OW SPEED AND TECHNOLOGYCHANGE EVERYTHING

In the recent past, training was aprocess almost disconnected from the dailyoperations of the rest of the organisation.Sometimes this gap was literal – trainingwas often confined to a separate building.

At the same time, however, training’s valuewas seldom questioned. It was understoodto have a positive, if usually unmeasured,effect. The role of training was ‘buildingcapability’ – giving employees ‘just-in-case’knowledge and skills for use at some pointin the future.

Today, however, the way people learn in theworkplace has changed. The amount ofinformation people need to carry out theirjobs has altered; there is more of it thanever before and it changes quickly. Part ofthis change springs from the nature of

today’s service-based knowledge work andpart of it from today’s rapid communicationstechnology.

The result has been a shift in the role ofLearning and Development (L&D). In thepast we specialised in building capability,particularly at the beginning of anemployee’s career or at the start of a newassignment within the organisation. Nowwe are increasingly also asked to provideongoing performance support to helpemployees tackle new tasks in their dailywork.

The result is that L&D must change theway it operates in today’s world, in threeways in particular:

Develop content collaboratively –the L&D department can no longer work atone remove from the rest of the

November 2010 Inside Learning Technologies 49

Ara Ohanian outlines three

key ways L&D departments

must change to stay

relevant.

HOW ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING

NEEDS TO CHANGE TO MEET

TODAY’S CHALLENGES

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November 2010 Inside Learning Technologies & Skills

organisation. While trainers in the pastcould develop deep expertise in a givensubject matter, today’s urgent need forinformation makes that impossible. Morethan ever, L&D needs to establish strongways to develop learning content incollaboration with workplace subjectmatter experts (SMEs).

Support current practice – a greatdeal of learning takes place in theworkplace without L&D’s intervention.However, the department has a role toplay in supporting this learning, whetherdeliberately organized by managers orinformally arranged between colleagues.

Maintain and build your department– it is no longer possible to support thewider demands of workplace L&D with ageneralist skill set. Instead, it is essentialfor L&D staff to have both a good generalgrounding in L&D and specialist skills inparticular areas.

DEVELOP CONTENT COLLABORATIVELY

In contrast to the past, L&D professionalsare no longer the subject matter experts inan organisation. Rather, they are specialistsin good learning practices. The speed ofchange in the workplace together with thecomplexity of modern knowledge workmakes this inevitable.

For example, suppose a company regularlyupdates its field sales people withinformation on a competitor’s products. Inthe nineties, it might have brought themall into HQ once or twice a year for abriefing lasting several days.

As the time between a competitor’sproduct releases decreased in the earlypart of this century, the company wouldhave wanted to reduce the lag betweenthe launch of a competitor’s product anddistributing a briefing on that product toits sales force. Probably it would haveanalysed the competitor’s productcentrally, produced detailed informationfor the sales force, and distributed it ase-learning.

In recent years, however, it has becomeclear that a field sales force is potentiallyunder-informed while they are waiting forthis detailed briefing. L&D departmentscontinue to produce these briefings, butmany also distribute short, quick-to-produce videos of key information on acompetitor’s products in just a matter ofdays. Who produces these? Anyone in thesales team who has used the product.The L&D department acts as the editor,distributor, and curator of these videos.

SUPPORT CURRENT PRACTICE

This trend towards the decentralized

approach to learning is not another way ofsaying that the classroom is defunct – forsome training needs the classroomremains the best delivery mechanism.Instead, it is an adaptation to the reality oflearning in the workplace today.

Charles Jennings, former global head oflearning at Thomson Reuters, breakslearning into three categories and roughlyassigns them the following percentagesof learning: Learning on the Job (70%),Learning through Coaching, Feedback,and Networks (20%), and FormalLearning (10%).

Importantly, for Jennings, ‘Learning on theJob’ means more than simply pickingthings up at random. Most learning on thejob, he contends, is the result of deliberateintervention and much of it is encouragedor fostered by managers. This may includeexpanding an employee’s role, giving themstretch projects, deliberately encouragingcontact with senior managers and a hostof other activities.

This new decentralized approach tolearning is a matter of taking the L&Ddepartment into the business and

engaging it with current experts – not onlyin the 10% of formal, course-basedtraining, but also in all the other ways thatthe workforce currently learns.

MAINTAIN AND BUILD YOURDEPARTMENT

Going out into the business is crucial forthe success of L&D in the modern era –whether it is talking to managers tosupport their current learning activities,supporting the grass-roots social learningthat is already taking place, or engagingwith SMEs. Doing these things effectively,however, relies on a team with the rightbreadth and depth of skills as well as onthe right systems and processes.

The IT systems you use should be yourservants, not your masters. They shouldsupport your work with as littleintervention as possible – whether it’smajor maintenance from the ITdepartment or minor workarounds fromthe L&D department. A necessary part ofthis is an integrated approach.

Any time spent transferring data ormaterials from one system to another,

50 Inside Learning Technologies November 2010

The IT systems you use should be your servants, not yourmasters. They should support your work with as littleintervention as possible – whether it’s major maintenancefrom the IT department or minor workarounds from the L&Ddepartment.

HOW ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING NEEDS TO CHANGE TO MEET TODAY’S CHALLENGES

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Inside Learning Technologies & Skills November 2010

spent reformatting, editing, or recompilingis wasted time. The L&D department isthere to support learning, not to supportIT. Any IT system you choose should allowyou to carry out your core activities onone integrated platform – these activitiesare likely to include courseware creation,distribution, and usage tracking.

In addition, to ensure that your IT systemsrequire little technical attention, consider aSaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution,which requires minimal intervention fromyour IT department.

As for your personnel, the demands onthem have definitely increased. In the pastit might have been possible for a trainingdepartment to be a collection ofexperienced L&D generalists, all capable ofturning their hands to most things. Today,however, it needs a far wider set of skills

than ever before to deal with a far widerset of responsibilities.

This wide range of skills means that themodern L&D department needs specialistsin specific areas of L&D practice tofunction effectively rather than thegeneralists of the past. It is no longerpossible to complete the sorts of tasksdescribed above by picking up the skillsthey need up on the job. L&D departmentswill need clear career paths anddevelopment methods for staff, withchoices and development options madeexplicit and recognised.

In needing to change, the L&D departmentis a microcosm of the modern workingenvironment in which individuals areincreasingly focused specialists in theirfield. In this L&D microcosm, thedepartment is staffed by specialists in

certain areas of learning practice. They addvalue to the enterprise in collaborationwith fellow workers and use technology toensure that they are focused on high-valuework as often as possible.

HOW ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING NEEDS TO CHANGE TO MEET TODAY’S CHALLENGES

November 2010 Inside Learning Technologies 53

Ara Ohanian is CEO of CERTPOINTSystems. This is an extract from aCERTPOINT white paper available athttp://bit.ly/CPNT-WP

The Working Manager LimitedT +44 (0)1285 657978 E info@theworkingmanager.com www.theworkingmanager.com

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Any time spent transferring data or materials from one systemto another, spent reformatting, editing, or recompiling iswasted time. The L&D department is there to support learning,not to support IT.

November 2010 Inside Learning Technologies & Skills