Today’s business landscape is not the same as the landscape from 30, 20 or even 10 years ago.
Digitalisation is opening up new opportunities. Artificial Intelligence is creating solutions but also raising challenges. The regulatory environment is becoming complex.
In the modern-day VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) business ecosystem, learning can make a working professional successful or push him into oblivion.
Such shifts are also changing the roles and responsibilities of Chief Learning Officers (CLO). Where earlier they were in charge of designing and delivering job-related training and development initiatives, now their work profile is much broader and definitely more strategic. Today’s CLO is also expected to reshape their employees’ capabilities and their organisation’s culture, and find ways for the two to synergise.
This prospect may sound intimidating to some. However, there are several ways for a CLO to take charge of transforming their organisation’s learning culture and position her company for success.
Develop capabilities and mindsets, not just skills and competencies
Today, it is no longer enough to train employees on job- or compliance-related skills. To prepare their organisations for the future, CLOs need to focus more on developing mindsets and behaviours that can enable employees to perform well in future as well.
Develop leaders and let leaders develop
Leaders must be encouraged to build new strengths, capabilities, values and behaviours. Resting on their past laurels should be outlawed. Only when leaders are able to enhance their past experiences and expertise with self-driven learning and experimentation can organisational goals truly be achieved.
Think Digital, Think Data
Today, no modern company can afford to ignore the era of digitalisation. That’s why CLOs must encourage their employees to develop digital awareness and data-driven thinking. Only when employees are prepared for the digital age will they be able to contribute great ideas to make their organisation’s digital-driven business transformation a success.
Learning comes from curiosity and a willingness to learn
CLOs must strive to develop an organisational culture that encourages curiosity and the desire to learn.
Personalise learning and make it part of the company’s DNA. Build tools that tailor learning plans to individuals. Identify useful external content and add it to your on-demand learning modules. Empower employees to set their own agendas for gaining knowledge and skills. Foster peer learning and provide contexts where they can both learn and teach in order to internalise their learnings. By rethinking ways of delivering learning, CLOs can create a ‘learning-pervasive’ environment that is available to everybody who might benefit from it.
Embrace new ways of learning (and teaching)
With so many digital tools and technology available today, there is no reason why learning must continue to remain an ‘exclusive’ opportunity available only to some employees. A learning culture where only a select few (e.g. top leadership) get access to high-quality training is counter-intuitive to the goal of driving organisational success through learning and development.
CLOs must harness the new opportunities available today to digitise and democratise learning across the employee spectrum. Encourage every employee to learn and grow. Stop focusing on specific job-related courses and aim to deliver learning experiences for the ‘whole’ person. Of course, this does not mean that you give up on old-fashioned in-person learning. Balance face-to-face and digital learning – use text, audio, video, games, simulations and combine them with classroom instruction. As long as you give your participants opportunities for introspection and immersion in addition to instruction, you will be able to create effective learning experiences for employees, no matter where they are.
If something’s not working, get rid of it (and if something is, improve it!)
CLOs must create an inventory of learning resources and monitor it periodically to understand what’s working and what’s not. Use data analytics, employee surveys and other sources of information to optimise the learning and development inventory. Sometimes, less can be more. Fewer courses, fewer clicks, fewer items on a page – figure out the best combinations that will improve your learners’ capabilities and lead to growth.
This may require a few iterations that can only come about by measuring the impact of your learning initiatives. Tie learning experiences to employee performance and measure the business outcomes that result from training.
A final word
Today’s organisations and CLOs are required to be proactive and strategic with their learning and development initiatives. Instead of looking at employee learning with a short-term lens, they need to make it an integral part of their companies’ strategic agenda. Only then will they see tangible outcomes that transform their organisation’s futures.
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What is your organisation doing to transform its learning and development goals? Leave a comment below!