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A Learning and Development (L&D) strategy has a huge role to play in shaping any organization’s business decisions. After all, for a company to remain competitive, its people need to have the right skills.
While learning and development programs are an investment for the business, they also consume valuable time that employees could ideally spend on their daily tasks. Therefore, it is most important to ensure that your Learning and Development strategy aligns with the overall objectives of your organization.
What is a Learning and Development Strategy?
A learning and development strategy starts with defining employees’ capabilities. It gives a roadmap on how these skills can be further nurtured to align with company objectives. Creating an L&D strategy is an integral component of the overall business strategy.
In general, L&D strategy is influenced by various factors right from company goals to stakeholders’ needs, current skills gaps to right learning methods and measuring L&D effectiveness to policy implementation.
Especially crucial during a tight labor market or recession, a strong L&D strategy offers employees more development opportunities, in turn, increasing their loyalty.
According to Deloitte, a robust learning strategy and culture can increase retention rates by 30 to 50%.
The Role of HR in Learning and Development Strategy
In many cases, learning and development activities fall under the purview of HR, particularly in smaller companies. On the other hand, larger organizations typically have a dedicated L&D department for them.
What this means is collaboration between HR and L&D teams is imperative to prevent confusion or duplication of efforts when:
- Identifying the skills required for recruiting new people.
- Upskilling/reskilling the existing workforce for internal mobility.
- Managing the performance of underperforming individuals.
Moreover, HR teams also shoulder L&D responsibilities like:
Designing and implementing learning and development in the workplace that caters to the entire employee lifecycle (this includes everything from onboarding, career development, succession planning, leadership development etc.).
Assessing and refining the effectiveness of corporate training programs for employees, adjusting based on performance evaluations.
Importance of a Strong L&D Strategy
Curious about the importance of learning and development? We give you five compelling reasons to consider adopting a solid L&D strategy:
- Attracting New Employees: Enhance your appeal as an employer by showcasing your commitment to employee professional growth and development.
- Onboarding: A well-executed learning and development strategy streamlines the onboarding process for new team members and accelerates their productivity.
- Employee Retention: Employees prefer to stick to companies that offer corporate learning and development opportunities for skill enhancement, particularly in context of their employment.
- Employee Engagement: A robust L&D strategy is linked to increased levels of employee engagement and satisfaction.
How to Build Effective L&D Strategy in 7 Easy Steps
The objective of learning and development is twofold: to facilitate the growth and development of employees while addressing the current/future talent needs of the business.
Although each organization is unique, typically the below steps help lay the groundwork for a robust learning and development strategy.
1. Align L&D with Business Goals
The first step is to ensure your learning and development strategy is on the same page as your business objectives, milestones and priorities. This is a juncture where many strategic training and development initiatives falter. They try to develop employees without a clear understanding of what specific improvements are needed.
For example, imagine your goal is to increase customer satisfaction ratings by 15% within the next year. Then you need to first establish and quantify the connection between improved customer satisfaction and the investment in learning and development.
Similarly, if your aim is to minimize product defects, showcase the impact of strategic L&D programs on employee output, productivity and organizational efficiency before and after implementation.
Establishing these connections is a great way to demonstrate how your training and development programs contribute to tangible outcomes.
2. Zero in on Leaders to Meet L&D Objectives
Who will be responsible for shaping your L&D vision? Will it be the HR department? Perhaps a dedicated People or Talent team? Should it closely align with a Performance Management team or leader?
Who you choose will be tasked with crafting the organization’s learning philosophy. They will be making pivotal decisions regarding the L&D strategy while also looking at the processes.
So be sure to choose people who are strategic thinkers and collaborative leaders. They should be capable of championing the cause and supporting its purpose. How can you do this?
For example, start with involving stakeholders in the employee training and development process. Conduct an internal stakeholder assessment using surveys to identify their learning and development requirements. Supplement these surveys with individual meetings to gather detailed feedback.
