Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011 - (Page 7)

AT THE EDITOR’S DESK | KARLHEINZ OEHLER LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT MUST SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF THE BUSINESS. LEARNING AGILITY: A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE T o outperform competition in turbulent economic environments requires learning agility at individual, team and organizational level. Learning agility means to look systemically at the employee lifecycle, starting with attracting and selecting the right candidates, followed by successful on-boarding, developing, retaining, and promoting employees who make a difference. To add value, learning and development (L&D) must play a critical role in each step of this process which will ultimately impact organizational effectiveness. This requires a very different L&D model, a model of adaptability and resilience capable of managing discontinuities in turbulent business environments. Managing discontinuities not only means the full integration of L&D into a company’s value creation chain, but to measure its impact on business results. Measuring the financial impact of L&D-related initiatives is difficult. L&D must be aligned with market dynamics and intrinsically linked to key company financial indicators. L&D must provide a real time response to business needs and focus on integrated solutions, not training programs. For L&D to add value, it must provide learning structures that enable knowledge transfer and application to achieve sustainable impact. And most importantly, L&D must bridge the gap between individual and organizational learning. To move L&D measurement from concept to reality, interdependencies between company objectives and L&D programs need to be recognized. The art of measurement is in its simplification. In the case of L&D, this means selecting only the financial key per- This Month’s Guest Editor Karl-Heinz Oehler serves as vice president, Global Talent Management for the Hertz Corporation. Karl-Heinz has over 30 years of extensive experience in developing both global human resources and organizational development strategies in a multicultural business context. Prior to joining Hertz, Karl-Heinz led Global Human Resources and Organization Development for the international division of The Reynolds and Reynolds Company. His previous positions included working for 15 years in senior positions with Texas Instruments. Email Karl-Heinz. Know someone who’d make an outstanding guest editor? Interested in becoming one yourself? Contact us at editor@trainingindustry.com. formance indicators (KPIs) which provide meaningful information for L&D and the business to act upon. With an almost indefinite number of measures to choose from there is a real risk of selecting too many. What appears to be a “key” performance indicator may in fact not really be key. There was never a more conducive environment for L&D to rise to the challenge of delivering value to the business. There was also never a greater demand from the business on L&D to reinvent itself to gain credibility. L&D must speak the language of the business to deliver timely, integrated solutions, not HR programs. At the end, it’s all about outperforming competition which needs holistic people development thinking to make a difference in the marketplace. But foremost, it requires a business-focused L&D function fully integrated into the value creation process. 7 TrainingIndustry Quarterly, Spring 2011 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011
From Where I Sit
Contents
At the Editor’s Desk
Performance & Productivity
Learning Technologies
Technical Training
Learning 2020
Developing High Impact Academia Partnerships
Sustainability – The Next Corporate Challenge
The LMS Evolution: Revolutionizing Form and Function
Video: The Next Hot Learning App?
Jackson Hewitt
Pay Attention to Knowledge Retention
Closing Arguments

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011