Designed around the theme of “Thrive and Grow”, the Irish Institute of Training and Development’s annual conference in December kicked off a national dialogue between the C-Suite and Learning & Development professionals in Ireland. The IITD National Conference is firmly established as the leading event for practitioners and providers in the L&D and Talent arena. The conference explored the key needs of Irish indigenous and multi-national businesses based here, showcasing L&D’s potential in contributing to their overall strategy. From positioning the industry as a key national economic driver, to understanding the diversity and agility needed amongst our workforce, the conference aimed to inspire L&D professionals to chart a path for SMT alignment and growth in 2019.
The L&D function of an organisation contains the potential for broad impact and provides benefits to the entire business. A range of speakers and thought leaders shared case studies, walking through how their L&D initiatives were successfully adopted by their organisations. Irish L&D leaders proved time and again that training initiatives within their companies contribute to the bottomline.
The Big Picture Danny McCoy, CEO of IBEC, got proceedings underway in the Hogan Suite at Croke Park and gave his insight on the key trends of Ireland’s economy. He focused on L&D’s position as a key developer of intellectual talent and how itmaximises employee potential.
McCoy compared the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger years to Ireland in its current situation. The Celtic Tiger years were credit- driven; The current economic climate is cash-driven and fuelled by intellectual property, a cornerstone Ireland’s success. L&D must harness asmuch potential as possible so that as the impact of L&D on Irish business grows, so too will Ireland’s attractiveness to foreign investors.
L&D’s Role in Accelerating Growth This year’s MC, Matt Cooper, insightfully introduced speakers, conducted Q&A sessions andmoderated questions. The Q&A with McCoy delved into the importance of the L&D function future-proofing professionals, and the key role this activity plays in our society.
Hubspot’s Christian Kinnear, Nuritas CEO Emmet Brown, Matheson partner Tara Doyle, and Google’s Helen Tynan then took to the stage for a panel discussion exploring business leaders’ perspectives on the importance of capability development and how it links to the business agenda. The panel spoke at length on the idea of “general athletes,” those versatile workers who can adapt as their roles change. As L&D builds the general athlete, businesses in turn have the capacity to adapt to changing industries and grow in new directions -- employees and businesses willing and capable of facing change will grow at a faster rate than non-adopters.
Cognitive Diversity and the role of L&D Being a “general athlete” requires resilience. The reality, however, is thatmany employeesmay not have the personal resources to cope with high pressure, fast-moving workplaces. L&D has a real role to play in supporting the wellbeing of employees, stepping into the gap to provide training for employees to strengthen their coping skills and formanagers to understand how they can support their teams. Companies and training organisations should consider focusing some investment on resilience, in the interest of supporting an agile and productive workforce.
Economist GerardWalker raised the topic of ageismin the workplace. The panel agreed that ageismexists, and older applicants should not be overlooked: The value of their experience and life skills can’t be underestimated. Some organisations have put in place schemes to draw older and hidden workforce members back into the jobsmarket – see page six for a further exploration of the theme.
Making it Stick The focus shifted fromstrategic needs tomatters of execution andmeasurement in the second half of themorning. The stage was then turned over to Sky UK and Ireland’s TraceyWaters and Eoin Cannon (Upwelling Learning), who walked the delegates through how they approached L&D in Sky by leveraging an Agile methodology. To overcome their problems and reapmaximum impact fromtheir L&D programmes, they had to break the traditionalmould of the programmes being HR-centred. This involved experimenting with a flexible, accessible and personalised training experience to achieve effective results in their L&D process. Some tools they utilised during their experimentation were Trello and Slack. They were keen to stress that experimenting is a key part of Agile. Although they were constantlymindful about the end user experience and solving the end user problem, their theories and concepts were wrongmore times than they were right. Being tolerant of some failure paves the way for innovation – the key is to ‘fail fast’.
Book Recommendation Scrum:TheArtofDoingTwicetheWorkin HalftheTimebyJeffSutherland
GSK launched similar initiatives in their organisation, according to Sinead Marron, who spoke about how GSK changed the engagement approach with their learners, realising that sustaining the learnings of their employees was essential. To enable change to their L&D function, Sinead encouraged GSK to constantly engage with the 'customer' (employee) and listen to what they want. Feedback was critical, as was understanding the journey the employees undertook. The learning process was streamlinedmaking itmore efficient, enabling learners to be more efficient with the 1%of their time which is the average weekly duration dedicated to learning.
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