This month it was a pleasure to collaborate with Sunder, a member of my own personal learning network. In the spirit of open discussion and shared learning, we wrote about our experience, knowledge and observations of working in large organisational learning teams to write a joint blog post on what we believe we will see the Training or Learning Function evolve to. Are your observations similar to ours?
A Joint Blog Post By Sunder Ramachandran & Helen Blunden
The role of the Training or Learning and Development function has evolved over the last few years. The hyper-connectedness and changing needs of the business have placed the training function at a pivotal point within the organisation. As learning professionals, we have been reflecting on these changes and how they have impacted us and our teams.
Back in 2011 the focus was on informal learning and asynchronous e-learning programs delivered through Learning Management Systems which were the “game changers”. During this time, organisations transferred their facilitator-led programs to online formats in order to cut costs and emphasise a return on investment and value.
In 2012, we saw the changing landscape of the various roles in learning teams. For example, the Training Manager evolved from being a manager of teams who designed and deployed content on behalf of their internal clients to that of a supply chain manager of knowledge. The focus was on training teams to become internal consultants who partnered with their clients to identify performance gaps and analyse requirements with much of the design and delivery outsourced to vendors through preferred supplier arrangements.
In 2013 we saw social media integration within training, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were considered or used for corporate learning and for staff professional development. Also, gamification of learning journeys or pathways as well as the ‘chunking’ of learning to be delivered anytime, anywhere via Mobile were emerging as key themes.
Donald Taylor wrote about the themes and tools that will make an impact in 2014 in his blog post “What Will Be Big in 2014”
We believe that 2014 will be a year of leverage and portability for learning professionals. What this means is that we are now in a position to apply the various tools to achieve business outcomes. If Learning and Development continues to accept, learn and engage with these tools, we will be in a position where we can make a broader organisational impact.
What’s in store in 2014?
The demands on the training function will be even greater and new dimensions of engagement will further transform the function. Most training managers who have kept pace with the changing needs will now be called upon to engage their functions for large enterprise wide programs, projects and initiatives. Here are some that we believe will gain prominence:
Training Function as the Change Management Champion
We are seeing the roles merged between training and change management. Given that most organisations are now driving towards collaboration and change, the Training function will be increasingly called upon to champion these efforts. For example, we may work with teams such as Internal Communications or Marketing to design awareness campaigns, design ‘bite size’ or micro learning pieces. These may be delivered as and when required through the campaign to communicate the benefits of the change as well as facilitate employee orientation sessions for change.
Training Function as the Employee Engagement Champion
Most employee engagement surveys identify that learning opportunities are a key driver for engagement within the organization and the training function is best suited to champion this. Rather than just solving a business problem, the Training function will create learning journeys that inspire, engage and reconnect employees with their organisation. Also the training functions contribution to the overall employee value proposition will become more pronounced.
Training Function as the Collaboration Champion
Most organisations are now embracing enterprise social networks to foster collaboration. Given that this requires community management and facilitation skills, the training function is best positioned to support the organisation and its people to develop and use these new social tools as well as role model the online behavior skills. Creating communities of practice, training community managers within the organisation and curating content in these communities are some of the areas where the training function can meaningfully contribute.
Training Function as the Employer Brand Champion
The quality of learning that an organisation offers plays a role in how that employer’s brand is perceived.The training function will need to broaden their scope to external agencies to promote and showcase their innovative practices in learning through social media to attract the best talent. The positioning of being a ‘learning organisation’ will offer a distinct advantage to organisations in the highly competitive talent landscape.
In summary
Given the rapid pace of transformation in business, the training function cannot procrastinate anymore. We cannot use the convenient excuses of the lack of learning culture or supportive management as reasons not to change. As training teams are further reduced in size and costs minimized, here is an opportunity to reconnect with our business. It’s time for our teams to use, apply and role model the behaviours of a 21st century digital learner and worker so that our new roles will see us survive beyond 2014.
