Measuring
to learn from its competitors in order to redefine its core offering. As a result it was able to regain market share at a time when the business was being rapidly eroded away by global competition. Now organisations use benchmarking to specifically consider new strategic directions and to improve processes within core business functions. In Japan, benchmarking is a core management practice – all managers are expected to not only keep up with colleagues but also to surpass them.
B
So what is benchmarking? Benchmarking is the process of comparing key performance indicators for one organisation with the indicators of others who are considered to represent the industry standard or best practice. We are operating at a time when skills are seen as essential. However, as resources are slashed, it is critical that the L&D function is able to improve performance by redefining its offering and taking on a new strategic direction. The few L&D benchmarks that did exist merely looked at resources allocated to training – how much budget and how many days are allocated. These are no longer adequate to inspire the changes needed.
Figure 1
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Laura Overton is a keynote speaker at the World of Learning Conference
2011 on Wednesday 28 September at the NEC Birmingham. She will advise the audience on ‘Adapting to change and influencing success – five new conversations for L&D’. For more information see page 32.
Learning Magazine
enchmarking has been credited for literally turning
companies around. The earliest example of this came from Xerox, the first pioneer of benchmarking, who used the approach
Benchmarking has been around since the early 90s and can be a vital tool to improve operational performance. Laura Overton asks do current benchmarks fail to inspire the changes needed in L&D today?
Redefi ning what ‘good’ looks like At the start of our own benchmarking journey, our initial aim was to investigate how L&D departments were using technologies to make a business impact and why some were more successful than others. With this focus on impact, we had to consider new performance indicators for L&D that were more meaningful in the 21st Century. We now have established new benchmarks, for example, efficiency improvements (cost and time saved) and agility (reducing time to competency). More importantly we now understand what actions influence these indicators.
up “
The benchmark has adapted over the years through the input of key industry supporters and the 1,500 plus participating organisations from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
25 Feature Benchmarking
“As resources are slashed, it is critical that the L&D function is able to improve performance by redefining its offering”
As a result, we have identified six work streams that influence success, see figure one. By benchmarking against these work streams, organisations can baseline their current L&D activities and create a personalised action plan to accelerate performance improvement in the future.
Organisations can take part in the Towards Maturity Benchmark for free at
www.towardsmaturity.org/ mybenchmark. The 2011 industry benchmark will be free to download in November 2011 at
www.towardsmaturity.org/2011benchmark.
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