Prove it or Lose it in 2016!

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Determining the impact of a training program in your organisation is a challenge. In 2016 it looks to be a key trend for learning and development professionals - because we need to prove the value of learning or face losing the budget for it.

But establishing the business benefit of learning is rarely attempted as it is deemed "too difficult", but just because it is hard to do doesn't mean it should be ignored and it doesn't make it wrong to do. So we need to move towards being more convinced by and committed to the business benefit of learning.

There is poor consistency of organisations establishing the return on investment and effective gains on learning activity(1). With budgets continuing to be squeezed - no wonder the issue has started to become a focus for many. Huge benefits can be achieved from effectively recording the impact of learning; we will discuss only a handful in this blog:

1. Show the contribution of selected programmes
2. Earn respect from senior management
3. Improve furture learning and development decisions
4. Alther or remove ineffective programmes

Lets explore them in more detail:

Show the contribution of selected programmes
Being able to show the value of selected training programmes gives your stakeholder's confidence that the budget you are given for learning is making a real difference to the business. Not being able to display benefit will give senior stakeholders the go ahead to cut the budget and chip away at your department. No benefit, no budget.

Gain respect from senior management

Going beyond just sharing the amount of learning you are shifting and proving exactly how it is impacting the business gives your stakeholders the confidence that the work done through L&D is giving organisational benefit. We see organisations that have lost confidence from their senior stakeholders and have therefore started to see their learning department diminish. Being confident for your stakeholders gains their respect, if marketing get their budget by confidently sharing their expected payback of activities, then L&D can and should do the same for learning spend!

Improve furture learning and development decisions/programmes

Evaluating programmes can inform future decision making for your organisation. Identifying the programmes that worked or didn't work allows you to know whether to repeat that programme or deliver something different.

Remove ineffective programmes
Good evaluations and identification of impact allows an organisation to identify and remove ineffective programmes, to stop them running again and end up being another wasted investment.


Cuts will happen in the learning department if the benefit of learning is not understood or collected. NO BENEFIT -  NO BUDGET!. And with budgets continuing to be squeezed it is vital that leaning and development consider and prove the benefit they are making.

We at KnowledgePool (part of Capita Plc) know how to do this; our experience can help you to prove the impact of your learning. Contact us through the blog, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Learning Transformation Shift 3: From cost to business benefit

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Here, the cost of learning is well-understood and quite easily calculated: it appears in any plan or report concerning learning, and the numbers will be accorded a high level of validity. No learning professional would get a proposal for a learning programme agreed without a cost estimate, on the understanding that ‘costs may go down but not up’, and we expect to be held to that estimate.

In contrast, the business benefit of learning is rarely attempted: it is dismissed as being “too difficult” and when it is attempted, the values are considered rough estimates at best. Mostly we prefer to accept the vague assumption that learning does deliver business benefit, and don’t look too close in case we find that it doesn’t!  And that’s not healthy.

So how can we move towards being more convinced of the business benefit of learning? Four ways:

What it looks like

The overall aim is for all learning investment decisions to be made in the light of expected cost and business benefit. No learning should therefore happen unless there is some understanding of the likely business benefit and how it will be realised. More specific steps along the way include:

·         Demand planning. The planning of learning is conducted on an organisation-wide basis. This has operational efficiencies quite apart from the articulation of business benefit. Demand planning invariably starts life as a budget-setting exercise, but as the business benefit of learning becomes better understood, the character of demand planning changes. Ultimately learning is prioritised according to its expected contribution to business benefit.

·         Management Information. Development of reporting that begins to roll up the contribution of learning to business benefit for the whole organisation. This includes numeric reporting of data, but also compilations of the narrative evidence which has to be a more manual process. This may evolve into some kind of dashboard equivalent which answers the question ‘what has learning done for the organisation this month/quarter?’

·         Learning Governance. Over time a governance structure can develop. The strategic decisions about learning priorities and learning investments tend to be made by a Board of senior business leaders, in line with strategic business goals. L&D or HR become responsible for executing the decisions made by the Board.

·         L&D resourcing. The size and shape of the L&D team is determined as much by their contribution to business benefit as their cost. The division between internal resources and external service providers will change as we understand where the value is greatest.

·         Talent Management. Finally we may even develop a view of talent management that includes the increased valuation of employee skills resulting from development activity.

Benefits

As a result of this shift, learning wins the support of senior management because it’s talking their language (and to be blunt, helping them get their bonuses).

 

 

 

Kevin Lovell
Learning Strategy Director

Learning Transformation Shift 2: From learning content to performance improvement

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What it looks like

Embedding learning into everyday work. Working to ensure that embedding is seen as an inevitable corollary to learning. Before formal learning occurs, learners and their managers should understand how and where the learning is expected to be used. L&D are to foster mechanisms whereby embedding of learning is encouraged or even mandated.

Developing competency frameworks and role profiles. These are the building blocks of talent management, against which learning content can be mapped. This allows employees to assess their competencies and build their own development plans in line with their career aspirations. It also facilitates alignment of development with performance improvement goals.

Review the academy / catalogue of learning content. Once mapped to competencies, L&D can better assess any gaps in the curriculum, and rate the content in terms of its expected impact on performance improvement.

