Learning Services

Everyone knows the three most important ingredients to have a successful restaurant right?  You can have the best foods, the best run kitchen, the best and most polite service but without the secret ingredient your restaurant may fail, right?  The secret ingredient of course is; location, location, location!

So what is the most successful ingredient for learning success?

So what is the most successful ingredient for learning success?  Is it the content, the learning system, instructional design, e-learning, virtual classes, or the latest technology?  Is it learning organization, processes, quality control, subject matter experts, or the best people with great instructional design capabilities?  While all these ingredients are certainly important they may not be the secret ingredient.  After all, how far will you get if you have great processes, or the best content but it is all leading to the wrong results?  It would be something like a great set of ingredients but the wrong recipe, or not mixed properly or half baked! Or possibly not what was asked for…

So the secret ingredient or the overall recipe for learning has to be something that pulls all this together, ensures you are heading in the right direction and leads you to success.  It’s the learning strategy.  Like a recipe it should contain the list of ingredients needed with the necessary measures, how to apply and the expected outcome. 

What would a learning strategy look like, and how or where do you begin?  That will be the next topic I will be writing about, look for it soon…

In the meantime let me know what you think?

Posted by Theodore Ross at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Many companies today are facing an increasingly volatile and competitive business environment.  To be able to effectively compete in such an environment, an Enterprise Learning Strategy must be able to address the following issues:

·  Aging workforce resulting in loss of intellectual capital

· Business silos leading inconsistent, non-cohesive training approach

· Identify opportunities to streamline functions and reduce costs without impacting employee performance

· Retain and fully engage top talent

· Identify metrics designed to relate Enterprise Learning to organizational return on investment

· Provide governance and standardization designed to meet regulatory and compliance standards

Organizations should consider a talent management mindset that links together the overall business strategy and the competencies in order to successfully realize the vision.  An Enterprise Learning Strategy is a vital component of the broader Talent Management Strategy.  An effective Enterprise Learning Strategy takes into account the identification, alignment, and management of the 7 key considerations in the Learning & Development realm:

· Strategic Business Alignment: Coordination of learning activities for the purpose of achieving strategic objectives

· Governance: Monitoring, through policy, of the long-term strategy and direction of organizational learning activities

· Learning Culture: The strategy, structure, systems, values, skills, and leadership that define how an organization encourages learning

· Enterprise Learning Platforms (Technology): The selection and maintenance of the enterprise technical tools that support the most effective and efficient learning management architecture and infrastructure

· Content Management: Designing, developing, managing, tracking, using and reusing learning content

· Learning Delivery: Selection, implementation, maintenance, and management of the optimal mix of learning delivery methods

·         Learning Evaluation: The measurement of learning initiatives for the improvement of planning and implementation of delivery events

An integrated, coordinated, and measurable enterprise learning framework will drive tangible benefits across an organization.

Posted by Christopher Halaszynski at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chief Learning Officer, Training Department Manager, Learning Consultant, Program Manager.....you are responsible for many learning programs....and possibly an entire organization that supports your company's learning objectives.  How do you know if your learning programs are where your company needs them to be?  Our Infosys learning team uses a learning maturity model that can assess your organization's current learning maturity level,  help you decide where you want to be in the future, and create a roadmap to help you get there.

So what is a Learning Maturity Model (LMM)?  Our LMM is a framework that describes the learning and development organization at four levels of maturity:  Lagging, Tenable, Progressive and World Class.  We analyze 12 best practice attributes that focus on three significant learning questions:

   1.)  Is your learning organization aligned with your business requirements?

   2.)  Are you builiding the employee competencies required to run your business?

   3.)  Are you running learning as a business?

You might want to reflect on these questions and think about how well your (or your client's) learning organization is doing in these areas.  Over the next few weeks I'll talk more about each question, and how you can help your company make improvements in these areas.

Posted by Karen Burns at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

An earlier blog post spoke to the Need to Measure the cost of Training and that very few companies can accurately calculate the total training spend across an organization given the federated nature of global training functions. One of the areas of large spend for training functions is with sourcing training content suppliers to meet various learning needs (Sales, Leadership Development, Project Management, Soft Skills etc.)

In a federated model, each business unit based on their training needs sources their own content, leading to high cost and lack of consistency in training delivery. For instance, Project management courses vary between vendors in their quality and emphasis, even though the subject matter and learning objectives are the same.

One of the key initiatives to control the cost of training spend is to rationalize training content suppliers globally.  A typical supplier rationalization project addresses the following business objectives:

• Drive adoption of global suppliers, allowing for localization as necessary

• Reduce the total number of training content suppliers used,  whereby reducing the total learning spend

• Balance price, quality, consistency and effectiveness of training. For example, most global companies have projects managed by virtual teams. By ensuring that all teams use the same practices and methodology, a company can achieve far more cost efficiencies than just a reduction in the initial training spend.

So where do you start? A typical assignment would have the following components:

• Have defined ownership of the supplier rationalization project, preferably driven by the global learning team.

• Define the subject areas that you need to have addressed. Most teams would like to address everything when starting on such a project. But, it is important to limit the scope of such exercise to key development areas that are business-critical and aligned with the company goals.

• Complete data collection and review of existing learning supplier base. This helps you establish the baseline for further analysis. This could be a very tedious process and some form of automation helps tremendously.

• The sourcing team is your best partner during this exercise! What is critical is for the global learning team to drive the assignment (setting objectives, outcomes etc), and for the Sourcing team to provide inputs (RFI, RFP, evaluation criteria etc.)

• Brainstorm on the criteria that would be used to evaluate shortlisted suppliers. This could be a combination of business, sourcing, legal and commercial elements. This is critical to ensure that the RFI and RFP have the right questions for analysis.

• Keep all stakeholders informed and engaged as you move along in the process.

• If any such initiatives have been conducted in other parts of the company, get them to share what worked and what did not work for them. Do not re-invent the wheel.

The outcome of such an exercise would be a list of preferred training content suppliers by subject areas. This list is then published to the various business units and functional training groups who would leverage preferred suppliers to meet their learning needs at preferred pricing and getting consistent quality. A short term investment in understanding corporate spend on learning content suppliers yields a wealth of understanding in controlling related future costs.

Posted by Praveen Kaushik at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)