How Can the Learning Function Deliver Relevant L&D and Business Value?

Part 4 – Learning & Development Series

What happens when you make learning a strategic investment in your people?  You “move the dial” on individual and organizational agility and, thus, the performance of the business. Importantly, a partnering between the Learning Function and business operations will be required to deliver relevant learning and development (L&D) aligned with key strategic priorities, especially in an environment of continuous change.

In our series demonstrating why L&D is critical to an organization’s success, we offered points of view about:

• L&D’s “War to Develop Talent” to support organizational growth and change initiatives
• Leadership’s “Make or Break” role in L&D
• Taking People with You” to develop a readied and enabled workforce
  
  

Discover more about the Learning Function itself and its true need to:

• Establish an active partnership with business operations to understand changing business and related workforce L&D needs
• Validate the results-driven connection between L&D investments and desired business outcomes
• Touch the “minds and hearts” of the workforce to reinforce commitment to individual and collective organizational improvements

How effective is the Learning Function in business today?

“What is most important in my mind is that the learning function improves the company's people capability. For us, leadership development is absolutely essential, so we have a real strategy around it. We need the right tools and the right processes to bring people along, [and to] educate them about our culture and what we really stand for.”

“One of the things I love most about our company is the way the learning function helps people gain self-awareness and improve.... We help people build awareness of their real strengths and then we help them figure out how they can take them to the next level.”

“In the end, we expect our people capability to improve and our results to be better.”[1]

David Novak, CEO of YUM! Brands

The Learning Function should be a key workforce advocate and translator. It needs to be the engine that translates “What do I need to do my job?” in an understandable way for the workforce, especially related to job impacts from change. David Novak stresses the importance of that role in his quote above.  As you read in our series, he backs his philosophy by making L&D a strategic priority and investment for YUM! Brands and has positively impacted performance by doing so.

The Learning Function should provide a safe place where people can learn essential competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills and behaviors) and capabilities to meet business operations needs.  The advocate and translator roles are much more acute when change events need to be demystified so the workforce understands the what, where, when, why, how, and personal impacts from change. 

But does the Learning Function generally deliver?

We think it’s pretty obvious that David Novak’s leadership commitment to and participation in L&D has been instrumental in creating performance success for Yum! Brands.

However, criticisms have been cited by Human Capital Institute (HCI) that strategic talent management overall — and corporate learning in particular — still puts too much faith in, and pours too many resources into, information-delivery strategies and systems that are stuck in the old world. Limited information sharing, old models, failing to reach appropriate audiences, and infrequent training are some of the examples cited.[2]  

Additionally, Clark N. Quinn notes two concerns in his book:[3]

“Organizations have changed, technology has changed, and the nature of work has changed, but Learning & Development (L&D) has not advanced in the last quarter century.” 

And “97% of learning takes place on the job, yet L&D practitioners seldom prioritize the need to support performance and provide job assists. At worst, they focus more on the efficiency of training than on its effectiveness.”

Since there is an expectation that organizational L&D should evolve to create a more readied and enabled workforce, how does the Learning Function itself first (or simultaneously) evolve to become a relevant, impactful business partner to drive desired organizational results and establish a credible return for investments made?

The Learning Function must become an active partner with business operations to understand the ever-changing business and related workforce learning needs. It cannot reside in its function managing just the legacy programs.

Read the quote above from David Novak: “… the learning function helps people gain self awareness and improve.” In a dynamic business, the Learning Function must:

• Proactively work closely with business operations to gain awareness of their emerging needs
• Create and adjust learning to help people personally improve their competencies and capabilities and learn how to be more effective at what they do

Although active partnership may sometimes be a challenge even during normal business operations, it is critical to sustain a high-performing culture and certainly a greater imperative under conditions requiring organizational change.

5 L&D factors to support business performance and change

1. There is a normal and natural human capital dilemma at many levels of the organization within the context of change.  While an organization may have its workforce, are they the right individuals to navigate the turbulence a change process will create?  The Learning Function can support change and workforce readiness by:

• Identifying requirements and needs to successfully achieve change objectives
• Assessing the mindsets and competencies of the key individuals
• Creating focused, efficient and effective learning based on the specific identified priorities, requirements, and needs
• Helping to message the vision and purpose of change through L&D (i.e., infusing it during the competency acquisition process)
• Facilitating accountability for the application of L&D efforts in both routine and non-routine work

2. Understanding organizational vision and purpose enables people to adjust without unnecessary delay. This understanding, coupled with two-way communications, allows an organization to work through challenges encountered during change more rapidly.  It is important that the Learning Function embeds a significant communication thread of the vision and purpose for business strategy or any change in all L&D to support workforce understanding of intended outcomes. This insight allows people to anticipate, see and figure out necessary responsive adjustments without waiting to be told what to do.

