The link between learning management and overall business performance has long been established. By focusing workplace learning on a business as a whole, rather than segregating it by department, it becomes easier to determine how the business can better reach its goals. Once strategic and operational objectives have been aligned with the business' set of activities L&D can effectively manage performance. The link between learning and development in the workplace automatically impacts business performance – and could potentially result in a more effective L&D strategy overall.
Learning development opportunities
More often than not, learning development occurs at ‘traditional’ stages in a workplace. These opportunities are usually during initial induction training when an employee first joins a company, if an employee is about to apply for a promotion, or if they have specifically expressed an interest in developing or upskilling themselves to mature in their existing job role. As employee’s circumstances change, their need for workplace training grows.
The upgrade or introduction of new software and systems can also be an instigator – as the entire workforce will usually need to be trained in order to operate them. This tends to result in a mandatory ‘one size fits all’ type approach to training, which is usually based on what businesses think their employees ought to be trained on, rather than what strategic and performance based data tells them is needed. Focusing on this tendency to roll out training in this way, L&D is responding by making attempts to adopt data driven strategies, making the whole thing a lot more precise. Ultimately it is up to the organisations themselves to connect the learning function to business performance, yet research shows that a large number of organisations are still not doing this.
Measuring learner performance
Brandon Hall Group’s recent research report ‘The State of Learning & Development’ found that high performing organisations who experienced growth in areas like revenue, customer satisfaction and market share year on year were also the most likely to adopt modern L&D strategies and contemporary best practices. BHG discovered that these top performing organisations had built their L&D strategy based around activities, so that the strategy would be directly aligned to their organisational and performance goals.
Any improvement in performance needs to be measured. Learner scores and feedback, although often the most used, are not actually a reliable method for calculating this. Just because an individual scored 100% on an e-learning course does not necessarily mean that they will retain that information forever. Similarly, just because an individual might have enjoyed a quiz and scored highly does not mean that they will have retained the same level of information as someone else in the organisation who took the same quiz – consistency is not guaranteed.
Armed with the right results and correct data, L&D teams have the opportunity to deliver the right training to the right people at the right time. Contact us today for more information about using Virtual College’s Enable LMS as a collaboration tool for your business.