Each of the businesses I’ve worked for or with are powered by a unique set of individuals all wanting something different from me, yet all had a set of common themes that have emerged.
Some of these are common across all settings and some, I believe are driven by the ongoing debate around returning to the office.
I wanted to share these themes so you can think about them when working on your L&D strategy.
1. Leaders still want to know how people feel about the learning provided
You may not like it, you may not see the value in it and you may feel that it does the L&D community a disservice as a whole, but leaders still want to know how their people felt about any learning they are undertaking.
Now don’t go railing about biases and the fact that how people felt doesn’t tell you about how they’ll apply the learning. Leaders want it, so provide it. Plus, how people feel about the programme is a great way to start leaders on a data-informed learning journey.
2. Leaders want to know if the learning is sticking
No one attending the workshop/programmes/course cares about the quiz – unless it’s to gain a recognised certification, in which case they care very deeply. Leaders will still ask you to put them in, so do, but remember to talk them through behavioural change outcomes and align the learning to specific business needs.
3. Leaders want the solution to be cheaper / take less time
Nothing new, but with people tightening their belts, and demonstrating fiscal prudence you may need to look at your offering. Think about how you can make the learning so specific that it takes the group less time and how they can complete individual learning specially designed for each of them.
4. Leaders want “new”
Because new attracts people, but new doesn’t have to be expensive, nor does it have to be groundbreaking. What’s new to the business? What new thing can you bring to your learning experience design (see my article on starting your learning experience design journey) that hasn’t been seen before in the business? Is there an activity people have never done, a piece of software they haven’t used? Can you engage your audience with something new that helps drive engagement with learning and help people achieve their goals?
5. Leaders want more face to face experiences
I’m yet to hear anyone say they’d swap a live 6-hour learning experience for a virtual one. I’ve spoken to the leadership teams within Align Learn Do clients and they all prefer face to face. We’ll hopefully get back to this, but in the meantime think of ways to blend the learning you wouldn’t have thought of before. What can you get your group to do from home that mixes the delivery up?
6. Leaders want data that links the learning to business outcomes
This has always been true, and in my experience, L&D aren’t very good at it. It has become even more important to my clients over the last year. With the pressure of the economy and redundancies, the business has to prove the value of learning experiences. We have to be looking at how we develop good quality data sets that show monetary or productivity gains. This isn’t a case of x training delivering y money/productivity: that’s far too simplistic.
You’ll need to be taking a systemic view of data points through the employee lifecycle.
I hope that offers some insight and helps you plan your learning strategy.
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