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little or no change in these findings, despite an incredible hunger in L&D professionals to align learning more effectively to business needs.
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Align learning with business strategy and the rest will then fall into place
Alignment clearly is the big opportunity for L&D in 2014, but the evidence shows that we need to do things differently, not just debate the merits. Turning our talk into action will ensure that L&D activity adds bottom-line value to business and, furthermore, it will highlight that this is just the beginning of a virtuous cycle of building stakeholder engagement.
Three key ingredients for improving alignment 1. Remember it’s a two-way conversation! When it comes to aligning learning and business, you are not alone. Our research has shown that leading learning companies are more likely to engage senior business leaders in conversation: coming to a mutual agreement on the aims that need to be reached through learning, and sharing the responsibility for the realisation of those goals. Often, it is difficult to start a two-way conversation with business leaders so why not use independent evidence already shared in this article to open up new opportunities to connect?
2. Clarify contributions – alignment means that everyone is clear about what needs to be done, who is doing it and why. For example, if a critical part of your new blend for induction training is about line managers encouraging their staff to apply new techniques, those managers need to be clear about how to do that and what tools and resources you have made available to them and to their team members as part of the process.
3. Focus, focus, focus! Once you have mutually established what it is that you are trying
achieve, and have clarified what the roles of L&D, individuals and business leaders are in achieving those goals, then everything else is a distraction! In all of your activity, keep the end in mind, stick to your side of the bargain and continually communicate your mutual successes! Aligning learning to business isn’t about scoring stakeholder buy-in to your latest ideas, nor is it about increasing your budget or headcount (although those often follow). Aligning learning to business is about L&D working hand in hand with both individuals and business leaders to help them respond faster, improve performance and deliver results. If you do nothing else following WOLCE this year, do this and success will follow. n
Laura Overton is managing director at Towards Maturity. Contact Laura via Twitter/LinkedIn: Lauraoverton
Learning Magazine
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