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Aligning Learning Programs With Business Strategy for Global Workforce Agility
Businesses are placing more demands on learning and development teams, says Jamie O’Brien, AVP of learning and development at investment platform Voya Financial. Most importantly, “keeping learners engaged in a rapidly changing environment, and aligning our learning programs with our business objectives,” she said during a From Day One webinar. The pace of change gets faster every year.“We’re no longer designing and delivering training solutions just for different adult learning styles, but also for virtual and hybrid work environments, with rapidly changing technology, and for five generations of workers,” she said.Voya’s learners are increasingly seeking an experiential environment. They don’t want to sit through lectures, O’Brien says. “They want to do it. They want to try it. They want to feel it. They want to feel like they’ve been prepared and they’re confident in their ability to come out of training and then go do their roles.”Fellow panelist Tim Gerrits agreed: Leaders in L&D now do much more than transfer information. Gerrits is the the head of learning and leadership development at pharmaceutical company AbbVie, thinks about application most of all.“As it becomes easier to find whatever snippet of knowledge you need, that’s no longer the real crux of success for organizations,” he said. “It’s not putting information into people’s heads, it’s how you get that information back out and change behavior.” Lynnette Collins, head of global L&D at office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, identified the “most difficult part, and the most critical part,” of her job: “Making the connection between those goals, our learning experiences, and key performance indicators.” Who completed the training and when is not nearly as relevant to the executives as how they’re helping the business grow.Yet it’s not easy to demonstrate the value of L&D, said Ken Matos, director of market insights at HiBob, an HR management platform. Returns may not happen right away and even if they do, learners may need help identifying just how they’re applying their new skills. As businesses become more complex, so do learning outcomes, and measurement follows suit.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the panel of experts (photo by From Day One)Ultimately, leaders have to be able to feel the difference, not just see it on paper, says Matos. “Being able to change the stakeholders’ impression of what’s happening in the organization is one of your best, most accessible outcomes, because they are the ones who said it was a problem to begin with. And if they’re not feeling that problem anymore, you have succeeded. Being able to articulate that back to them is a really powerful message.”At AbbVie, Gerrits invites those leading business functions to observe learning in progress at assessment centers. “They see what we’re doing and the transformation that’s taking place with participants, and that gives them confidence that what we’re doing–not only in that assessment center, but overall–is important for the organization.”When Steelcase’s new CEO Sara Armbruster took the role three years ago, “she introduced a long-term strategy for growth, which was new for us in the organization,” Collins said. In the first year, Collins’s team contacted the top 400 global leaders in the company to ask what skills and behaviors they believe are necessary to achieve those new goals, and what might get in the way.“At first, our measurement was really around improving leader perception on how we perform these transformation behaviors,” Collins said. “But now we’re going a bit deeper, because we want to connect it to performance. Ultimately, we want these behaviors to become the way we work to achieve our results.”O’Brien knows her L&D programs are really working when they create a buzz, and managers–or individual contributors–come asking to participate or partner in the design. She knocks on doors, too, to find out whether teams feel that they’re benefitting. If they don’t seem engaged, “that’s a chance for me to ask questions about what their goals are and get closer to what it is that we can deliver.”Business goals can change quickly–just think of how many employers rushed to incorporate some kind of AI into their workflows–and priorities may migrate up or down the list. To stay relevant, L&D needs to change along with them.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
