Risk management is a top priority for any business during normal times. But we are not living in typical times: With rising inflation, an active war and ongoing labor and supply issues threatening the bottom lines of many businesses, uncertainty has become the new normal. And in an uncertain landscape, adaptability to change has become the number one strategic imperative.
How do companies know just how adaptable they are? And, with budget season upon us and a potential recession looming, how can businesses be sure they are investing in processes and systems that will keep them as agile and adaptable as possible?
A company’s ability to pivot as times change comes down to the skills and development of its employees. The data that pertains to these skills — and informs company leadership just how adaptable the organization is — resides in the learning and development department.
Every company wants to know that its L&D programs and technologies investments are providing the maximum return to keep the organization nimble. But many businesses struggle to link their investments in learning to tangible outcomes.
In my work helping enterprise businesses optimize their L&D programs — and use their data to inform critical decision-making — I identified five key indicators that show whether a company truly is resilient and adaptable to change.
The indicators
The data that a company has about its workforce is arguably the most important information it has. These indicators tell me whether or not a company can use this information to stay ahead of the rapid pace of change:
Data quality: The trustworthiness of L&D data is essential, but many companies don’t know how to determine the quality of their data. In general, if L&D data is stored in multiple disconnected data silos, it will be of limited benefit. If teams outside the L&D department have trouble accessing and using data, then its quality can and should be improved.
Data fluency: In addition to how data is stored, I look at how various teams access and use data. If a company still relies on spreadsheets as a primary data analysis tool, that’s a sign that data fluency is lacking. An organization that is data-fluent can easily pull actionable insights from volumes of information and quickly prepare for an audit, which is impossible with spreadsheets alone.
Resource use: How well do L&D departments use and optimize resources? Many L&D teams still rely far too much on manual work, which is both error-prone and labor-intensive. Bringing automation to learning and a company’s overall data architecture means removing enormous barriers to growth and change.
Business intelligence: Investments in learning should lead to a clear ROI for a business. But if it is difficult to determine the ROI, it means the company’s data infrastructure is lacking. When L&D data connects to other departments instead of residing in a separate database, it is easy to see the ROI.
Agility and resilience: One sign that a company might not be as agile as it needs to be when its learning technology is a series of use-case-specific point solutions. Learning technology connected to other IT systems, which is part of a robust data infrastructure, hints at a company that can pivot quickly and is adaptable in the face of change.
Showing real ROI
Some organizations can clearly see the ROI from their investments in learning technology, while other organizations struggle. Those struggling can use a specific prescriptive analysis to identify gaps in their learning technology strategy, as my company recommends with a Scalability Index Assessment.
Here are several quick tips to help any company implement an effective learning technology strategy:
- Optimize training reports, automate communications to shareholders and leverage customized reports to show learning impact across departments.
- Upskill the team’s data literacy, as this is a critical skill for modern L&D functions but is often poorly developed across the organization.
- Automate some learning functions — many teams do not entirely utilize their existing technology, so there may be easy areas for improvement hiding in plain sight.
- Identify the characteristics of highly resilient L&D software, and explore how a unified tech stack provides additional resilience.
- Understand how learning operations can improve data accuracy — the daily tasks that drive your training operations can be used to improve the accuracy of the training data you capture and analyze.
With uncertainty rapidly becoming the new normal, it’s vital for businesses to be adaptable to change. Training and upskilling workers are essential. Until companies make L&D data part of robust data architecture, they won’t know how to change.
