Demonstrating the value of Learning and Development

Lynsey Whitmarsh at Hemsley Fraser argues that learning teams are key to transformation but need to make the case

Learning and development (L&D) professionals are committed to their organisation’s vision of business transformation but are they falling down on the task of showing company leaders how learning programmes’ success in delivering change?

Our research data shows a clear — not to say glaring — disconnect between L&D teams’ aspirations and their ability to show the momentum they are creating for change. 

Agents of change

We surveyed 420 UK L&D professionals in 2023 and found that more than two-thirds (70%) say they are playing a key part in their company’s transformation - this change role rivalling their traditional tasks of talent retention, acquisition and onboarding (noted by 72%), and significantly ahead of capability development (64% of respondents).

Their pivotal role as agents of change is borne out when the survey explored learning professionals’ multi-faceted efforts to modernise learning and development. 

Big majorities of interviewees provide in-person training (77%) and coaching (68%) while digital learning elements are almost as popular — blended learning, virtual training, free online resources are used by 72%, 71%, and 72% of respondents respectively. 

Most learning professionals make use of learning management systems (LMSs) and e-learning assets to accommodate the many learning options that company leaders and colleagues demand - 61% of our study uses an online content library and almost as many (58%) a learning hub or portal. 

And, meeting demands for self-directed learning and learning in the flow of work options, most companies are now using facilitated learning (54%) and social/peer learning (52%).

A lack of hard data?

Despite these efforts and flexibility, learning professionals lack the measurement framework to clearly demonstrate learning and training programmes’ impacts on the business. 

While six out of ten (60%) learning practitioners ask for learner feedback on their L&D programmes, fewer than three out of ten L&D teams - 28% - currently use detailed business impact measures while the same proportion (28%) does not measure the impact of learning at all. 

More surprisingly, at a time when organisations have access to more data than ever on employees’ in-work activities through collaboration platforms and business applications, only one in eight (12%) analyses the ROI of their L&D programmes.  

In some ways this lack of learning programme evaluation, even the reliance on learner feedback in the way that L&D teams in the 90s counted ‘bums on seats’, is not surprising. After three years of business upheaval — encompassing the overnight adoption of remote work and ongoing efforts to find a balance between hybrid work and returning to the office — it’s clear learning teams have been largely consumed by the task of maintaining training and development and adapting it to changing demands. 

But many L&D departments haven’t had the attention from leaders or the budgets to build effective evaluation systems to underpin the huge array of learning options they now provide, still less relate them to their organisation’s business goals and success measures that have been so hard to define as many an organisation simply battles to survive. 

Learning professionals’ apparent disconnection from their company leaders is not new - for example, in the CIPD’s 2020 Learning and Skills at Work Report learning managers named lack of learning time, limited budgets and lack of management time or support as the main barriers to success in their learning and skills initiatives. 

Research in 2023 from HR software company Personio found that more than half (55%) of C-suite executives are behind where they need to be on navigating workplace challenges. Survival and short-term thinking reigns.

Our survey data indicate there is an opportunity for company leaders and learning professionals to work more closely to define better measures of success and build better feedback systems to help design, track and deliver the elements like agile learning that support corporate transformation strategies.

Learning supports positive company transformation

While spanning the divide between senior management’s agenda and learning and development priorities in an uncertain economy remains a difficult prospect there are still three main reasons for optimism.

First, company leaders are determined to better understand and upskill their workforces which remain their biggest, if under-realised, asset. After the different constraints of remote work, hybrid versions and returning to the workplace, bosses will no longer accept that they can’t see or can’t assess their employees’ learning and its impact on productivity. They want a clearer picture of L&D results and their impacts, and in turn, their buy-in will help make positive change happen.

Second, the learning industry is increasingly harnessing data to innovate in, assess, and benchmark learning outcomes as never before. Learning providers can now extract and analyse data from organisations’ different HR and L&D processes — specifically collaboration platforms and learning management systems — to design learning strategies for enterprises’ needs that are rooted in success metrics, rather than attendance levels.

Working with learning providers, Heads of L&D can now harness data storytelling and visual tools to show the possibilities and the progress of their customised learning programmes. Company decision-makers will be able to see what effective hybrid learning journeys can look like, how they can be adapted, and the benefits they bring - increasing their levels of buy-in and willingness to invest further.

Third, our data show L&D teams have been adept at providing an array of learning strategies for colleagues in different remote/hybrid/office work environments such as face-to-face, blended and digital learning programmes over the last three years. They will now need to harness abundant workplace and application data to create even more exciting, goal-oriented learning journeys for their people.

This also means furnishing senior management with the evidence that learning activities are being successfully embedded in their organisation, that L&D programmes are driving genuine company change and transformation, and employees’ ability to learn, their skills and their long-term prospects are being transformed. 

In the past, without tangible measures of training and development’s impacts on the bottom line, board members have scaled back or even sidelined L&D and prioritised other areas.

Now, learning professionals have the capabilities to design learning programmes and set board expectations of success. They have the tools to make the business case for L&D investment and demonstrate its benefits - all based on hard facts.

Closing the disconnection

There is an opportunity for senior management and L&D practitioners to work more closely to deliver exciting new learning journeys by closing the current disconnection between L&D teams’ aspirations and their ability to show how their programmes enable positive change.

Given leaders’ determination to realise their workforce’s potential, learning providers’ data-driven innovations, and learning practitioners’ determination to fulfill a central role in business transformation, this exciting opportunity will not be missed.

Lynsey Whitmarsh is CEO at Hemsley Fraser

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com