Learning & Development — What do I do with that?
Learning and development can be a very broad topic and are usually put under a central team somewhere.
In the most basic sense, it is there to help the organisation and it’s people learn and develop from where they are now to where they need to be. Very similar to the Agile Project Management approach.
What most assume it is
A person that trains an individual or a group, they are usually in compliance because many don’t want to pay externals. Good move for a business but it can be so much more effective.
You can get a lot of different types of trainers in terms of leadership development, pathways, compliance programs and ways to make people more productive and efficient.
But they can make a small dent operationally when they can have a significant effect if they are moved to a more strategic position and allowed to view more data points to evidence any changes.
How do you make the most of L&D people?
In my opinion, take them slightly out of the operational role and move them more towards a strategic function. Very similar and has a hell of a lot of crossover with HR.
But use this role to look at processes, data, productivity, management styles, leadership development, infrastructure and whatever you would like to make better.
It can be creating your own learning system, but if their role is to manage the LMS system for the company then they spend their days doing that rather than working out how to develop the organisation.
What I’m not saying
Give them a table at every board meeting and automatically promote them to give them that strategic position. Yes, would be nice.
What might help your organisation
Give them the tools to be able to see into the right areas, pull out the data they need and work with people who want to develop. Focus on getting out of the daily running of L&D and focus on pushing the organisation forward through processes, productivity, people, culture and performance.
Every organisation needs to develop in some way or another, if not another innovation is likely to come along at some point or the service is found to be bettered by someone or something else.
By getting them to spend time looking at how say an e-commerce store can pack 10 items to 15 items a day, or how they produce better productivity through certain work programmes, how they can develop the organisation by running certain surveys to get feedback on how to incentivise the staff. There’s so much they can do.
By keeping them operationally, you trap an L&D person in to a role and probably pay more than what you would an admin person to do that role because they are L
&D focused.
However, if you make the shift to looking at how you can improve the organisation and their metrics, which should be backed up by evidence, then the role should pay for itself.
This is my take on it. There are needs for having trainers in organisations, which is fine, give them the qualifications to train, but for L&OD, allow them to develop and create a great place to work.
