As a senior leader, you are responsible for aligning learning and development efforts with your organization’s strategy. You’re focused on the ever-elusive training impact and return on L&D investment.
Let’s look at a few facts to set the context in which you and your learning team operate: The unemployment rates are at an all-time low — 5.4 percent in Canada and 3.6 percent in the United States.
Record-high job vacancy rates and skills shortages contribute to chronic difficulty for organizations hiring needed workers. In addition, our aging population means this trend will remain, so hiring employees with the required skills will continue to be challenging.
As learning leaders, we know L&D is part of the solution. And the data backs us up: 51 percent of HR managers indicate training employees is their primary method of addressing the skills gap in their organizations. And yet, these managers lack buy-in from leadership for L&D:
- 54 percent say leadership often sees L&D as a cost, not an investment.
- 52 percent report facing resistance when asking for budget approval.
Given this landscape, the time is now for L&D to move from the shadows and become a strategic partner that works proactively to directly contribute to the organization’s priorities. L&D needs to move from a cost center to an investment and get buy-in and support from leaders across the organization.
As you lead the charge for a more strategic learning function, you need managers and learning professionals with the skills to implement your vision and deliver on your commitments.
L&D professionals are the shoemaker’s children
Learning professionals take care of and develop employees in their organizations, but don’t always take care of their own development. Tier1 Performance Institute’s “2023 Learning Trends Report” identifies that learning professionals get very little professional development from their organizations and rely on general interest learning such as podcasts, articles, books and websites. Fifty-six percent of learning professionals want more professional development.
When learning professionals don’t invest in their own development, they continue operating with the same mindset and expectations. They continue to use the same delivery channels, technology and design approaches. They hold onto beliefs such as “strong learning objectives and performance outcomes form the basis of good instructional design,” and “learning outcomes are measured by Kirkpatrick Levels 1, 2 and 3.” While this may be accurate, it represents a narrow view of L&D. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many L&D teams were caught off guard by this overreliance on familiar, established approaches.
Learning managers need to expand their comfort zones and learn about the world of business so they can execute your business-focused, strategic vision for L&D. Being business-fluent helps learning managers be more responsive to and anticipate business needs. It provides the impetus for having a variety of solutions to ensure the solution will suit the need and environment.
Furthermore, if learning professionals are unable to prioritize their own development, how can they expect other employees to commit to the programs they implement? It’s the proverbial airplane oxygen mask — put the mask on yourself before putting on your child’s. Learning professionals, starting with learning managers, need to develop their own skills so they can, in turn, develop others. They need to role model innovation and continuous improvement. They need to embrace cutting-edge technology and step outside their comfort zone to gain new skills and knowledge.
Essential skills for your learning managers
Learning and development managers must stop being the shoemakers’ children and develop these three essential skills.
Learning acumen includes adult education principles, assessing needs, instructional design, facilitation, evaluation and learning technologies. These may seem obvious, but two nuances need highlighting.
First, learning managers need to shift from doing the work to managing others. They need to build on their instructional design skills and:
- Translate business goals into priority projects and identify metrics for success.
- Build relationships in their organization to facilitate work between their team and the business units they serve.
- Develop processes and standards to ensure consistency and quality across their team. Consistency reduces design time, decreases the manager’s review time and provides a predictable experience with stakeholders. When combined with quality standards, this elevates the reputation of the learning function in the organization.
The second nuance is that some learning managers move into the learning manager role from the business. They might be high-potential employees on a “tour of duty” with a stop in L&D. They may have a background in a contiguous role such as HR and now have learning under their umbrella of responsibility. These managers need a foundation in learning acumen to guide their team members effectively.
Managing projects and programs. This includes setting up and managing projects, and closing out projects or transitioning them to ongoing programs. Managers need project management skills to lead their teams and liaise with their client groups. As with learning acumen, managers need to establish processes, project management templates and standards for working with stakeholders.
Managers who lead their teams with learning expertise and project management skills build positive experiences with other business units. Timelines are met, budgets are adhered to and scope changes are managed more smoothly. Managers in different business units gain confidence that the learning manager’s team will balance learning priorities with the needs of the business unit and the project.
Business acumen is the third skill managers need to lead the learning function effectively. It includes understanding L&D as a business function and how it operates in relation to other functional areas. It includes financial acumen (knowing how money moves through an organization and the finances for the learning function. It also includes data and analytics) how to find and analyze data and communicate the story data tells.
At its core, business acumen is about learning the language of business. As long as learning professionals remain in their learning silo and talk about learning impact according to Kirkpatrick’s Levels instead of business outcomes, they will continue to operate outside the business and be unable to articulate their value and contribution. They will remain a cost centre and not an area in which to invest. Learning managers need to become bilingual — speak the language of learning and the language of the business — to understand the performance needs and recommend the best solution — training or otherwise.
The opportunity
When learning managers develop their capabilities and gain essential skills in learning, managing projects and programs and business acumen, the L&D function can move from being a cost center to a valuable contributor. L&D takes on the role of a business partner able to implement your vision and position the organization for success in the current environment of talent shortages and an aging population.
Managers in 67 percent of organizations expect to increase their L&D budgets so ensuring these investments yield tangible benefits becomes even more important. By enhancing the capabilities of your learning managers, you can transform learning from a cost center to a business partner. You not only maximize the potential of your L&D budget, but also ensure your learning function contributes meaningfully to the success and adaptability of your organization in an ever-evolving landscape.
