ICOG - 04-Aug-2021

One of L&D’s primary responsibilities is to develop and maintain talent in an organization in a way that contributes to the bottom line. An L&D department’s role spans five key areas according to McKinsey-

1. Attract and retain talent
2. Motivate and engage employees
3. Build an employer brand
4. Create a values based culture
5. Develop people capabilities

However, a shortage of talent within the L&D team is a challenge few organizations focus on. L&D continues to face small budgets and smaller teams.

What a Low Budget and Tiny L&D Team Does to your Organization

An overworked L&D team

An overworked and exhausted L&D team can rarely look up from their day-to-day and focus on what the organization needs most. 

Since L&D still is a partially manual function at even the best organizations, it continues to face a shortage of hands, which leads to L&D managers getting stuck within the business, with little to no bandwidth to focus on the business.

Beneath the five core responsibilities of an L&D team discussed above are a host of activities that need L&D managers’ focus and prioritization. For example, designing learning journeys, assessing capability gaps and measuring L&D’s impact on business.

No space for innovation and digitization

An overworked L&D department is the last thing an organization needs today. The pandemic has shifted how employees learn and what they wish to learn. Organizations with small L&D teams can’t take up such challenges when they arrive.

Companies with strong L&D departments, like LafargeHolcim, however, utilize the need to get ahead of competition by rolling out training programs about working remotely, remote cybersecurity and more, across the board.

Not only that, companies with a shrunken down L&D team have no time or space to think out of the box, measure the impact of L&D down to the T and make necessary changes in the processes.

What follows as a result is a run-down L&D team with no capacity to change and therefore, evolve.

Manual processes

Having a low budget for most organizations means manual processes. Be it creating training reports and learner journeys or rolling out assessments. Learning can happen in the rote manner- in the manner of yesterday where employees could cram up training and write tests but couldn’t use the knowledge on-field, or learning can happen in a radical fashion- where employees learn through micro training and apply what they learn on the field, solidifying their knowledge.

Rote learning can get away with manual L&D processes, but radical ways of learning need the infusion of technology- in the form of artificial intelligence, deep analytics and machine learning.

With radical learning, employees learn in the flow of work, through personalized lessons, and on a learning trajectory that benefits both the individual’s career aspirations as well as an organization’s objectives.

Imbalance in the various kinds of learning- Functional, Behavioral, Technical

A small L&D team will be an inefficient one is an understatement (unless powered by an intelligent personalized learning platform). For holistic learning to happen, L&D teams must focus on the various kinds of learning- functional, behavioral and technical.

Functional learning equips employees with the essential skills they need to perform in any given area- such as working with a CRM for a sales manager and with a marketing software for a marketing manager.

Behavioral learning forms the basis of the behavior required to excel at a job- such as communication, interpersonal skills and self branding.

And technical skills include all IT and technology-related skills such as an in-depth knowledge of GST and dividends for a job in finance.

In order to create a balance between all three, you need a well-equipped L&D team that can keep track of the various learning needs of the organization and strategize how to better move forward with each.

This takes a competency-based approach as opposed to a skills-based approach that can be diverse and fragmented. A competency-based learning approach maps various skills to one competency and separates each into a healthy balance of behavioral, functional and technical learning.

Rare focus on the business impact of learning and more on flawed KPIs

Accurately measuring learning impact is not enough when the metrics are traditional and flawed, such as learning program satisfaction and completion percentages and test scores.

High-performing organizations instead focus on outcome-based KPIs such as employee engagement, individual performance, business process improvement and more.

With a tiny L&D team and no futuristic platform to support it, it’s next to impossible to arrive at the metrics that mean something for the business. And without the right evaluation of L&D efforts, how does an organization know if it’s on the right track?

The Bottom-line Impact of an Inefficient L&D Department

The impact is not just bored learners and frustrated/stifled employees

A traditional LMS and a small L&D team will not attract, engage and retain talent. The impact of an inefficient L&D department is not just bored learners and stifled employees but a business that knows not how to grow and evolve.

A substandard learning environment with siloed content messes with the accessibility of learning opportunities. It not only frustrates your current employees but also sets the bar for talent acquisition.

However, a platform like ICOG can turn on an integrated and personalized learning experience for your organization, leading to a learning environment that attracts highly engaged learners as new employees and encourages peer-to-peer learning which benefits the organization in the end. 

What Happens When ICOG Joins your L&D Team

While most L&D managers stayed stuck in making training available and accessible, including the pressure of having to create training content, companies like LafargeHolcim India continued to grow through the pandemic.

Neeraj Akhoury, CEO India LafargeHolcim, MD & CEO of Ambuja Cements Limited shares how the pandemic accelerated the digitization of L&D at ACC and Ambuja Cement...with ICOG.

Here’s what happened:

1. We started with 5,200 pieces of content in 2019 and scaled up to 16,097 pieces of content
2. A total of 10,445 engaged employees logged in 
3. Over 34,403 employees participated in webinars and sessions
4. Over 11,000 course completions supported by assessments
5. And... 13,669 hours of pure learning and upskilling

“As we had invested in new-age learning infrastructure over a year before, we were able to hit the ground running when the lockdown began and leverage its full potential simply because of the base work done earlier. L&D also emerged as a core tool for employee engagement, and therefore became part of business strategy.”

Read the complete article here.

Explore ICOG for your organization today. Reach out to us at [email protected].