Learning, Training & Development – Defend Thyselves!

“The reason that you are in court today is to defend the very existence of the Learning, Training and Development function in your organization. You will have an opportunity to make a vigorous defense for the role of workplace learning. Assume nothing. Please tell the court why you exist. Defend your role in the organization, from headcounts to budgets. And, remember – you are under oath.”

Have we just described the nightmare of a human resource leader? Or, could we learn something from this type of investigation into the value of learning (no pun intended)? Either way, there is no time to dawdle … we are on the witness stand and the testimony is about to begin.

Q. State your unit’s name and have you ever used any alias or other names?

A. We are the Learning, Training and Development unit. Actually, we have been called other things over time – from Corporate University to Training Department to Workplace Effectiveness to Quality Competencies. And, to be totally honest, your honor, we are about to change our name to ‘Shared Learning Services.’

Q. Why all the name changes? Do you have something to hide?

A. I’d probably love to take the fifth on that question, but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t go over too well. Ironically, our names keep changing based on the overall organizational structure of HR, and often vibrate with the latest ‘improvement initiative’, such as Quality or Six Sigma. Our next title, ‘Shared Learning Services’, is a good move as it focuses on how we will relate to the various business units around the company.”

Q. OK, but part of your image and confusion problem may stem from this name changing habit. I’d advise you to pick something simple and stick to it. I know that you are known as change’ specialists, but this amount of title change only raises eyebrows. Let’s jump to what you do and what you accomplish. Using less than four sentences, tell us what your staff does on an average workday.

A. We create learning activities – from formal classrooms to structured e-learning – to build the skills and knowledge of our employees. We assist business units to improve their performance by increasing the competencies of their associates. We develop content, deliver instruction, provide assessment tools and build a corporate culture of learning. Finally, we track learning and development by employee for promotion/assignment purposes and support the compliance reporting needs of the corporation.

Q. That was four sentences - but you used a lot of words. Let’s take it from another perspective. Let’s assume that you didn’t exist. Tell the CEO and Board of Directors why they should create a Learning & Training Department. I learned most of my job from my colleagues: not from formal classes. Why should the organization spend so much money on your unit?

A. (Gulp.) I’ll follow your advice and use fewer words, your Honor:

• Readiness.
• Talent
• Compliance.
• Performance Gaps.
• Business Impacts.

Q. That’s impressive. Now, let’s see how these actually make the company a dollar or help keep us competitive. I’ll jump around. What does Readiness mean and how does that help the shareholders of this company?

A. Readiness is our ability to act. When a business unit wants to launch a new product, readiness is the measure of how quickly they can have the people, information and skills needed to launch the product. Readiness is at the core of our ability to survive and grow. We can’t just teach people the things that they need to know today. We focus on building individual and group readiness to take on new challenges and functions.

Q. I would assume in this very rapidly changing world, Readiness can be quite difficult. How do you train people for unknown states?

A. That’s at the core of how we have changed. A decade ago, most of what we delivered was done by an instructor standing at the front of a classroom, teaching a set curriculum. In the age of ‘fingertip knowledge’, e-learning and global access to information, classroom training is only about 30 percent of our function. We build Readiness by creating a Learning Culture and giving employees and their managers the tools and comfort to access wisdom from a wider range of sources. We sometimes are more like CNN then the old school house model.

Q. How do you relate to Talent? I thought that our recruitment department was responsible for finding our new employees.

A. We work hand in hand with them. After they find the new employees, it is our responsibility to rapidly get them up to competency levels and to keep them learning and growing. A lot of our role in Talent happens on the retention side of the equation. In addition to paying competitive salaries, research shows that challenging assignments and investment in associate knowledge development is the most powerful way to retain our best employees.

Q. How does the CEO measure your success in the Talent arena?

A. She has told us that her worst nightmare is that there won’t be a supply chain of Talent for her to grow the company and that we might not have a ‘bench’ with succession candidates. The CEO holds us accountable for our ‘speed to competency’, which is how long it takes us to convert a new hire into a competent, working associate. And, she holds us and the HR department accountable for the retention index: how many of our high value employees are we keeping and are they ready for succession to higher positions? Judge, these are hard numbers.

