Forbes recently published an article that shed light on the importance of learning and development programs in today’s world of work. Titled “Why Learning and Development is Now a Competitive Differentiator,” they discussed how employees are now seeking L&D opportunities now more than ever before. In fact, nearly half of employees are pursuing training and development opportunities on their own time because they find it important to stay competitive in the market. But, when you offer these opportunities in-house, you’re shifting that narrative and providing them with more reason than ever to stay and grow with your business. Over ¾ would stay at a company providing them with these options! So, how do you make this a reality for your business?
In the first part of the blog series, we talked about the potential ROI of an effective L&D development program. Today, we’re going to talk about steps you need to take to put that effective program into action!
Garner Buy-In from Key Stakeholders
Before you spend the time and invest the money in a personalized L&D program, you must have buy-in from key stakeholders. That likely means your senior management team and your people managers, as they are directly responsible for cultivating the culture and success of training initiatives. Without that buy-in, your investment will go to waste. Employees won’t take something seriously if management doesn’t.
Here are three steps to take to garner this important buy-in:
- Create an outline identifying potential ROI based upon L&D success statistics
- Identify key stakeholders’ interests and design custom proposals for how L&D will help them achieve that.
- Create a competitive analysis – are your top competitors offering training and L&D? You should be too.
Later in the series, we’ll go into more detail on this, too. So, stay tuned!
Start by Identifying Business Needs & Target Audience
Once you have buy-in, you must identify where in your business and who in your business would benefit from customized L&D most. This will vary from business to business.
Start by asking these questions:
- What are the organizational goals your business has been struggling to meet?
- Where are your team’s skills gaps when it comes to reaching those objectives? Is it leadership, follow-through, or problem-solving? Identify where they are lacking and need more support.
Design a Delivery Framework
Once you’ve identified what gaps you would like to fill to achieve business goals, it’s time to think about the best way to fill those gaps. For example, is it a manager training program that offers monthly workshops for soft skill building, or is it a company-wide initiative where everyone takes a customized survey to identify their own skills gaps and then works with their managers to personalize a learning and development plan?
The options are endless, and it can seem overwhelming at times. But selecting the right methodology and rollout is key for overall success.
Which brings us to the next point, how do you even measure that success?
Create KPIs to Measure Success
Learning and development efficacy and success will look different for every business and its unique achievement goals.
For example, if your goal is to enhance your team’s ability to provide quality customer service, the key performance indicators for success may be something like an increase in customer retention or an increase in repeat-customer sales. However, if your L&D program is focused on management’s ability to mentor and nurture potential talent, you may look at employee satisfaction scores and employee retention rates.
Setting those goals will help you identify a measurable path toward success.
If You Need Help Designing a Custom Learning & Development Program, NimblyWise Can Help
This is, of course, an oversimplified version of the process. But it is a great place to start!
We know this because we personalize employee development daily.
Using our real-time learning framework as a foundation, we help design programs that customize your employee’s experience while developing necessary soft skills to succeed. And, in turn, grow your business.
Developing an L&D program from scratch is costly, and there is a lot of room for error. Enlisting the help of a team with client-backed results, certified coaches, and years of experience in L&D can help you succeed. Let’s chat about how!
P.S. Stay tuned for next week’s blog on choosing pilot participants!
