As part of the #MakeItHappen campaign from Towards Maturity, they are providing the opportunity for L&D teams to FOCUS on specific themes to help them progress and become more effective
Laura Overton shares five areas where L&D teams can make a real impact in 2016, along with a new challenge to L&D leaders.
"We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another"
...according to the conversations that flowed out of the World Economic Forum in Davos. However, when we look at the conversations that flowed out of Learning Technologies last week, it is equally clear that despite high aspirations and plenty of opportunity, L&D professionals still have a lot of catching up to do! For example, only one in five of us are blending technologies together to create engaging experiences for modern learners, with only one in ten encouraging staff to connect and solve problems together.
We know that the same old L&D ways won't tackle the ever-new challenges of today's and tomorrow's business. We also know that our tried-and-tested approaches are having little impact, with 70% of L&D teams failing to report any positive impact on productivity.
Read the full article here
http://towardsmaturity.org/article/2016/02/10/why-ld-need-focus-move-on/
Choose which of the 5 following areas you wish to focus on:
Action Area 1: Increasing Business Buy-in
Top Deck organisations (those in the top 10% of the Towards Maturity Index) analyse business problems before recommending solutions (84% versus 55% on average) and align business and learning outcomes (79% versus 36% on average).
It is critical that we work in conjunction with the business, not just aligning what we do to business goals. This needs a new conversation with business leaders. You could start by troubleshooting business problems, rather than defaulting to providing solutions. By doing this, business leaders will start to see that the L&D team is about business performance and your solutions will start to be far better aligned to business outcomes.
Action Area 2: Understanding Modern Learners
Relevant, timely and useful learning is engaging. But with so many ways to design and deliver learning, how do you know which will work best for your workforce? The answer is simple: listen and learn how colleagues do their job and how they learn and design for that. That's what 86% of Top Deck organisations do (versus 30% on average). They also welcome innovation and contribution from staff.
Action Area 3: Transforming Learning
Face-to-face learning delivery is on a slow decline. We need to adopt a more contemporary approach; either with a big symbolic gesture, or on a project by project basis. With so many alternatives ways to help peers access information and learn from each other, the L&D team needs new ways to frame the learning agenda. There are models and frameworks (such as 70:20:10) that can help facilitate change, both within the L&D team and the business.
This is working for 94% of Top Deck organisations, who consider the course as only one option for building performance (versus 53% on average). 86% of those organisations are supporting learning at the point of need, using models such as 70:20:10 (versus 47% on average).
Action Area 4: Equipping the L&D Team
The action areas we are outlining here require a new skill set for the L&D function. But what skills will you need? You might want to focus first on how you build those skills. Consider the current and future context of your business and the vision you have for how learning will evolve. Now audit the skills against current and future need. This will give you a solid basis for upskilling the team.
This is how 84% of Top Deck organisations are preparing their teams for the future (versus 29% on average).
Action Area 5: Prioritising Actions
Choosing only one of the first four areas might seem daunting, or risky. If that's the case for you, make your number one action this year prioritising your actions! If you are unsure about what your learning strategy should look like over the coming months, or even where to start, then make this the year to shape it.
Organisations all around the world are benchmarking against others to see what is and isn't working. This provides the foundations for building an evidence-based learning strategy. This is proven in the fact that 73% of Top Deck organisations use data to improve their service delivery (versus 19% on average).
Once you have decided your area of focus complete the form from the link below and make a commitment to focus and make a difference in 2016
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