. However, your points about going beyond are valid and must be taken into consideration by all L&D teams. It would have been amazing if you had attached one example under each point, showing how your team went beyond with different clients. I loved the QR app example and thought it was quite innovative. Providing videos through QR codes right where the users are. One quick question though, how were users scanning these codes? On the walls? Did the QR codes also had video titles associated with them for easy recognition? Thanks for sharing this piece!