Benefits

• That when they ask for development, their request is part of a thought-through plan to fix a business issue, and not just short-term sticking plaster over a problem
• That they accept their role to ensure that learning is embedded and translates into performance improvement

Picturing the shift to performance improvement

The Learning Chain:

 

Kevin Lovell

Learning Strategy Director

 

Learning Transformation Shift 1: From islands of activity to joined up talent management

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There are many reasons why we find ‘islands’ of activity in L&D. Local practices evolve around individual sites or departments; organisations merge yet legacy practices persist; learning is booked and managed using different IT systems (or no system at all); different groups of employees deliver the learning; and some managers source their own training either out of frustration that the formal channels can’t respond quick enough, or simply because they can.

In short, without a strong unifying force, the natural evolution of organisations serves to decentralise and fragment learning provision. From an efficiency perspective, these create typical problems:
 

• Multiple processes for the same task are confusing for learners and wasteful. The same can be said for multiple systems (such as e-learning LMS platforms).
• Much of the bookings administration work is manual and time-consuming.
• Fragmented procurement of learning activity leads to variable/ duplicate content, inconsistent delivery quality and inconsistent employee access to learning and inconsistent spend.
• All of the above confounds any attempt to measure learning provision across the organisation – inefficiencies emerge without anyone realising.

Barriers to Transformation

In our experience, L&D teams instinctively recognise the need for transformation. What stops them is the need for investment: resources and budget. They struggle to build the business case for what they want to do and why (or how it will benefit the organisation). For example:

1. L&D recognises that their third party training spend is fragmented and uncontrolled, but the effort required to bring it under central control seems huge.

2. L&D know that they need an ‘Academy’ but can’t describe the steps by which it will improve workforce performance.

3. L&D know that their managers need more confidence, but leadership training is expensive and they can’t articulate the new behaviours needed, and how they will deliver business benefit.

When an organisation seeks to improve its learning provision, these are often the first things that are tackled, seeking to simplify processes and technology and gain control of learning such that it can be effectively managed.

What it looks like

One central L&D team. Learning experts who manage all learning throughout the organisation, on behalf of the organisation.

One set of best practice learning processes organisation-wide.

One central catalogue of ‘recommended’ frequently used learning content, together with quality standards for creating new learning content (regardless of who creates it).

One suite of integrated learning technology. This is likely to be several systems with complementary functionality, which exchange data with one another, and manage the whole range of developmental and talent management activity - automating manual processes where appropriate.

One central reporting suite, derived from the technology above, which gives a holistic view of all learning activity. This informs rapid decision-making and enables learning to be properly managed and controlled.

Central control of all third party training suppliers: identification; on-boarding and ongoing management.

Benefits

Inefficiencies, even in a pared-back L&D function, can be significant. With highly fragmented learning, savings are hard to achieve: costs are split amongst many different budgets and time savings are scattered in many small pockets. Nevertheless when added up, the savings can be substantial – depending on the start point up to 30% of the total cost of learning.

This shift is about making the learning machine efficient, however at this stage it might still be efficiently going in the wrong direction. The other two shifts – we look at in coming weeks - ensure the direction is right.

Learning Transformation: Part 1

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Repeated cost-cutting of learning spend can lead to fitter, leaner L&D functions, but it can also leave L&D hollowed out and ineffective. We argue that L&D needs to change dramatically, in order to offer best practice and best value in all things learning. We see three ‘shifts’ which are necessary for learning to achieve a transformation. Over the next few weeks we will share a 4 part blog that will look at these 3 shifts. But first let’s take a view of current L&D and what led us to develop the idea that L&D need to shift.

For many years, learning departments have been under pressure to cut costs. One indication of the extent of this reduction comes from the CIPD annual Learning and Development survey reports. In 2002 the annual training spend per employee was £361: twelve years later it had fallen to just £286 – that’s a fall of 40% in real terms[1].

• Learning gets reduced to mandated or compliance-based learning only, with very little developmental learning. Consequently we see workforces that know the ‘rules and processes’ but lack the behavioural skills to execute them effectively.
• The drive to promote e-learning and informal learning becomes a Trojan horse for cost-cutting. Organisations with an enthusiasm for low-cost learning delivery largely fail to provide self-learners with enough support and guidance.
• L&D headcount is reduced to a point where it no longer has the resource to support best practice in learning. Increasingly the L&D modus operandi is that of order-taker, as important areas like evaluation3, needs analysis and investment in learning technology succumb to cutbacks.
• The learning team becomes small and centralised: managing a handful of generic programmes, whilst the majority of learning is managed elsewhere in the business. The cost is dissipated around many budgets and departmental headcounts, resulting in multiple processes, inconsistent learning delivery, no useful MI and the organisation loses economies of scale.

Throughout this process though, the tendency is for evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes. We substitute face-to-face with e-learning, but keep our distance from social and informal learning. We adopt technology to manage our learning in more standardised fashion, but use it to create multiple variants of course materials. We introduce Preferred Supplier Lists, only to find reasons why we must continue to buy outside the PSL.

If we are to tackle the need to cut costs and adequately support workforce development, we need a radical re-think. L&D needs to think very differently and it will need to look different as well.

A New Paradigm for L&D?

Throughout these developments we see one consistent characteristic: L&D functions cannot say how and where learning contributes to business benefit. This is crucial, because until we can make convincing arguments at board level about how learning contributes business benefit, the cost-cutting proposals will always win out.

Whilst it is right that L&D should serve the organisation, instead it is subservient. It needs to be less cowed and more bullish.

So for learning to offer best practice and best value in all things learning, right across the organisation, requires more than a development of the current operating model. Transformation is a better description: transformation of the way we think, and a transformation of the way we operate.

Kevin Lovell
Learning Strategy Director

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