About Helen Blunden
Helen Blunden, Activate Learning Solutions is an experienced workplace learning and development professional with over 23 years of experience in performance consultancy and organisational learning in public and private sectors in Australia. Her passion is using social networking and collaboration tools for learning and professional development. She is the founder of Third Place, an informal social networking community of Learning Professionals to meet, share and learn from each other.
About Sunder Ramachandran
Sunder Ramachandran is a Senior Training Manager with JLT Group, one of the world’s largest providers of insurance and employee benefits related advice, brokerage and associated services including an office of over 1100 employees in Mumbai, India. He is passionate about social learning and blogs @ learning experiments
Hi Helen & Sunder! Love that you collaborated on a post – demonstrating right there one of the benefits of developing strong ties with your PLN through online social platforms.
I was going to comment on the section “Training Function as the Collaboration Champion” and ask how you thought the ‘training function’ might best be able to support the development of community managers within the organisation (and do you see these ‘community managers’ as being within L&D or the distributed across various business units…?), when I clicked on the ‘enterprise social networks’ link and my questions were answered and more by Sunder’s excellent post on his experiences rolling out an ESN in his org http://sundertrg.tumblr.com/post/64748436768/enterprise-social-networks-esn-the-indian
I love his post (although couldn’t seem to find a comments function to say so on Sunder’s blog..??) – full of practical and honest tips, telling it like it is – I think my fave bit was: “Keep it stupid…Avoid using big words like knowledge management, communities of practice etc. during the initial roll-out phase. Let employees embrace the platform & then you can say whatever you want.”
Yes! I think this happens a bit – people get tied up in the vision of what they want this to be (or ‘think’ they want it to be…) without realising that if it’s to be successful, it is the EMPLOYEES themselves who will shape it and determine what it will be, and this will evolve as it is used over time. Yes you can role model behaviour, teach / support skill development in sharing and curating content, encourage participation and facilitate behaviour change (and I think the CEO role modelling behaviours is a good idea – and perhaps extend this to all leaders across the org) but for widespread usage individuals need to ‘own’ it – and I think the point of “employees adapt at their own pace, not yours” relates directly to this.
I can totally see why building use cases and highlighting these to promote the benefits of the ESN are effective – and although Sunder doesn’t mention this specifically in his post, I wonder whether getting the early adopters from these use cases, who have realised actual business benefits from the ESN, to then act as champions, role model behaviours and promote the ESN alongside L&D would also help.
It is so useful, relevant and refreshing to read about examples of HOW people are supporting people in the adoption of social networks in organisations (rather than hot air, and hype – commonly focused on how the implementation of social tech itself will ‘create’ learning communities or CoPs) – so thank you for that Sunder! Another post I read recently on a similar vein of *actual* experience developing learning communities is this by Mike Collins: http://www.learningcafe.com.au/blog/2013/07/19/the-slope-of-enlightenment/ – which focuses on the time required for people to actually change their behaviour, expectations and views of learning to utilise these social technologies to their full potential in the workplace.
Thanks for your reply Tanya, as always your replies are greatly appreciated because there’s a lot of thought in them that make us think and continue the conversation. I’ll pass on the issue re the comment in Sunder’s blog – this amuses me because you are picking up on the usability of our websites! Thank you!!
I’m going to write another blog post soon on how I used ESN (in particularly Yammer) on a program but I am thinking how to present it without giving some confidentiality away on why I am doing this approach. It’s hard to explain but there’s a reason why the onboarding program was deemed critical for this particular business but I can’t write too much about it. I will however touch on Sunder’s themes and yes, it’s why I chose to collaborate with him (besides, he kindly asked and I really liked how he too, was open and shared his work). It was a true example of collaborating with peers on a joint project of mutual interest and I recommend that you see what brilliant activities and tweet chats his team are doing with India HR Live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiyCIPjHGog
I know Mike Collins has done a great job with communities of practice and I’m keen to explore more about implementing these for my onboarding program (and using the onboarding consultants as community managers) but I will write more about this soon….