UK 
United States
Does the personal approach to training taken by the HRD have direct bearing on organisational learning effectiveness?
More than half the FTSE 100 firms have reduced their L&D headcounts since 2009 – eg one of the big 4 Banks has cut from around 500, to less than 100. There are of course disparate reasons for this but one widespread perception is a major contributor: senior management often feels that their huge investments in training fail to add genuine net value to the business. Why is this?
The Training Foundation’s work with more than 1,400 L&D functions across the public and private sectors since 1998 has led us to some informative conclusions.
First, the typical mind-set of Heads of L&D and Training Managers is focused on tactical, operational aspects - training design, development and delivery. They count training days, delegate numbers and ‘happy sheet’ scores, which are more a measure of ‘did I like it’ than a measure of any learning transferring into workplace performance improvement.
These metrics are of absolutely no interest in themselves to senior management - what matters to them and what shapes budget allocation decisions is 'what impact is the L&D function making on our business?’ Regrettably, for too many senior managers, the answer is a negative one, as the two quoted surveys suggest.
A minority of Heads of L&D, on the other hand, do get it. They have a different mind-set. They are more concerned with providing strategically important metrics that prove the positive ROI contributions their teams are making. They quality-assure their function’s activities against best-practice standards. They measure the specific performance improvements achieved through training. They actively drive an effective learning transfer system, ensuring that their team members have the training skills, the business acumen and the consultancy skills to engage credibly with the business.
There is far less chance that such an approach, measuring what is important to senior management rather than training days and delegate numbers, will result in their function being ‘restructured’ and/or outsourced.
Second, there appears to be a correlation of these two types of Heads of L&D with the approach to the function being taken by the HR Director (according to annual CIPD L&D Reports, around 75% of core L&D functions report to HR).
Where HRDs themselves actually get the strategic importance of becoming a ‘learning organisation’, they actively support a drive to quality-assure L&D and support development of an effective learning transfer system leading to positive impact on the bottom line. They appoint an L&D Professional, with a strategic and theoretically sound L&D background, to the leadership role. They ensure that line managers are focused on supporting the L&D function by participating in the learning transfer system, supporting application of training on return to work and collaborating with L&D to measure performance improvements. They fight to provide their Head of L&D with necessary budgets even when times get tough.
All too often, however, the HRD does not get the strategic importance of L&D. They often appoint an operational manager from the business with little or no previous experience or in-depth understanding of how people learn or best-practice training practice and methodologies. In some FTSE100 companies, the attitude is either, ‘well, she’s had a stressful time in the field, let’s transfer her into L&D chair for a couple of years or so”, or “well, he did a pretty poor job in that operational role, but he’s been with the Company a long time, let’s move him to where he can’t do too much damage – how about running training?”. They are content with the traditional measurements of happy sheets etc, rather than requiring more meaningful metrics as shown above. When the C-team looks for cost reductions, they do not resist first cutting the training budget…
The bottom line is – where is your organisation on this mission-critical issue?
To discuss this article with the author, contact Nick Mitchell at The Training Foundation 02476 411288
