12
Comment from the British Institute for Learning & Development
Y
es, it is easy to get hung up on negatives when it comes to the economy. At the recent British Institute for Learning and
Development (BILD) annual conference, delegates were tasked with a big and seemingly negative question: “Are L&D spending cutbacks creating a skills gap that is hurting the UK economic recovery and if so, how can we reduce it?”
If you ever watched the BBC sitcom ‘Yes, Minister’, you will remember the senior civil servants could set any opinion poll question to elicit the answer they wanted to hear. To get over this potential problem, a panel of opinion leaders gave their take first. Wyn Llewellyn of WynMill consulting thought a skills gap was hurting recovery, but it was up to the L&D community to get the training needs analysis as robust as possible, and then “just get more business savvy – talk their talk”. Andy Gilbert of Go Mad Thinking asserted that a thinking skills gap existed. There is a need for better-phrased questions, to tease out the strategic level positioning for board members. His upside down thought that there is actually no budget (and therefore no budget to cut), was an obstacle that L&D professionals needed to get over. Sharing the risk and reward, and offering tangible business benefits were his solution focuses. Jack Wills of Wills Consultants offered “yes and no” as his overview answer to the big question. His suggestion was for the community to “get our act together”, to develop the product right out of school – to join up the needs of the modern workplace to the teenagers.
Laura Overton of Towards Maturity thought the key to recovery was through the performance of our people. Some 72 per cent of organisations that Towards Maturity polled were going to increase their L&D investment in the next year. This investment (not ‘spend’, you will notice) was more visible and transparent because of the economic situation, which meant that it had to be more targeted and cost effective.
learningmagazine.co.uk
What effect will L&D cutbacks have on economic recovery? Phil Hawthorn asks whether it will become a much bumpier ride
Do
It would seem obvious that benefits should be quantified, value should be demonstrated, priority should be given to highest impact ideas and businesses should identify the skills that are actually needed. Perhaps the ‘let’s put it on the backburner’ attitude towards L&D as a whole was driving thinking towards
“
Providing examples of ROI calculations (and many methods were promulgated at the conference), specifically allied to improvement interventions was Wyn Llewellyn’s drill down on this. “Getting teams to measure the cost of poor quality, reworks and errors,” would give the
Demonstrating the worth of L&D, to make it both more central and compelling, would have a major impact. Noble, yes – but how to get there?
making sure the links are made obvious and marketed? The constraints, some delegates felt, were adding a positive impetus to becoming more creative.
It did feel to many that demonstrating the worth of L&D, to make it both more central and a more compelling prospect for all organisations, would have major impact. Noble, yes – but how to get there?
baseline figures. Would reassessment post intervention give an easy to measure uplift? Perhaps some of the potential solutions need to be considered at that level of reductionist simplification, rather than thinking three-year strategies? Wyn added: “The bottom line is needing to get obsessed with the client/customer business and also with the customer’s customer needs – and
“
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68