3. Assess Employee Capabilities & Identify Skill Gaps
The next step is aligning the L&D strategy with current employee capabilities and checking areas with skills gaps.
Begin by defining the necessary competencies required for various functions and responsibilities as per the business objectives. For example, in a customer service-oriented environment, critical competency is improving communication and conflict resolution skills.
Now, conduct a comprehensive skills audit to assess existing competencies and knowledge. Perform a skills gap analysis to pinpoint potential deficiencies for individual employees. By understanding the areas with skills shortages, you gain a deep insight into where your priorities should be focused when crafting your L&D programs.
4. Develop Learning Journeys
You need to place enough emphasis on employee learning journeys for continuous growth. These journeys are designed to assist individuals to acquire skills relevant to job-related tasks. Typically, they include immersive learning environments such as gamification, microlearning and scenario-based training.
For example, imagine offering leadership development programs. You can do so through varied avenues such as workshops, seminars, mentorship programs, leadership retreats and peer-to-peer learning opportunities.
5. Implementing L&D Initiatives
Your learning and development activities should start with meticulous planning. Your plan should include the purpose of the employee training and development and the intended outcomes. Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify the most suitable learning programs.
Look at your proposed budget which includes all associated costs of program implementation. Collaborate with your company’s finance department to see what financial metrics are to be added. Provide details on the benefits of the learning and development program, align them with business goals and objectives to facilitate ROI which will potentially increase support/ funding.
For example, you can pilot your program by conducting trial classes. This trial phase helps in identifying weaknesses and enables you to refine your training approach to meet everyone’s expectations and objectives.
Then, as you successfully execute your learning and development activities, integrate the employee lifecycle into your strategy to develop multi-year L&D strategies.
6. Monitor Performance
Monitoring employee performance enables you to ensure that the learning and development activities are engaging enough.
Below are examples of commonly used learning and development metrics and how they can be arrived at to assess the effectiveness of your training programs
- Training cost per employee: Calculated as the cost of training divided by the number of employees.
- Employee performance post-training: Assessed through quizzes, surveys, one-to-one sessions, and observed changes in behaviors.
- Training ROI: Calculated as (Return of Benefit – Investment Cost)/Investment Cost x 100. This L&D metric measures the efficiency of the training investment and is typically correlated with increased revenue.
- Training experience satisfaction: Evaluated through surveys to gauge participants’ satisfaction with the training experience.
- Operational performance: Measured by improvements in sales growth, service efficiency, productivity enhancements, and compliance maintenance.
- Retention: Assessed by tracking employee retention rates before and after training initiatives.
7. Select Your Delivery Methods
Every organization is made up of individual employees who have diverse learning styles. So, naturally in any L&D strategy, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
Using the 70-20-10 model for learning and development offers a systematic approach to determining how your business will deliver identified learning programs. This will help you develop L&D programs that cater to varied learning styles.
For example, you can use experiential learning which is recognized as one of the most impactful learning methods. It provides on-the-job, relevant and real-time employee training activities. Incorporating experiential learning into your L&D strategy leads to higher engagement, attendance, and effort from participants.
Other examples are assignments that push boundaries, cross-functional projects or field experiences for employees. Ideally, your employees should allocate about 70% of their development time to such activities. These activities bridge classroom learning with real-world application.
Finally, ensure that the learning and development strategy remains adaptable to changes in the business strategy. Regularly revisit and adjust the L&D strategy to ensure it stays aligned with organizational objectives even as they evolve.
In Conclusion
As technology keeps changing fast, investing in a solid learning and development strategy is increasingly crucial for maintaining an organization’s competitive edge.
L&D leaders must focus on crafting learning and development strategies that align well with business objectives and effectively tackle employees’ skills gaps. This is why you should invest in learning management software, like Akrivia HCM, which ensures there is enough human talent that will help organizations thrive in the digital era.
What according to you are the major challenges in creating a learning and development strategy? Let us know in the comment section!
