Strengthening Workforce/Talent Development

Key strategies to fortify the function

By Nelson R. Santiago , CLO at Learning DNA , LLC.

In her January 2022 CNBC article , ?Abigail Ng shared that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, eliminated its global talent development team in December 2021. Between 70-100 people were affected by the layoffs. The reasons for the team’s disbanding? According to the company’s memo, the Talent Development team's work offered “limited practical value,” was of “mediocre quality,” and “did not make very effective use of our employees’ time.” Even more concerning, company leaders also mentioned that the organization discovered that many employees did not know what the talent development team did.

Many organizations, representing all industries, are opting to reduce Workforce/Talent Development (W/TD) staffing or relocate responsibilities to save money and time. Although this is tough news to hear from a W/TD professional perspective, it is a justified approach since, statistically, W/TD teams often have not done their due diligence in proving their value and/or meeting the organizational needs. As Ng wrote of ByteDance, employees may find W/TD initiatives to be “personally helpful” but are more like “feel good” initiatives where their actual value to the company is limited and, at times, questionable.

To prevent this from happening in your organization and to your team, I recommend three strategies below that have been proven to be best practices in attaining success: Development for the W/TD Professional, Fortifying the Function, and Gaining Support for the Function. These strategies address three levels within the organization: the W/TD professional, the W/TD manager, and the organization’s executives.

1. Development for the W/TD Professional

Executives highly regard competence in all organizations’ workforce. To meet that bar, talent development professionals should adopt a continuous learning mindset for themselves and act upon it. Aim your professional development to their desired goals and the needs of the organization. If you’re an individual talent development staff member, you should ensure that there is tangible value for both you and your company, whether you decide to pursue a professional certification or an advanced degree. Remember that you are a resource to the rest of the organization and you need to stay relevant. Like the newest cell phone, you have to be running the latest operating system in order to practice full functionality and lead by example.

Managers can facilitate professional development for their direct reports by learning what interests them, allocating, and allowing, time to learn, and finding ways for their team to use their new skills. C-suite execs can approve organizational funding for such learning and be an advocate, making sure the organization fosters a culture of learning.

We asked over 100 global W/TD professionals, through a poll and individual interviews, which top three skills new W/TD professionals needed to kick-start their career in the right direction. Of course, this was not an easy question to answer as W/TD career paths vary greatly from person to person and industry to industry. That said, their top three recommended foundational competencies are:

·?????Continuous Learning - By pursuing knowledge for both personal and professional purposes, talent development professionals should serve as role models for the importance of lifelong learning. It sends a message to others that they can and should take charge of their own professional advancement.

·?????Evaluating Impact - Professionals in talent development should be able to put into practice a multilayered, methodical strategy for acquiring, examining, and reporting data regarding the efficacy and effort of learning programs. In order to make decisions, develop learning programs, and increase the value of learning for senior executives and business stakeholders, data related to organizational plans and goals must be collected.

·?????Business Acumen - Talent development professionals need to comprehend both the general business or organization they work for and basic business principles. Understanding important elements affecting a company, such as its current status, impacts from its industry or market, and variables influencing growth, is referred to as having business insight. Understanding an organization's internal procedures and structures, as well as how money is made and spent, choices are made, and how its mission or purpose is carried out, are also included. Being strategically involved with senior management and ensuring that talent development initiatives are in line with the overarching business strategy requires having business acumen.

2. Fortifying the W/TD Function

As a W/TD manager, you are responsible for overseeing your company’s talent development program. Your goal is to help employees grow in ways that?improve the organizational culture, contribute to both personal and organizational success, and?boost employee retention.?Performing these duties will be made more successful by obtaining executive buy-in. To achieve this, the W/TD function has to have a solid foundation and yield tangible results that support business imperatives and strategic goals.

Here are our recommended three actionable approaches to fortify your team’s effectiveness:

· Increase your proficiency in performing needs assessments. Choosing how to respond to a training request is a strategic endeavor. Starting with the end in mind, or the why, will be the keystone in identifying the root cause of the actual problem and providing educated solutions, rather than simply recommending training that will only treat superficial symptoms. Remember that the issue is not always the issue, meaning that there is always a deeper underlying factor that kick-starts the training request, at times unknown to the requestor. Needs assessments place the training request in the context of the organization’s needs. Training adds value only when it ultimately serves a business purpose such as for proper upskilling and reskilling efforts. Our customers, both internal and external, know their business, no doubt about it. But at times, they do not know the root cause or remedy for issues that involve human performance. During the needs assessments stage, talent development professionals should consider the following measures:

Payoff needs-

• Is this a program worth doing?
• Is this a problem worth solving?
• Is this an opportunity worth pursuing?

Business needs-

• What problem(s) must be resolved?
• What strategies must be supported?
• What measures will indicate success?

Performance needs-

• What are the specific gaps between desired and current performance?
• What tools and resources do the employees need to achieve the desired performance?
• How is the work environment affecting the transfer of learning back to the job?