Q. Compliance – Why is that on your radar screen? I would have assumed that is the responsibility of the legal department.

A. Compliance is a driver and, frankly, a pain; it is a reality of learning departments in 2007. Every month, the organization is asked by either a regulatory body, professional certification group or our own legal department to show evidence that we are in ‘compliance’. This often means that we have to show evidence that every employee in a job function has been trained (or re-trained) and has demonstrated awareness or competency. Frankly, it often is a bit of a ‘game’ and it can be quite boring and de-motivating to our employees to have to sit through dull briefings or on-line compliance modules. As you know from your background, Judge, it is essential for shareholders that our organization is safe and legal from a compliance point of view. Lawsuits hurt our profitability and share price. So, while it isn’t the sexiest thing we do, it is critical and measurable.

Q. What is Performance Gap? Don’t give me some garbage about making every employee all that they can be. What does this really mean?

A. I’ll make this personal. You want to get your paycheck every week and have it be perfect and on time. If the check does not appear, or has a big error, that is unacceptable. It may be a computer problem, a business process problem or a skills gap with the payroll clerk. We are performance investigators. We will work with the business unit to determine how to fill this gap. The goal is to clearly define the competencies needed in each function and to monitor what might be causing performance gaps. Sometimes, the job needs to be changed, sometimes the employee needs to be re-trained and sometimes we need to make a major personnel or organizational change.”

Q. Your testimony so far has been pretty decent. But, this last item seems to be the key to your ‘case’. Let’s assume that we can improve readiness, help with the talent supply chain, keep the company out of ‘compliance jail’ and fill the performance gaps. But, how does that result in a business result? These all seem like supportive, intermediate inputs. How do we know that it is your intervention that makes the company grow? Perhaps we should shut you down for a year, pay our employees a bit more based on that savings and see what happens.

A. With all due respect, your Honor, that would be a crime. There is a cultural and a ‘business school’ answer to your question. Remember, the company is a culture (a tribe). We bring people to this workplace and expect them to perform for us every day. This does not happen accidentally. We have an obligation to create an environment where they can learn the skills they need to succeed and we have a critical need to create (and measure) the readiness of this tribe to take on tomorrow’s challenges.

The hardcore answer is that every time we start a project for a business unit, we demand that an impact evaluation be built into the deal. Sure, we want to know if the employees learned the content. But, the impact evaluation is based on a changed and measurable result on the balance sheet. Sales training results in increased revenue. Leadership training results in higher retention and lowered recruitment costs.

We are not your parent’s training department, your Honor. Sure, in the old days, you might find this function filled with people who didn’t understand a spreadsheet or know the basics of our core business. Not anymore: we live and breathe the details of how our business operates and grows.

Every day, a new employee starts working here and we systematically get them to competency. Every month, a new product is released and we guarantee that the content and knowledge is in the minds and at the fingertips of our staff so that they can sell and support it. Every year, the CEO and Board launch a new organizational imitative and we are responsible for creating the learning and organizational change needed to make it a reality. And every day, the revenue and expense side of the balance sheet is impacted by the competency (or lack of it) in our workforce. We can’t survive as a company in a flatter and changing world if we aren’t deeply focused on systematically learning new skills and knowledge sets every day.

Our tools are evolving, your Honor. We don’t use chalk but do use a lot of podcasts. We have moved from the front of the classroom to the center of the workplace. We are more interested in your ability to search for knowledge then in memorizing long lists of facts.

I know that this has been a long and passionate defense of our function. Learning professionals are business professionals. We help make the trains run on time and create the culture that attracts the best talent to work here.

Q. Thank you. And I mean thank you for more than your testimony here today. Thanks for clarifying your role, your function and your value. Get back to work and keep doing a great job. Court is adjourned (at least for this year)

Elliott Masie is the CEO of The MASIE Center and the head of the Learning CONSORTIUM. He is the host of Learning 2007. www.masie.com.