A Strategic Approach to Transforming Training for Market and Technology Changes

Talent and training leaders can add more value by being more strategic. Technology is changing much faster than many organizations are able to skill up their workforce. One of the top challenges for corporate learning is to enable their workforce faster than the world and technology is changing. Most are playing catch up rather than staying ahead of the curve. A lot of corporate training tends to be reactionary and transactional in nature. Taking a more strategic, partnership and proactive approach will allow you to manage resources and address market and technology training more efficiently and quicker. Here are some things that learning departments can consider as ways to be more strategic, reduce waste; address bottlenecks; be better equipped to manage training supply-demand issues and how to become a true partner to the business and their learners.

Be More Strategic and Less Reactionary

Many training departments are reactionary rather than proactive or strategic. Many of the learning strategies tend to be fluffy and not easily defined or implemented. Take a more proactive and strategic approach to identifying future skills and needs rather than waiting for the business to tell them what they need. Learning leaders need to be more strategic rather than order takers. They should act as true partners to the business. Part of this is to understand the industries and markets with which they support. You don’t need to be an expert in that, but having an awareness of trends and changes will put you in great stead with the business. You will be invited to the table and your role will move from transactional to strategic and transformational.

Be Data Driven in Your Decisions

Use predictive technologies to forecast trends in what is happening internally and externally to your organization. This will give you a head start on what trends are showing and where you can initiate conversations with the business and create learning strategies and approaches to address these forecasted trends and needs. Furthermore, it is also related to enabling and facilitating better partnerships and better measurements as being key strategic actions.

Work in More Agile and LEAN Ways

Use agile methods to get training out the door quicker, cheaper, with higher quality and less waste. However, be mindful that many learning departments use agile by name only but are still somewhat waterfall in nature. If done wrong, it simply introduces more administration for the sake of reporting. If done well you can get from learning need to idea to MVP to finished training asset quicker. In order to be truly impactful, agile processes need to be true agile and not just traditional waterfall in agile clothing. 

Balance Talent Development and Talent Acquisition

There is a real challenge and desperation to get skills into an organization to respond to market and technology changes. There is often a pre-occupation to do so in the quickest manner and that is likely through recruitment. Learning leaders also need to have a solid approach to enable and upskill their existing workforce. This needs to be balanced and a long-term strategic view needs to be taken as the preoccupation on bringing in skills through recruitment means that there is a real risk of skill atrophy and resource redundancy if we are not balancing how we bring in and enable skills in organizations. This speaks to the need for less siloed working even in Human Resource and Talent departments and the importance of creating key and meaningful partnerships between Talent Acquisition and Talent Development. Often the right hand is not aware of what the left hand is doing.

Identify Your Operational Bottlenecks

Learning is not a boundaryless resource. There are fixed resources (budget, staff, time etc.) and there will always be more demand than there is supply. Learning departments need to start to ringfence their resources and identify what is and is not defined as a service offering. Many training departments are spending time, effort and resources on training that could have otherwise been solved for in a different way. Not every business need or challenge is solved by training. Learning leaders need to be able to set appropriate boundaries and have clear inclusion and exclusion criteria around what is and is not learning. If leaders start to say no to requests for training where training is not the best option; this opens significant capacity to focus on those needs posed by changing technologies that might be more of a priority. It’s about resource management, prioritization and being more strategic.

Stop Creating Networking Events as Training Events

So many training events are really just networking events. It is ok to build in networking into learning designs and architectures but they should not be the sole focus at the exclusion of any learning per se. Not only does this use up significant training resources; there are often no real tangible business outcomes or learning outcomes. Those resources can be freed up to focus on priority learning to address market and technology changes. Networking events are fantastic and important, but leave them to the business to fund and organize.

Adopt a Solid Outcome Measurement Strategy

A lot of training might not give the ROI they had intended nor offer the actual learning. This means they are a drain on your limited resources and create bottlenecks in your supply-demand. Hard decisions need to be made about what is and is not having the intended business and learning outcomes. Those trainings that are not having the intended outcomes must be seen as waste as they are consuming significant resources that can otherwise be redirected to more impactful and priority training options and respond more quickly to changing market and technology needs. Discussions about measurement need to focus on business outcomes right from the first conversation with business leaders. Adopt a solid measurement methodology that measures substantive competence and knowledge transfer beyond attendance and completions.

Secondly, bring measurement discussions right up front and make them part of the original architectural design. Often you see measurement being an afterthought once a training is already developed. Often you see measurement strategies that focus on attendance or preference (both which are important data points) but they don’t offer insights into the effects of learning or the ROI. Better measurement and assessing the true business outcomes; speed to proficiency; task competency and the effects of knowledge transfer will provide important data to learning departments to make further prioritization decisions and credibility with the business. Tracking completions and attendance are important for operational perspectives but they aren’t business or learning outcomes.

