The session was led by Ruth Stuart – CIPD Research Adviser
Robert Ashcroft – Senior L&D Manager Santander UK
Ruth Stuart got the session off by asking the participants what we thought the “purpose of L&D is?” (L&D = Learning and Development – or “training” in old money)
The 2015 CIPD survey reported that the purpose is about:
“improving individual and organisational performance through developing employee capability”
There are some key external drivers that were identified in the research:
Economic, Social and Cultural and Science and Technology
These drivers are changing the needs of people and businesses. Younger generations have a very different set of expectations when it comes to learning, and how they learn.
Change is constant
What is different about change in recent years is that the business context is said to be:
Volatile – Uncertain – Complex – Ambiguous – VUCA
This is a changing environment not only for employees, but customers.
Research still shows:
- 70% of change programmes still fail!
- Reliance on outdated models
- balance of step change vs stability
We need new ideas and models to take into account the complexity of the context in which change takes place.
L&D can be a critical part of the solution. L&D should be about more than just training
Business alignment –
The biggest barrier is our inability to understand the business strategy. Better alignment comes from impact measures
Only 7% of professionals report that they evaluate interventions against business impact – most only measure evaluation against participant satisfaction.
Versatility
Look beyond the obvious – look to curating, behavioural science, analytics and harnessing innovative technology.
We need to ask ourselves what can we do differently to drive change for customer benefit? – we need to reflect on this in our own contexts
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Robert Ashcroft – Santander
Talked through the changes to the business – from 2004 to 2010. In 2004 there were more people in the learning design team than there are in L&D in total today.
4 critical things helped the change:
- Partnership – work with
- Observe results – run a pilot, learn from it change before deploying. – L&D are the first customers on all training. all delivery is now by external providers
- Old and new – technology. harnessed workbooks rather than just e-learning
- Work with what you have – costs and revenue are the two indicators – use them! – use what is there, sharepoint or other tools
Blend old and new – not blend tech with tech – but align to your culture and budget
As a part of the development of the L&D team, Santander had the ex CEO from GU talk to then. The key take away was…
- Great products
- Stand out from the crowd – in l&d the crowd might be amazon, bbc, youtube, marketing, etc…
- be seen, be heard
- get people talking
Do this as a business – OR do this as a function
Interestingly the speaker drew attention to that fact that if we use the GU example above, as L&D we need to look not just at our customers, but our competitors. For information this must include all online providers. If it takes 10 minutes to log into the firms LMS, find the relevant content, and then start learning – will employees bother? Especially when they can go to google, find a youtube clip and have the answer to their learning need on their screen in 2 minutes and apply that learning in 5! It is the online services that are really the competitors to L&D. It is the MOOCS, Youtube and others that fight for screen time with our employees. We need content to be accessible and relevant!
Most peoples phones run faster than internal intranet speeds – we need to compete with what individuals have access to…. the landscape for learning now include the BBC, Google, netflix, twitter, MOOCS, youtube. These are the competitors to corporate LMS systems.
Design, look and feel is critical to engagement – people will compare what they see, with what they have – via apps and their own screen. This is there point of reference. Our customers or users will be comparing what L&D functions provide along with what they can get “in their real world”!
Big data
People have more data about their own performance, than business have. i.e. fitbit – we need to look at harnessing data. people want the date too. how can we use this data to improve business.
Data and analytics is becoming important in L&D. Practitioners need to learn statistical and analytics literacy!
Gamification was used to measure the effectiveness of training. The game showed what they learnt. The analysis of the game results and usage showed that the focus on some key topics did not deliver the level of understanding, Santander were able to change their training to be more effective due to the results of game analytics.
Certifications
People do not want attendance or completion certifications – they want points for external accreditation. they want what they have learnt from schools and universities….
Comments in this piece are from the speaker of the session – not the writer
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