CLOSING THE GAP:Maximizing the Impact of Learning and Development Initiatives

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ROLLING OUT A LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE CAN BE CHALLENGING

FOR ANY ORGANIZATION. Whether your purpose is to develop specific competencies

within your workforce or to support a strategic organizational initiative such as a

culture transformation, you invest significant time and resources into determining

what development is needed, gaining buy-in and support, and, finally, implementing the

training. Therefore, you want the initiative to align with the strategic direction of the

organization, make an impact, and achieve lasting results.

In order to create such an initiative, it is imperative that any corporate leaders who

require the support of learning and development actively seek out and involve their

HR and L&D teams. It is unfortunate, then, that Mercer’s 2016 Global Talent Trends

report found that of those HR professionals surveyed, only 4 percent reported that HR

was viewed as a strategic business partner in their organizations.1 With this in mind,

the report states that “HR must reconcile the break between the business and talent

strategy, and work harder to demonstrate how HR systems, processes, and insights

can positively contribute to business outcomes.”2 By doing so, HR and L&D teams can

maximize the success and impact of any business strategy through effective

learning initiatives.

In the following pages, we will review how together, leadership, HR, and L&D can focus

their initiatives to actually make an impact. This includes seeking clarity and alignment

on where you are and where you are going as an organization, understanding how

training for employees and leaders will support the achievement of your goals, and

creating an agile plan for how you will brilliantly execute the initiative.

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SETTING UP YOUR INITIATIVE FOR SUCCESS

A commitment to the necessary pre-work is an essential first step when building and

implementing a learning initiative. After all, when your goal is to deliver measurable

results that help your organization reach its strategic goals through its people and a

real change in behavior, you’ll need to be crystal-clear on the strategic direction of the

organization, understand key challenges, and determine the training and development

you’ll need to achieve success.

Investing time and resources into pre-work ensures that the learning and development

initiative you develop and deliver is fully aligned with organizational goals and the

evolving realities of the workplace. To set up your initiative for success, here are several

strategies that have proven highly effective.

Achieve Alignment on Where the Company Is Going to Develop a Training & Development Plan That Supports the Company Strategy

Rapid changes in the marketplace, shifts in customer expectations, and mergers or

acquisitions can put any organization in the position of needing training quickly. In

addition, tight deadlines and other pressures can make it tempting to embark blindly on

a training path and simply hope to find opportunities to leverage new information as

it comes.

However, failing to take the time to solidify the organizational strategy first can have

detrimental effects. Any successful training initiative requires alignment with the

company’s strategy as well as agreement among stakeholders that an investment in

training and development will have an impact on the strategy. Once this agreement

occurs, it is imperative to the success of any learning initiative that leaders not only

mentally agree with the direction moving forward but that they also show employees

that they support the direction in their actions, decisions, and behaviors.

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Conduct a Discovery

An Insights Discovery provides an authentic picture of your current reality so you can

confidently build a plan of action moving forward. Before you focus on changing an

aspect of your organization through training and development, you have to understand

the current reality and define how a shift in employee behavior will optimize results.

At this stage, it’s also important to understand employee attitudes because knowing

how to address employee mindset and conviction through training is a prerequisite for

changing actions and behaviors.

Conducting a discovery process stimulates the gathering of authentic quantitative and

qualitative information you need to ensure training meets the needs of the organization.

Following a successful discovery process, you will have the necessary elements for

building a training program that builds conviction among employees and speaks to both

their current reality and their future with the organization. The key steps of the discovery

process include:

• Gathering quantitative and qualitative data that helps you understand the current and

desired future state within your organization

• Identifying performance and training gaps that exist between the current reality and

the desired results

• Reviewing the current level and effectiveness of executive and management support

• Identifying barriers to and enablers of the success of any training and

development initiative

• Designing developmental and operational plans to address and close gaps, either

organization-wide or within a specific team or department

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Develop a Competency Framework

A competency framework is a map of the most critical competencies required for success

in any job throughout the organization. Each competency is defined and broken down

into observable behaviors, which can then be separated by function, specialty, or level of

responsibility. It acts as an organization-wide playbook that is used to address needed

skills and behaviors for corporate success, and it ensures the skills and behaviors you are

providing training for support and reinforce the corporate culture you desire. The benefits

of developing a competency framework include:

It assists in the design of various HR systems (e.g., selection, training,

performance appraisals) to help achieve a common business objective.

It provides consistency across the organization with respect to

performance management.

It can be used as a tool to help employees identify development opportunities

against an established standard (e.g., multi-rater feedback assessments).

It allows for targeted training and development plans by measuring gaps and

identifying areas for skill development.

Regardless of the complexity of your competency framework, it is best to work with an

experienced partner who can help you gather useful insights from different stakeholders

across the organization and incorporate those insights into your competency

framework. Ensuring you are equipped with this information early on in the development

of any initiative allows you to adequately address and fulfill competency gaps. This

competency framework is also a valuable tool in providing employees with a more

complete understanding of the skills and abilities required to advance their careers,

which are also the behaviors needed to drive your desired culture and provide greater

value to the organization.