Learning Leaders as True Partners

There is real value in building a true partnership relationship with the business leaders and subject matter experts. Closer partnership is about co-creation, collaboration and working together rather than simply being told what the business needs. Better relationships and partnerships will allow learning departments to get ahead of the curve because they will have a seat at the table. Hold strategy and alignment sessions to be proactive rather than waiting for the business to tell their needs.

Organizational Design and Siloed Working

Many learning departments are highly siloed and the transition between each silo creates significant delays and bottlenecks in the need’s identification-design-develop-deliver cycle. Consider process redesign, organizational redesign and other mitigation strategies if the current processes and organizational structure are causing delays and bottlenecks and impacting your ability to manage the increasing supply-demand issues you are facing.

Consolidate Your Learning Strategy and Approaches

Many organizations still want to develop their own training in-house. That is admirable and likely not sustainable especially in light if the need to respond to market changes and technology which is changing much faster than training can respond to. Learning leaders can begin to think about their strategy around build, buy or curate and how they might develop key strategic partnerships with an ecosystem of vendor partners who specialize in those prioritized areas of need.

Clean Up the House

Cleaning up your learning management system is a key strategic move as it allows for a clearer view of what is needed, the gaps, what can be leveraged or curated. It might also allow for the release of people resources who are otherwise still managing specific training initiatives and that capacity can be used to address changing priority needs. It also improves the learner experience as they will be able to find relevant and key resources quicker, and reduces the challenge of them spending training time on outdated training resources. They can focus this time on training in priority areas.

Standardize Those Processes Where It Makes Sense

Customization and personalization are important in learning departments. However, there are many areas that can be standardized. This would reduce bottlenecks; improve speed from end-to-end and allow for more consistency across areas where that would impact your ability to manage supply-demand better. For example, be clear on how to work with the business to get to needs, identify skills; understand business objectives and develop learning objectives. This typically takes an inordinately long time and is often not that effective. There is too much variability in this process which generally leads to significantly different outcomes, expectations and planning. Creating a strategic business alignment process that focuses on key information you need will support in getting to the information quicker and more consistently. These are not just conversations; they are key strategy alignment conversations. This key information then gets fed into the training cycle and the quicker you get to it, and the higher quality of information has a downstream impact into the alignment, fidelity and impact of everything that comes after those strategic business conversations. There are many other areas within corporate training cycles that can be standardized.  It will also better place learning leaders to determine if the requests are in fact appropriate for training or if there are other organizational solutions. I think it is also important to be clear on what areas of the training cycle that does not lend itself to standardization.

 Drive Ongoing Organic Prioritization Efforts

It’s typical for the demand for training to exceed the supply of training resources. Training is often one of the largest line items for organizations and there is generally no option to extend those already large budgets. However there is often a lot of waste, duplication and outdated resources in training portfolios. Learning teams need to be skilled at prioritization strategies and conversations working with the business areas they support. This relates to those conversations about partnership and measurement data.

Diversify Beyond Traditional Event Learning

There is still a lot of preference for learning events; and in-person classroom style learning. These take a lot of time to plan and deliver. Learning departments can start to include learning strategies and approaches that are not based on large events only. For example, learning leaders can work with the business on understanding where in the working day learning opportunities might be immersed into their every-day work without the need of taking the employees out of market. On the job learning is not a new concept. Give people the information they need at the point of demand and offer coaching, mentoring and performance support guides that they can use on the job. There are other options such as coaching and mentoring programs that support your learners where and when they need it with little disruption to their work day.  

Reduce Learning Administrative Efforts

Learning operations teams spend a lot of time in meetings. Reducing or eliminating the non-essential meetings will literally open capacity where they can focus on actual training rather than talking about training. More strategic partnerships and clearer objectives will lead to less transactional meetings. For those meetings that are necessary, learning departments can ensure they have a clear structure, agenda and objectives for those meetings. They should identify tangible and clear next steps and align on who is responsible and accountable. LEAN approaches can be helpful in reducing the time spent in unnecessary activities that produce bottlenecks and reduce the ability to respond to those market and technology changes.

 Market and technology changes are posing challenges for learning departments around how they might stay ahead of the curve. I believe that there are a number of things that will help learning departments be better partners, more strategic, reduce bottlenecks and help them prioritize those training needs while balancing real supply-demand challenges. Get in touch. Let’s talk training.