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
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