Learning and Development

Depending on your point of view, Learning and Development (L&D) is either the biggest sub-section of HR or – many would argue – a discipline in its own right. We’d probably agree with the latter to be honest, but the fact that L&D activities sit as part of the HR function in many organisations means we’ve included a chapter on it here. Particularly in smaller organisations, the HR team is often expected to administer learning opportunities at the very least and in some they are expected to get their hands dirty and deliver some aspects of the organisation’s training.

L&D touches on many other aspects of HR practice, particularly talent management, performance management and leadership development. Depending on the activity it can be viewed by employees as both a benefit and a punishment. Whichever way it is perceived, equipping your staff with new skills and developing their existing ones are absolutely crucial in the ever-changing world of work. Despite this, in times of financial difficulty the L&D/training budget is often the first to be cut as it is seen as a “nice to have”, rather than a “must do”. Some managers worry that if they spend money training and developing their staff then they will leave. As we have mentioned elsewhere in this book, there is only one greater risk than training your people and them leaving and that is you not training them and them staying!

Assuming you aren’t an L&D specialist, in an HR team your involvement is most likely to be the planning and delivery of learning interventions. As “Death by PowerPoint” becomes a recognised phrase in corporate life, the focus seems to be moving (slowly) away from face-to-face, off-site, company training days. L&D activities can range across anything from an hour or so spent completing an online e-learning module to a university post-graduate course.

Many organisations start with an L&D budget (sometimes based on a percentage of the salary bill for example) and work backwards to what they can afford, so that tends to be a defining factor. Others put on a catalogue of learning opportunities and it is down to managers and staff to identify which are of interest/use. Some would say that more enlightened organisations are starting to see L&D as more of   a strategic partner who can advise and support the organisation to develop and grow. Whichever way your organisation operates, you are going to need some sort of practical plan for your L&D activities across the year.

If you are given the task of putting an L&D plan together, you are going to need to follow some broadly similar steps to other plans we mentioned throughout this book.

Recommendations for putting together an L&D plan:

• Firstly, you need to understand what the organisation’s priorities are – so start with your business and people plans and work out (preferably with input from others) what the priority areas for L&D are going to be. As an example, if your organisation plans to increase its sales targets by 100% next year, you may decide you need to focus on developing your sales function!

• Depending on the type of organisation and industry sector, you may have some required training. Neither of us are big fans of the idea of ‘mandatory training’ (also referred to as ‘sheep- dip’) but in some sectors – such as healthcare – it is unavoidable that certain skills need to be demonstrated and certified on a regular basis. Many organisations adopt the same approach to areas like Health and Safety.

• You might also want to factor in specific, individual training needs. You could gather this information through a formal Training Needs Analysis (TNA) or you may already have it through your performance management systems.

• Once you have identified the “what”, it’s time to think about how you will meet those needs you have identified. We’d suggest thinking as innovatively as possible and not getting stuck in the “I must send Joe Bloggs on a training course to learn x” approach. If you have people in-house with the skills you need, can you involve them in your L&D activities? Can you put together a programme that involves social learning from others? Is there existing learning you can tap into, for instance on YouTube? If there isn’t, can you create some yourselves?!

• E-learning can often be seen as a “magic bullet” – but we’d issue a health warning. It can be great if the content is good and the idea of being able to do it whenever and wherever is certainly very attractive but if the content is dull or you suffer from IT problems, it will switch people off faster than you can say “click next”…

• Don’t forget individual development approaches like mentoring and coaching. Entire books have been written about each of these so we won’t go into more detail here – although we will mention it again when we come to talk about leadership development.

• Somewhat unfairly, you may be expected to have all of the answers: don’t be afraid to ask managers whether they have had any positive L&D experiences that might be relevant – especially if they are subject experts! People will happily share tales of what has worked for them and what hasn’t.

• No discussion of L&D would be complete without mentioning evaluation. We’re not talking about the ubiquitous “happy sheet” that you get after a training course here though: your L&D plan will need reviewing regularly to see if it’s achieving what you set out to do. Use practical measures wherever you can, even if your L&D intervention may not be the only factor – did your sales increase 100%? If it hasn’t worked, you can tweak the priorities and the delivery methods and try again.