You want to improve your Learning & Development offering. You don’t want to make a lot of new investments.

This is a really common challenge that I see.  Don’t fear! There’s some actions you can take right away that can help address it.

Here I outline 4 actions you can take to help people care about your L&D offering, draw them towards you, and create a case for more investment.

Go where the energy and noise are

If people are telling you that they don’t care and they don’t have time, I think a great way to combat this is to go where the noise is or go where the energy is. What do I mean by that?

Well, going where the noise is, is finding that group of people who’ve been dissatisfied with what L&D has offered in the past and addressing that grumbling. See what you can do to make their working lives easier and to re-engage that group with L&D.

Going where the energy is, is finding that group of people that always exist in a business, who really want to do something with you, who want to help you create a programme or look at the way in which they’re working and will help you put that together.

I think if you find these two groups and you address the noise and find the energy, and you build a bridge across that gap, it’s a great way to get people to start caring about what you do through those two groups talking positively about how you’ve helped them.  This will help improve your Learning & Development offering.

Help the business gain or retain customers

How do you make people engage with L&D, find some time to go on a programme, and care about what you do?

You don’t. When people go to work, they don’t really care about what L&D does, that’s just a fact. What they care about is how you can help them.

I think a great way to do that is to think not just about the individual but also about the whole business.

So ask yourself: “How can we, as L&D, help the business grow?”

Through that I mean, how can we help the business retain customers, or how can we help them attract new ones? By doing that, you can think a little bit more strategically about the offering and align it with some of the business-critical outcomes you’re all facing.

By doing that, all of a sudden you’re changing the conversation from not just helping the individual, but helping the team, then maybe the business group, and then the whole organisation.

That shift moves you away from being a team that runs small-scale, tactical interventions into thinking very strategically about the business as a whole.

Doing draws people towards you, and it also makes for some great case studies as you talk about how you helped retain and grow the business.

You don’t need to market everything: Don’t over-egg the pudding

Constant messaging or marketing your programmes can actually disengage people from what you want to do, and it doesn’t make them care about it. Why am I saying that?

Well, in a business, there’s a lot of noise, and people are constantly bombarded by internal communications about different programmes that are running, especially in a large enterprise. That can disengage people,

Not every single programme you launch needs a pronouncement. Not every piece of new technology that you put in place needs rolling out to everybody in the business with a huge amount of fanfare.

If you want people to engage with your offering, it’s not just about marketing it well but making sure that it’s been analysed properly, that it addresses a specific need, and that this need offers a business change that can be noticed.

The main takeaway here is: don’t rely on rolling out massive programmes with big announcements to engage people. Instead, go back to basics—build something specific, get it well analysed, pilot it, test it, and then roll it out. That way, you should see a change in the business that you can use to market what you’re doing to other specific groups.

Make learning specific, address a near-term need

My final tip here is for when people are telling you that they don’t care and they haven’t got enough time, is to look at learning that is specific, addresses a need that people can action now and in the near future, and is easy to access.

So what do I mean by that?

Well, by specific, I suggest looking at a group that need help with just one thing and helping them address that one thing in the here and now, building up kudos with them so they think, actually, I needed this help, you helped me right now, and I might come back to you in the future.

Then understand what is the best way for that group to learn, so that you’re not pulling them out of the flow of work or running against the tide and trying to implement something you think will be best, when actually what you’re trying to do is build something for them.

I hope you found those 4 tips useful.  I know how challange it can be do good L&D on a budget. 

If you’ve got any questions about impriving your L&D offering please use the contact us page to send me a message.

If you’d like to continue reading head back over to the blog page.

Cheers

Neil

Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash