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

10:03:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments


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

This shift is all about making the learning machinery more efficient. Key transitions here are moving towards a new operating model with the following characteristics:

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.


 
Kevin Lovell
Learning Strategy Director


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Learning Transformation: Part 1

10:06:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments

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].
 
In a recent survey of L&D and HR managers[2], despite the fact that 65% said this year’s L&D budget was lower than last year, 62% claimed their budget was sufficient to achieve their goals. However that does mean that 38% feel their budget is not sufficient.
 
So, as L&D does more and more with less and less, it raises the question: how far can cost-cutting go before workforce development is seriously compromised?
 

Over the last ten years, KnowledgePool has provided Learning Business Process Outsourcing (LBPO) services to large organisations, accompanying them through this period of cost reduction. In some cases, outsource interventions have enabled large and inefficient learning teams to be considerably reduced. Undoubtedly this has led to fitter, leaner, learning functions. However in other situations, where the learning function is already lean, further cost reductions risk going too far – we are now starting to see hollowed out and ineffective L&D. Here are some examples:

  • 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.

Learning Transformation: We would characterise this transformation in terms of three key shifts in the diagram. Over the next 3 weeks we will explore ech of these shifts in detail!
 
 
 







Kevin Lovell
Learning Strategy Director







[1] CIPD Annual Learning and Development Reports for 2002 and 2014 show that the annual training spend per employee was £361 and £286 respectively. ONS statistics for annual CPI show prices rose on average by 32.18% over the same time period (01JAN02 to 31DEC13), hence £361 is equivalent to £477 at today’s prices. The 2014 figure of £286 is 40% lower than the 2002 equivalent figure of £477.
[2] Survey of 209 L&D/HR managers in large UK organisations, conducted for KnowledgePool by LoudHouse, June 2014.
 

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Corporate L&D: The Flea and The Whale

10:21:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments

The Flea and The Whale - Resourcing, Agility and the need to Prove the Value of Learning


When considering the strategic direction of a central L&D function in a large organisation, I find it helpful to think in terms of two key characteristics:
 1.       resourcing levels and
2.       agility (the capacity to innovate)

Resourcing is obvious – it’s the L&D headcount plus any third party resource used.  Agility is the ability to adapt to fast-changing circumstances: changing processes to be more efficient; adoption of new technologies; meeting the ever-changing development needs of the workforce, and the way they want to learn.
By plotting these two factors on axes (see below), you could describe a wide variety of conditions.  Each of the four corners of the graph represents an extreme situation, which I'll describe using animal metaphors:
  1. The Flea (high agility and low resource levels).  Highly adaptable, but not enough resource to carry anything through.
  2.  The Cheetah (high agility and high resourcing).  The ideal situation: very agile, with the resourcing to carry change through to fruition.
  3. The Beached Whale (high resourcing levels but low agility).  Lots of resource but unable to change, stranded.
  4. The Dodo (low resourcing and low agility).  Where a learning function is low on both counts, it performs no useful function, so is headed for extinction.




What I find instructive is tracking the journey of learning departments around this graph over time.  For a mid-performing L&D department, I'd say the ideal intention is to grow resource levels whilst also increasing agility (dotted line below).  However what I typically see is that resourcing growth outstrips agility and the trajectory heads to the top of the graph.  I'd characterise this as solving problems by throwing resource at them, rather than changing the way we address the problem.


Worse still, when L&D departments get big, they risk losing agility - their sheer mass makes it harder to achieve change, as ways of working become entrenched and changing them requires altering the behaviour of too many people.  Such situations are at risk of drifting towards Beached Whale corner.

At the board level, when the C-suite look at an L&D department in this state, they are liable to see a large cost with very little benefit associated with it (except maybe compliance).  What happens next is L&D gets its budget cut.  And next year when the board realises the wheels haven't fallen off, they cut some more.  And so on...




Now the trajectory becomes downward, as cuts lead to resourcing reductions.  Instinctively, L&D maintains frontline learning delivery to the business, but what gets sacrificed is longer term investment - L&D becomes less agile still.  We are, in fact, on the slippery slope to extinction.  I have seen more than one central L&D department become so small it no longer provides any meaningful support to the business beyond some leadership training and maybe a graduate programme.  Meanwhile the business units sort out their own training and the central L&D model with all its benefits breaks down completely.

As training budgets get cut, smart Heads of L&D anticipate the future and are trying to pull their department out of that decline before it’s too late.  They are concluding that a vital part of turning their department round includes recognising the value of the learning they provide.  Put another way: where does learning make a difference to organisational performance?  All of L&D seems to know that learning is ‘A Good Thing’ but very few are able to be more specific than that. In the face of a challenge from the CEO, we need something more convincing.
 
 




Here at KnowledgePool Capita, we're helping our clients to do just that.  We are talking to learners after key investment programmes, and gathering evidence of the business benefit of learning.  It's not big sample sizes but the evidence is compelling.  Not only does it show clear evidence of significant business benefit from learning, but it informs L&D about what components of their programmes add value (and those that don't), it also highlights the key role line managers have in releasing that benefit.
Armed with this information, L&D can challenge proposed cuts and show where additional learning investment will give performance uplift.  L&D starts talking to business leaders in business terms.
Halting budget cuts is only half the answer.  The other half involves creating greater agility, we'll come to that another time...




Kevin Lovell

Learning Strategy Director


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