5 Alternatives To Mature Your L&D Perform
The focus is on learning and development
One result of the pandemic was the increased profile of learning and development (L&D) in many organizations. Two statistics from the LinkedIn Learning 2020 Workplace Learning Report [1] highlight the growth of L & D’s profile. The first is the percentage of L&D experts who said their CEO is actively committed to learning, which has increased from just 27% in 2019 to a staggering 70% in 2020 The C-suite table increases from 24% in 2019 to 62% in 2020. That is of course the good news.
The potentially bad news is that while appreciation for L&D has increased, many L&D organizations have been constrained at best by tight budgets, and at worst, have been downsized and demoted significantly during the pandemic, a potential misalignment between the organization’s expectations and the current ones L&D skills. If you are an L&D leader, now is the time to take stock of your learning organization and consider what actions are required to meet the challenges ahead. Let’s take a look at 5 potential ways to prepare your L&D.
5 ways to mature your L&D function
Opportunity 1: Governance
Governance is a collective term that captures the rules of engagement that you establish with the teams you support. Some examples of governance in L&D include defining roles and responsibilities for your team and internal customers, setting a benchmark for what needs to be in place before your team can get involved, and setting realistic service level agreements (SLAs) for the level of support your internal customers can expect. A “yes to all” approach to engaging your organization can lead to disastrous results for both your team and the organization. Implementing the right governance will prepare both your team and the rest of the organization for success by ensuring that your internal customers come to the table prepared and with appropriate expectations, and that your team knows when to do it okay to push back and when it’s time to move forward.
Opportunity 2: process
Usually the process goes hand in hand with the scale. This is not because we are all closed control freaks who want to micromanage every action, but most of us have found that an ad hoc approach may work for a small, agile team, but it will soon become chaos Will arise when you start team members without a process to juggle multiple projects and stakeholders. And this pattern tends to repeat itself. The processes you put in place to manage ten projects often don’t scale to twenty and so on. Now is the time to both think about where your process may have come short before COVID and put in place the right feedback mechanisms so you are ready to make quick improvements as your team scales.
Opportunity 3: technology
While most of us slumped during the pandemic, the EdTech market continued its rapid development. Our own Totara had its largest publication in its 11 year history with a foray into skill development and collaborative learning, but Totara wasn’t alone. The market has been inundated with product improvements and new products, and for good reason. Learning expectations of learners and organizations are changing rapidly, and technology providers are trying to stay one step ahead of the demand curve. Learning organizations need to do the same. Now is a good time to build your 6 month / 1 year / 3 year / 5 year vision for learning in your company and use that vision to identify gaps in your technology stack that are You need to get there.
Opportunity 4: data
With the advent of hybrid learning models, more and more learning will take place online. That’s a truth. Another truth is that online learning will generate lots and lots of data [2], and this data is becoming easier and easier to collect. This is the turning point for L&D if we are ever to become the data-driven, quantitative-based field that we aspire to.
Opportunity 5: people
The last chance to explore your L&D organisation’s capabilities is with the people. This reflects both the need to add staff after the last 18 months as Lean and the evolving skills required in L&D. Data analysts, social learning architects, MOOC moderators and system integrators are just a few of the roles that are needed in the modern L&D organization and that weren’t even on the radar a few years ago. Take a look at the graphic on page 29 of this eBook [3] from Toward Maturity for a great inventory of L&D skills.
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So what do you think Are you ready for the L&D boom? Join us and the eLearning industry on August 31, 2021 as we examine how the learning organization can mature and learn how leading companies have done just that to meet changing needs.
References:
[1] Lead with learning: Insights and advice on the new status of L&D
[2] Drowning in data? Seven Approaches to Data to Help You Measure Success
[3] Boost Performance and Productivity Why learning organizations make and sustain more impact
Kineo
Kineo helps the world’s leading companies improve their performance through learning and technology. We combine quality of learning with award-winning customer service and innovation. We’re here to meet your learning and performance challenges – and deliver results.
Originally published on www.kineo.com.
