Do you remember when you changed your department or section’s name from Training and Development to Learning and Development? What changed aside from the name? Did any of these happen?
- You started shifting your focus from training to learning. Yes, there is a difference.
- You stopped requiring employees to attend training courses they did not enroll themselves in
- You started working with employees, especially managers on the concept of learner-focused talent development strategies
- You started offering options for learners to address learning needs
- You stopped counting training hours and started assessing how much employees are growing in their roles in terms of competencies and capabilities
- You started making employees responsible and accountable for their performance and professional growth in the organization
- You are evaluating your performance as a department and your learning interventions in terms of learning application in the workplace
- Employees are now more motivated and compelled to address their learning needs using means that they believe work for them.
I believe that number of yeses you made to the above statements determine how far you have gone towards more strategic and learner-focused learning and development.
Ok, if you said no, to a lot of these, it means you got work to do, if you really want to make a genuine shift. And I must tell you there is a world of difference and importance in making this shift. The traditional approach to training is not working! Those organizations who still hang on to the old approach of forcing people to attend training they don’t care about, are wasting a lot of money! It’s frustrating! Or at least for me it is grossly frustrating!
I don’t want this post to be super long so let me get to my recommendations. If you really want to shift to learning and development, you have to give the responsibility of addressing their learning needs to the employees. There are so many theories and principles that support this to wit:
- “When the student is ready the teacher will appear” – Lao Tzu
- As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12)
- Learning is an experience which occurs inside the learner and is activated by the learner (Horne and Pine, 1990)
If you agree with all these and feel the urgency to change things, I suggest that you start working out a strategy. It should enable the following:
- Agreement on Career and Performance Goals – As Knowles would have it, adult learners are more open to learning if it connects with their developmental tasks or roles. Learning is a means to an end. That end often has to do with what the employee needs to maintain acceptable performance or pursue higher performance or career goals. This conversation between manager and employee should be enabled by tools my available by the Learning and development team. Your work should involve making this doable for both parties.
- Determination of needed competencies or skills to achieve goals. Having a framework in place to facilitate the conversation between manager and employee about competencies and how they look like in action should help both parties determine if their present or absent. This clarity helps with understanding what the employee needs to learn and how it will look like if the learning transpired. Your work involves working with your stakeholders to map out competencies or skills necessary to perform a job or to be ready for a new role.
- Agreement and contextualization of competency gaps. Having a competency model or skills matrix should help the managers facilitate conversations with employees and agree on what is lacking and what needs to be done to address the gaps. The work you need to do is to equip the managers for these conversations, and to prepare employees to participate in these conversations.
- Employees choose how to address competency gaps. People’s learning behavior has changed dramatically because of the availability of various learning avenues. We have also proven that formal learning intervention, while important accounts for a small portion of the actual learning need and gain. I call these learning interventions, seeds. The ones the truly grow learning involves interaction and involvement in activities or projects that deepen, and then create new learning. I’m talking about coaching and mentoring as an effective means to develop competencies. Your important job is to integrate these learning avenues with building a culture of mentoring and coaching in your organization.
- Regular Conversations between manager and employee regarding competency development and performance. You must have figured that each element builds on the achievement of the other elements. When items 1 to 4 are achieved, performance and professional conversations between managers and employees are more skillfully done, more structured, and more focused on the goals. When these happen, we can see learning take place and see them make impact on individual and organizational performance.
This name change is a big deal. If you made a genuine shift, I will appreciate your insights from your experience.
If you want people to change their mindset about learning in the workplace, you have to lead and manage that change.
