Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2014 - (Page 36)

the initiative's success. These are the individuals, the front-line operational soldiers, who will demonstrate how one's initiative delivers specific business results. Business leaders acknowledge that competitive advantage comes through people. This is why workplace learning and HR are playing a more strategic role. Another reason to align with business objectives is to convince business leaders that one can tangibly measure workplace learning outcomes. Always keep in mind that accountability for results is fundamental for leaders and internal customers. This requires those responsible for workplace learning and their staff (from design to delivery) to radically shift thinking from learning to business outcomes to gain support for any initiative. Training budgets, like every other business-unit budget, must demonstrate tangible returns, especially when an initiative associates itself closely to improving specific internal performance needs. These operational customers are held financially accountable and, as a result, pay for one's initiative through their budgets. PROVING VALUE FOR WORKPLACE LEARNING The biggest mistake one can make is trying to position training as an essential need. Business leaders see nothing as an absolute need - from their perspective training is simply another business function. Learning professionals must embrace this fact. The key to training's viability and validity is to align training to operational needs. Demonstrate tangible performance improvement benefits for each level of the organization (performance specialists call this cascading). Additionally, business leaders are sold on the need for training. The real question for them is which training initiative makes the most economic/ business sense and will present tangible benefits. This surprises many learning professionals. Learning initiatives need to follow business needs over learning priorities. The reality is that workplace learning is gaining recognition as a valuable business partner, but not necessarily for the reasons one may think. Workplace learning's role, like any other intangible business activity, remains precarious at best. Its relevance is due to dynamic economic and LEARNING PROFESSIONALS ARE MISSING A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME RELEVANT TO THEIR ORGANIZATION AND AVOID BEING SEEN AS AN UNNECESSARY EXPENSE. workforce factors. Business leaders acknowledge that increasing competition (keeping up with new products/services) is temporary and that employee and intellectual capital retention is paramount. 36 There is a lot of rhetoric swirling about how to effectively validate learning effectiveness, and much of it is rhetoric and very misleading advice. Learning must be effective and accountable, however, don't confuse these two distinctive requirements. To communicate learning effectiveness to business leaders, one must clearly define the initiative's validity relative to how it aligns with Kirkpatrick's Level 3 and Level 4 expectations. Business leaders see validity with how they allocate available resources for proposed initiatives. Leaders must meet specific business objectives by leveraging scarce financial and human resources. They base allocation decisions on how well each initiative utilizes available resources to meeting these objectives. The first myth about learning effectiveness is that results must be proven financially. This is inaccurate. Business leaders generally view training in one of three ways: * A necessary requirement. For the majority of training, leaders treat it as an expense and don't usually measure effectiveness. * Part of a major effort. In this instance, leaders view training as a component of a major business initiative. * A tangible capital investment. When there is a significant and tangible learning investment for the long-term indirect contribution it presents to the organization. With this in mind, those responsible for learning activities must present a clear business case addressing why a business leader should accept, let alone, implement the initiative. This emphasizes the critical choices leaders take when allocating financial resources. So, it is critical the initiative differentiates between learning effectiveness and accountability. This is where it gets messy. Learning professionals are inundated with the financial term return on investment. The problem according to accounting and financial guidelines (business leaders will point this out) is the inappropriate use of the training ROI methodology. In short, ROI fails to evaluate training on many levels and as a result, further undermines learning credibility with those that actually know how to apply ROI.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2014

Tracking Trends
Table of Contents
Guest Editor: Meeting Today's Learning Consumers Where They Are
Facilitating Change
How Smart Leaders Squash Employee Entitlement
The Reskilling of Design
Responsive Design and Learning Solutions
Women, Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
Key Trends for 2014: Shifting to Business-Centric Learning
The Promise of Badges for Learning and Development
The Business Leader's Bottom Line: Aligning Learning with Organizational Needs
Raising the Bar: The Impact of Sales Training on Effective Customer Engagement
The Language of Measurement: When to Assess, Evalutate and Test
Casebook: Combined Insurance: Ensuring Efficient Sales Training via Mobile Learning
The Challenge of Workplace Re-entry After Training
The Learning Shift: From Event to Process
What's Online
Company News

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