How to build an L&D strategy that aligns and works with company goals
In this blog, we will discuss the impact and importance of aligning learning and development strategies with your business goals. We will cover how influential L&D leaders are in helping this alignment of learning and business requirements through statistics from around the world, we will discuss the importance of investing in learning, discuss about the knowledge value chain, and the best practices that companies can apply to refine their learning and development strategies to their business goals.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Businesses around the world have found that aligning L&D strategies to their business goals will help them achieve said goals more efficiently. This is the reason that talent development leaders are always looking for new and innovative methods to transform their organization through l&d strategies. This kind of transformation can only be achieved if the business goals are in-line with corporate training and development.
In the last few years, L&D leaders have ramped up their efforts to bridge the skill-gap, while adopting more strategic and cross-functional methods rather than age-old traditional methods. They are seeking new learning solutions that tie skill building to efficient career paths, increasing retention rates, improving work-life balance, diversity and inclusion as well as an emphasis on the well-being of the employee.
Insights/Statistics
Now, let’s look at some statistics and how L&D leaders have become more influential:
- 74% agree that L&D has become more cross-functional
- 72% agree that L&D has become a more strategic function at their organization
- 87% of L&D pros had some to a great deal of involvement in helping their organization adapt to change
- 63% of L&D professionals agree that L&D has a seat at the executive table.
A business’ success solely relies on how skilled the workforce is and how efficiently they can learn and adapt to emerging technologies. In today’s highly competitive market, it is essential that businesses proactively invest in training their employees to keep ahead of the competition. Before investing in any sort of training, Learning and Development Professionals must assess the current skill level of the workforce, assess what is lacking, and calculate the impact of training on the workforce.
Here are the major reasons to invest in efficient learning:
- Motivates employees: You can make your employees feel more motivated and stay loyal to your business by offering prompt learning and development programs.
- Skill-gap closed: upskilling or reskilling employees existing employees is more efficient than hiring new people with higher salaries.
- Increase overall productivity: When the right l&d strategy is in place, the whole business moves faster and more efficiently.
- Reach business goals faster: When your workforce is in-sync with all the required competencies and skill sets, the processes of your business get more agile, and outcomes are achieved at a higher rate.
- Impact on business goals
Learning impact is achieved when L&D leaders come up with proper workforce skill assessments and assign the right training to the right roles. This automatically addresses the skill gap and improves the overall ability of the workforce, who are now empowered to directly influence the success of their organization. When an individual learns more, they are adding their knowledge, insights and their own creativity while performing a given task, which not only adds immense value but also improves overall morale. This step-by-step process to improve skills and focus on business goals is called knowledge value chain.
Best practices
How to reach business goals with focused learning programs?
- First, we need to define business goals
L&D professionals must continuously work with the executive team and business development team to clearly understand the goals of the business as well as the desired outcomes. This clear understanding of business goals will help them assign the right training to specific roles and consistently track progress and provide accurate feedback. This way, your workforce is aligned to the business goals too.
- Defining learning strategy
The hardest step in the process is to decide the proper learning strategy as everyone has diverse levels of learning, retaining and applying their skills. Here, skill assessments play a key role, for example Yaksha’s skill assessments allow L&D leaders to easily find skill-bottlenecks, assess training needs, and assign custom assessments according to specific roles easily. Most businesses use Learning Experience Platforms and Learning Management Systems to track the progress of their employees.
- Reporting and analysis
It is always wise to have measurable indicators of learning for your workforce. A report and analysis plan that gives you a better idea of the training needs and provides a better picture of what is to be added and what can be removed. These reports can help L&D leaders make quick, informed decisions and adjust the training regiment on the go. Constant communication with your workforce also provides you a better understanding of requirements on an individual level, while increasing employee morale.
- Action Plan
To achieve business goals in an efficient manner, you need to have the right insights, a steady plan and smooth execution. Execution becomes easier when you have accurately assessed the skill requirements and that should go together with business outcomes. When you have the right plan set in motion, you can make periodic tweaks to your l&d strategy that addresses specific pain points. Once those are achieved, you can set new goals and work towards achieving them. You can follow the model below for a better understanding.
Conclusion:
The most successful businesses consider strategy as more of a direction and agenda of decisions rather than just a ‘plan’. There might be huge gaps in your company’s L&D strategy, but they can always be refined and made better through simple steps. L&D leaders need to align business leaders and workforce into the same focused direction to achieve business goals faster, with higher efficiency and improve overall morale.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
-Benjamin Franklin
Yaksha is your one stop shop for all your assessment needs, where you can create customized assessments, create Codathons and Hackathons that can find you right skills for the right roles.