Learning needs-

• What knowledge and/or skills do employees currently have, or need, to achieve the desired performance?

Preference needs-

• What is their attitude towards the proposed training program?
• Is the program relevant to the learners' needs?
• Do the learners see the value of the program?

Ensuring that these needs are uncovered before rendering a solution is crucial to enhancing trust and credibility in the function. Note: Beware of falling into analysis paralysis, and make sure to practice an agile approach to assessing these needs when developing a training request process.

·?????Make learning measurable. How will you know that your initiatives are successful? If you think about it, the ultimate measure of the financial success of a program, process, or initiative is the return on investment (ROI). One of the ways to achieve ROI is to tie the initiatives to the business and isolate the effects of W/TD solutions, how do you know that the W/TD initiative was the cause of the business impact? To receive full support from your executive team, W/TD managers need due diligence to show the value and benefit of the function. In essence, we strive to move the value of the function from an expense in the P&L statement to the capital investments list.

Ensure you have a continuous improvement approach and measure your initiatives from the initial stage and throughout. Establishing a proper evaluation methodology, such as that which the ROI Institute advocates, will ensure that your initiatives yield the proper metrics to show the value of the function to the business and employees. The Jack and Patti Phillips ROI Methodology is a scalable and systematic approach to program evaluation. Using a process model, five-level framework, and operating standards to capture performance metrics from simple satisfaction scores to the financial impact, the methodology enables you to collect appropriate data to report the performance of a variety of initiatives and program types. The ROI method generates both qualitative and quantitative data and provides techniques to isolate the effects of the program from other influences–resulting in credible metrics and ROI reports accepted by financial executives and stakeholders.

·?????Foster a culture that promotes workforce/talent development. Organizations should concentrate on creating team cultures that support talent development and learning as part of a talent development plan. That can entail designating specific a time during the day, week, or month for training and development that focuses on developing talents. Or it may entail giving employees reading recommendations for books on leadership that could advance their understanding in particular fields. Are workers requesting definitions of leadership? People will seek to improve themselves if you cultivate an environment that emphasizes how essential talent development is.

3. Gaining Support for the W/TD Function

Acquiring support from executives is necessary before developing talent development initiatives. If management doesn't think employee talent development is valuable, this could be a challenge. Encourage company executives to educate themselves on the advantages of talent development and how it benefits not just the individual employees but also the business as a whole. Talent development is an operational readiness support function that can tangibly increase the revenue-generating capability of any given organization. Executives need to understand how supporting talent development fosters a great work environment that workers will feed off of. The implementation of initiatives is made easier once the top executives support it beyond approval.

To prepare executives to properly support the function, there are three recommended S’s of executive support: Seat, $ubsidize, and Speak for.

·?????Seat at the table:

Although not all organizations are ready, or have the need, for a TD executive (Chief Learning Officer), allowing your W/TD folks to have a real voice with and proximity to execs, and a C-team that supports W/TD, will expose the leadership team to the true state of the operational readiness (i.e. career pathing, revenue-generating readiness, onboarding, alignment to business strategy, etc.) of their organizations. Traditionally, W/TD professionals are placed under HR in the organizational chart; but at times that limits the operationalization of such initiatives as the workforce perceives the W/TD function as “compliance based” or "mandatory" instead of considering the professional development attributes that it offers. It is time to change the paradigm thinking!

·?????$ubsidize the function:

Many times, executives will say “You have a blank canvas to work with” when it comes to endorsing W/TD initiatives. But professionals soon realize that the proper funding to achieve organizational learning objectives was not present. Making W/TD part of the capital investment list rather than the P&L statement will take a strong global executive stance. Similar to how the HR department often is based on a ratio of HR to organizational staff members, the same holds true for W/TD. This will be a step in assuring that your team has the resources and financials (as well as the “ear” from the seat at the table) to be successful.

·?????Speak for the function:

Supporting the function, from an executive perspective, goes beyond approving the execution of the initiative. CEOs, and frankly other executives consequentially, should be the biggest W/TD champions. C-suite’s influence will cascade down throughout your workforce, inspiring all employees to learn. Promote learning from the top down. Encourage the CEO and other C-level officers?to post key articles or content that they curate from places they learn. Employees are more likely to read the same articles or watch the same courses when senior leaders share them. This is due to a psychological phenomenon called transference. This means that if an executive suggests you spend time learning, reflected by their example, most employees will follow suit. As champions, executives don’t necessarily need to be engaged in the day-to-day operation of the training program, but they should be there to endorse success and long-term commitment.

Conclusion

A Mindset, Not an Activity

A culture of learning is an organizational culture in which employees continuously seek, share, and apply new knowledge and skills to improve individual and organizational performance. Top executives play a key role in defining and supporting such culture, and W/TD professionals play an integral role in executing and providing appropriate metrics and results that confirm success.