3. Culture can be directed when L&D is used strategically.  Organizational culture displays its dynamic “personality” and is impacted by many factors, including leadership styles, workforce demographics, policies and procedures, structural hierarchies and titles, and workplace environment.  Learning can be tailored to help direct and reinforce the key elements of the culture and/or subcultures of an organization. It can also emphasize changes in the desired culture based on the business changes being managed.  Examples include a merger event where there are two cultures coming together such as development of a “customer-focused culture.” The Learning Function can provide great opportunities and platforms to facilitate the message on the new culture and its application in the success and performance of the business.

4. The accumulation of knowledge in a deliberate layered approach over time creates change traction. You’ve heard the expression “drinking through a fire hose” when someone describes a scenario, usually involving change, that requires a lot of information to be distributed and assimilated quickly.  How can you best address this challenge and need? 

Effective approaches incorporate:

• Layered learning of less but more relevant and focused content (answering “what”)
• Application of the learning to job responsibilities (answering “how”)
• Use of a variety of relevant learning channels (e.g., classroom, webcast, online, collaborative, mobile, etc.)

Successful incorporation impacts learning effectiveness and is demonstrated through:

• Greater learning retention
• Active and relevant on-the-job experiences and use of learning
• Employee resilience during times of change

This is important since resilience is a key factor in dealing with ambiguity, stress, and anxiety from a loss of control when change occurs.

5. Sponsoring leaders involved in all L&D efforts need access to real-time measures and feedback on how people are:

• Responding to and understanding key learning messages or objectives
• Incorporating the learning into their every day jobs
• Accepting and embracing change or resisting it
• Performing against expectations (i.e., financial, operational, people measures such as employee engagement or satisfaction)
  
  

This real-time feedback will also allow the organization to adjust and regroup, if necessary. We must remember that not all people go through the change trajectory at the same pace and this kind of feedback is invaluable to leadership.  In real time, the organization can respond with different types of interventions, as necessary. The Learning Function can and should be a barometer of the cultural response to the change process.

Can the Learning Function support its business case for investment?  L&D costs have typically been an initial line item cut from the budget to save costs.  This was especially notable following the global economic downturn in 2008. 

But did the pendulum swing too far?  As Accenture’s 2013 Skills and Employment Trends Survey revealed, the answer appears to be a resounding YES!

Consider this point of view instead:

“Learning would be the last thing that I would cut. In fact I think that's one thing we've never cut. We know we've got to take it to the next level.”

“We continued to invest in learning during the financial crisis in 2008. That was the year we trained everybody in achieving breakthrough results, and I continued to teach my leadership program.”

“I think it’s more important to do this kind of training and development in the tough times than in the good times because the tough times are when you show what really matters.”[4]

David Novak, CEO of YUM! Brands

It’s hard to argue the sound validity of that position when you consider YUM! Brands performance outcomes over the past 10 years: 

• Double-digit growth
• Stock outperforming the S&P 500
• Decreased turnover
• Improved customer satisfaction
  
  

Admittedly, L&D does not singularly enable an organization’s success; however, it is clearly and critically one of the most valuable tools due to its impact on the “minds and hearts” of the workforce.  Effective L&D touches both the “mind and heart” when it can answer two employee questions:  “What do I need to do my job?” and “What’s in it for me?”  Organizational performance and productivity expectations demand the answer to the first question.  Company culture and employee engagement goals respond to the second.

In order to have this type of significance and impact in the organization, the Learning Function must:

• Evolve their own business competencies and capabilities
• Actively engage with business leaders
• Understand key issues of the business based on priorities and emerging needs
• Learn the “language of the business,” including how to collect, analyze and interpret data, to “tell the story”
• Establish and support the business case and ROI for L&D

We hope these points make it more clear how the Learning Function can assume a significant role partnering with business operations to “move the dial” on individual and organizational agility and, thus, the performance of the business.

So, what will you do?

“If you don’t make business-relevant investments in L&D, what is your alternative in today’s complex, competitive, and ever-changing environment?"  

We invite you to discover how learning & development can deliver relevant business value.  Schedule your 30-minute needs assessment today.

[1] David Novak, ASTD interview on “Taking People with You,” April 9, 2012

[2] Human Capital Institute, “For More Successful Learning, Treat Employees Like Consumers,” 2014

[3] Clark N. Quinn, “Revolutionize Learning & Development,” 2014

[4] David Novak, ASTD interview on “Taking People with You,” April 9, 2012

This blog was co-authored by Joanne Flynn, Jim Bosserman and Debbie Gower.