Focus Magazine - Spring 2015 - (Page 24)

FEATURESTORY tell; can centralized training savings compensate for the lack of convenience and customization found in decentralized training? If not, the pendulum may well swing back to decentralized models (and consider the organizational costs incurred in repeatedly changing these models!). Trend #3: Demand Planning & Flexible Learning Resources Does your staﬀ feel overworked and stressed because of unrealistic deadlines for last minute training requests? With multiple launches, marketing requests, POA changes, new hire training and new initiatives, how do you juggle your resources? Who gets the highest priority? What gets done? As budgets get tighter, learning organizations need to rethink the way they spend money. Learning is a key part of the business, and needs to be treated as a business. One of the most basic tenets of business is managing your supply chain. What is your predicted demand? What resources do you have to address that demand? What options do you have to increase capacity during demand spikes? How can you distribute demand over a year to get the most benefit from your resources? Demand for learning resources is reasonably predictable, and can be mapped as part of a Demand Planning Process. Learning organizations oen staﬀ to maximum demand; however, those demand spikes tend to happen only occasionally throughout the year, meaning resources are underutilized during periods of lower demand. Once organizations can see demand spikes and lulls throughout the year, they can staﬀ to minimum sustainable demand, rather than highest demand. To meet periods of high demand, many organizations are using flexible learning resources, external partnerships to fill in the gaps in their demand plan, allowing them to manage the size of their permanent headcount. Trend #4: Building Long-Term Sales Team Success In a more robust economy, successful sales professionals tended to move around a lot. Either they earned promotions into leadership or remained in home oﬃce roles, or they moved on to other organizations. As a result, little attention was paid to ongoing sales learning. With less mobility in the industry, however, some organizations are looking at developing stronger long-term sales teams. e truth is, the constant turnover in many sales teams has a serious cost, in time, money and talent drain. For some life sciences organizations, advanced sales training was halfhearted; oen the content was good, but not contextualized into the career path. With more sales professionals spending more of their career in a selling role, there is increasing need for the next rung of the sales ladder, and a professional development plan for leveraging a seasoned sales force. Trend #5: More Focus on Informal Learning ink about everything you've learned in your career. How much did you learn from a formal method (classroom, e-learning) and how much did you learn from an informal method (experience, coaching, mentoring, advice)? e Center for Creative Leadership famously developed the 70:20:10 model years ago, suggesting that 70 percent of learning came from practice and experience, 20 percent from coaching and mentoring and only 10 percent from formal learning methods. at model is beginning to take hold in large organizations. More organizations are recognizing that learning is process-based, not event-based. ey are evaluating social learning systems, building more robust mentoring programs, and utilizing on-demand learning at the point of need - and relying less on classrooms and formal learning programs. Even in a highly regulated industry, informal learning is emerging. One of the challenges of social learning in highly regulated environments is the potential sharing of inappropriate or non-compliant information. Almost all organizations that use social learning utilize some form of monitoring or moderation to keep information sharing on track. Conclusion Changes in an industry oen represent good ideas; the current trends in life sciences learning represent survival strategies. Anyone who has worked in the industry for more than a few years can see and feel how much the world has changed. e new world is neither better nor worse; however, it definitely is diﬀerent, and we all need to adjust our strategies and tactics to succeed. I Ann Stott is the senior director, life sciences practice at Performance Development Group. Email Ann at astott@performdev.com. Rich Mesch is the senior director of customer engagement at PDG and the co-author of the Wiley/ASTD book "The Gamiﬁcation of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook." Email Rich at rmesch@performdev.com. 24 FOCUS | SPRING 2015 | www.L-TEN.org http://www.L-TEN.org

Focus Magazine - Spring 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Focus Magazine - Spring 2015