Learning and development (L&D) wants to measure business impact, but only a small percentage of learning and development (L&D) leaders know what and how to measure. Even if they do, odds are they don't have in-house data skills, so their tools go unused.
CEO's voice their concern about skills for the future—not just technical skills, but the ability to work socially in the digital world. 79% of CEOs believe a lack of essential skills threatens the future growth of their organization.
CEO's want results and assurance that learning and development (L&D) is impacting preparation of the workforce for the present and future, but barriers remain. The problem isn't learning measurement—it's perceptions of L&D's role in the business.
Learning and development (L&D) may have reached a crossroads where, in each organization, it will either become an integral part of the business or go extinct. We saw this happen to a few during the 2008 recession.
The few cases we saw were training departments that had become "order takers." The business told them what it wanted, and Training produced—or it didn't, and the requester found another resource. When it came time to cut budgets, Training got the ax.
When learning and development (L&D) needs right now is the ability to work collaboratively across the organization and to do business the way the organization does, working "socially in the digital world." Collaboration is the first step in building the skills and models to both develop impactful learning and measure its impact.
That's why, in our learning and development (L&D) delivery models, the first step in any project is to build a cross-functional team. L&D can't operate as a back-office service provider and help the business become successful. You must team with business process owners to make them successful. The first collaboration should be an alliance with Marketing.
L&D Partnership with Marketing
It wasn't so long ago that learning in marketing or separate functions. Marketing served an external audience and learning was internal.
Today, learning and development (L&D) can work with marketing on things like content design and campaign-based delivery. Marketing is a long history of using data on human behavior to drive customer engagement. While the aim may be different, the social behavior aspects of both customer and learning engagement are the same.
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