It’s increasingly common to hear about how people should be doing a job they love. This means bosses?needs to give candidates a good reason to want to work at their business, and they must make use of a learning and development strategy if they want retention to improve.
Our recent study with IDC also outlined the clear, positive connection between employee collaboration and business performance. A learning and development strategy is important in aiding this, but a strategy is only useful if it’s put into action. Here’s our tips on how to action your plans and ensure effective delivery.
1) Start with outcomes in your mind
Consider the objectives of the three key layers the individual, the team and the organisation?” and be clear about what you are trying to accomplish at each level. From there, define these objectives and ensure there’s a clear plan of action to achieve them.
2) Find pain points and look for gaps
Where is the greatest need for change Where are the skills gaps and key competencies todayAnd how will these change over time Be sure to think of the current issues, as well as the gaps, to make your chosen development areas align with your long-term business goals.
3) Make it central and consumer-oriented
To drive the best engagement, you?ll need the simplest user experience possible. You?ll get greater user adoption and faster results if all your learning content is in one place and as easy to engage with as the sites people are used to using daily, like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Don?t just compare features compare the user experience.
4) Get tech-savvy
Understand what new technologies are out there and what they can do for developing talent in your organisation. This could be anything from video on mobile platforms, to games done through virtual reality. Think about how you could apply these in the context of your own learning and development objectives to help simplify platforms.
Read on for points five to ten.
5) Create a pilot project first
Run a dedicated pilot project around your chosen area of employee development to start with. This will help sanity check your processes, and will allow you to use the results to demonstrate the need, value and ROI to secure funding. Once your project’s in place, you can work on using learning to drive employee development, and in turn meet objectives in all areas of the organisation.
6) Keep it sticky
Your uptake will improve if you create sticky content. Yes, you read that right. Sticky content just means relevant and engaging. Whether you use videos, animation, games or quizzes, synchronising the content with the employee experience should be your plan throughout. Employees will judge your content by the value and experience it delivers to them, so make sure it’s up to par.
7) Get collaborating
Encourage employees to get involved (and stay involved) in their development journey. Using today’s social learning tools, you can help create a culture of inclusion and engagement by enabling employees to share information, tips and content; get and provide feedback on colleagues; and apply learning to real life scenarios.
8) Deal with the short shelf-life
In the past, you went to school, got a degree, and what you learned would remain relevant throughout your career. But these days, knowledge and skills can become obsolete within months, making the need to learn rapidly and regularly more important than ever. Make sure your content keeps pace with change by putting a content calendar in place to encourage continuous engagement.
9) Big it up
Many L&D initiatives are widely publicised internally when the program starts, but go quiet after they?ve been launched. It’s important to keep a continuous, steady drip-feed of updates on success and milestones, as well as fresh content and new features as an on-going reminder throughout the year.
10) Be agile and get feedback
We all learn better through collaboration, and talent development programs are no different. Be sure to get feedback from all three levels of the organisation early in the process (using social learning tools to help get the feedback where possible), and regularly after that. If something’s not working, be agile and willing to adapt it to keep user engagement high.
These are just a handful of ways to make learning and development a key part of your company culture, but there’s plenty more options to try. HR, in general, needs to be a strategic part of the business, and not just an admin function.
Geoffroy de Lestrange is product marketing manager EMEA at Cornerstone OnDemand
Image: Shutterstock
