L&D Professionals, I don’t envy you

Last week I attended the #cipdLDShow in London. I have always said how I would like to be more involved in Learning & Development and how it must be brilliant to be delivering something great to employees. However, after attending this two days conference I realised just how hard this job actually is.

Not all employees will appreciate being told that they need extra training and that they need to ‘develop their skills further’. Not everyone appreciates online courses or enjoys sitting in a classroom for hours. Not everyone learns the same way and not always there is time to be truly concentrating on extra learning while work needs to get done. 

I felt a bit out of my comfort zone when trying to answer the following question: how do you use brain, health, emotion, executive functioning, habit, insight, memory and neuroplasticity to inform your L&D practice?

One simple question like this made me realise just how complicate and intangible the profession is. While the first couple of sessions on Wednesday morning left me thinking: ‘L&D has it easy, it’s all common sense’, I actually realised how much thinking and planning goes into successful L&D practices. I did think that pretty much everyone would love attending courses, but actually I really don’t envy you guys: it must be tough to get it really right, to make a difference, to prove ROI… I know I would find it hard in my company. I have now realised that change and tangible benefits would come slowly and I know how impatient some directors can be. And it’s not just the board, it’s engaging with the staff, get them immersed in a culture of learning and sharing, getting that right before even starting to think about delivering a course or promoting learning. Once again, I don’t envy you. 

I’ve always enjoyed learning, I’ve always been grateful for any opportunity that has been given to me in terms of being able to develop. However at the conference I heard many discouraged delegates explain how it is a challenge to encourage people to learn and how it is even harder to find the most effective way of making sure that some knowledge is absorbed and put into every day practice.

I am not in L&D and we don’t have an L&D department, however I listened to companies such as Google and Deloitte and many others successful case studies and I believe that there are a few things that companies like mine can learn in order to improve (or indeed kick start!) their L&D practices. I did leave Olympia on Thursday with some good tips on how to get started.

Thanks to the #cipdLDShow and these case studies I believe that if I was ever asked to look into implementing an L&D strategy I would start by doing a quick research. I think it is necessary to find out in what way employees prefer to learn. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t enjoy the ‘click-click-click-CONGRATULATIONS’ type e-courses, but I’m also not sure that the classroom approach would work. Dr. Ciela Hartanov and Aimee O’Malley explained in their Thursday session how Google asked their employees to answer questions such as:

– Give me an example of a time you had to learn something dramatically different and that required you to have a completely different set of mine. How did you think about it? How was the structure of your thinking? How did you tackle this learning challenge? What comes to mind when you think about learning?

 Also, in order for learning to happen, the culture needs to promote openness and transparency. Interaction and creativity need to be encouraged and this can happen through physical spaces in the office where people can bump into one another.

I would then give them a choice and let them choose would they would like to learn. I am a firm believer that if you give people freedom, they will amaze you. I like the idea that they could choose their own course, their own MOOC and self select what they would like to learn. Employees are not irresponsible with the level of freedom and they are aware of what they need to learn. If you work in a company that doesn’t see the need for a big budget in L&D, I would definitely start off with specific MOOCs. In order for the courses to be completed you would have to drive individual accountability and potentially link this to reward.

As Google explained, it is then important to foster the network and create an ecosystem of peer learners. Find a way of organising sessions where employees that have previously attended and completed a specific course, do an introduction for employees that are interested in joining or have joined and need support.

Have an internal portal where employees can post their reactions and opinions regarding specific topics, courses and make sure that you facilitate the discussions. Don’t take over, let them loose. Technology is important and it will attract some employees, however it is just the enabler. L&D and of course HR, should focus on people and encourage them to be curious, learn and explore.

These are a few of the initial things that could be done. In nearly all the sessions attended there were also examples of failures and multiple attempts before getting it right. In my day to day job, some of the things I do are clear cut: you follow the process, you address issues correctly and you have the outcome desired, easy! However it was clear that it is trial and error with L&D. Some initiatives will go down well and some others might not work. So much need to be taken into account and most of it is intangible and unpredictable. It is risky, it might not work and that is surely a scary feeling. It’s scary to know that despite trying to encourage a learning and sharing culture, despite all your research and work, there will still be employees that are not excited by this. There is little way of predicting the outcome of your work and what you do, however the sense of satisfaction when it all goes to plan must be enormous.

Knowing that you have made a difference in some teams and departments, knowing that what you enabled will be with them for many years, knowing that you can make the most stubborn employee become a role model and advocate. That must be rewarding.

 

L&D Professionals, I do envy you.