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Consult with an Expert

Large strategic initiatives can be a sizable undertaking for any team. Many companies

realize tremendous value by enlisting the help of a trusted partner who can guide them

through the process of developing and implementing a successful initiative. A strategic

advisor will guide the development, measurement, and retention strategies of any learning

initiative, which enables internal departments to focus on the daily work that keeps the

company running. Even companies within the same industry face unique challenges,

making it worthwhile to seek out a partner whose proven approach ensures your strategic

goals are met and your corporate uniqueness is accounted for at every step.

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BRING THE INITIATIVE TO LIFE: MAXIMIZE THE IMPACT OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

It’s hard to care about something you don’t understand, and yet, employees often

find themselves pulled into a new company initiative with little to no explanation of

its purpose. Employees today crave a deeper understanding so they can identify the

purpose of training and see how it impacts their overall success at work. In light of this

reality, it is important to ensure your training program is set up to introduce the purpose

of the training beforehand. Doing so will make it infinitely easier to engage employees

and leaders as the training progresses. To do this effectively means combining all the

information from the pre-work and discovery process to create a training initiative that

is directly applicable and practical in employees’ day-to-day lives. Read on to learn other

interesting and unique strategies that will help maximize the impact of training.

Customize Content to Maximize Relevance

Customizing training content builds the relevance necessary to engage your audience

and inspire them to change their behaviors. Employees today are more inspired

and motivated when they know their work has purpose. Whether they are pursuing

professional development opportunities or using new techniques to keep track of

day-to-day accountabilities, employees will be more convinced to change when they

can see the value of their efforts. Therefore, integrating business relevance, corporate

uniqueness, and pragmatic content is the only way to truly bring learning to life.

Customization can take a number of forms and will depend on many factors. Options

for customization include:

• Content creation, selection, and adaptation

• Training approach and methodology

• Delivery options

• Look and feel of training materials

• Length, frequency, and format of reinforcement strategy

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Use Company Leaders as Teachers

When it comes to implementing training initiatives, your most valuable teachers may be

right under your nose. Getting company leaders involved in training initiatives has many

advantages—if done well.

Establishing leaders as teachers increases their engagement with the initiative and

demonstrates their support for it to their own staff. Many mid-level leaders, especially

those newer to leadership roles, may underestimate their role in training initiatives. By

involving them in training content delivery, you are empowering them to be a part of the

training success story. Moreover, leaders who teach also act as subject matter experts

because they understand the day-to-day realities of the individuals they are training.

To ensure everyone’s success, it is imperative to equip your leaders with the skills they

need to teach. Train-the-trainer materials will need to be organized in simple, effective

modules, each with a core message, easily digestible information, and hands-on

activities. When leaders have the necessary training to train others, whole teams benefit.

Some of the additional advantages of training leaders to teach include:

• Costs earmarked for outside trainers can be redirected or saved for another purpose.

• Leaders are likely to be conveniently located near the individuals they are training.

• Leaders build confidence in their ability to develop their people.

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Make It Experiential

Format has a significant impact on the success of any training initiative. Many

approaches focus on providing knowledge during training, thereby turning training into

a purely intellectual activity in which individuals are shown what to do or how to do it.

Other approaches to training, such as experiential learning, actively involve employees

in their own learning, allowing them to learn more quickly and understand why new

behaviors are more effective than old behaviors. Experiential learning goes beyond

transferring information to truly build competency, ultimately helping employees

confidently translate training into improved performance at work.

Many employees learn best through interactive, hands-on experiences. Experiential

learning is a superior method to employ because it teaches individuals how to apply

what they have learned in training on the job. By combining immersive activities that

mimic real-world challenges with a targeted debrief that connects the lessons learned

with the reality of the workplace, experiential learning allows participants to learn

by doing and not by just listening, reading, or watching. Once employees personally

experience the lessons, they are far more likely to develop new competencies, retain

more information, and enthusiastically apply what they’ve learned back at work.

Furthermore, when you work with a training partner with expertise in experiential

learning, the odds of success are even greater.

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IT’S A JOURNEY, NOT AN EVENT: ENSURING THE LEARNING STICKS

You can design and implement an incredibly thoughtful and effective training initiative,

but if employees don’t believe the training is truly relevant to them, your chances of

positive results will remain out of reach. Moreover, it’s one thing for employees to know

how to do something or behave differently, but it’s quite another to use those new skills

“in the heat of battle.” There are other obstacles working against the application of new

behaviors: old habits, time pressure, peer pressure, lack of support from a supervisor,

lack of personal confidence, and even forgetfulness.

A solid post-training reinforcement strategy helps shield your training initiative from

the many obstacles that would impede its success. You can improve the likelihood of

higher engagement, productivity, morale, and empowerment by including the following

strategies in the design of your training initiative.

Provide Leadership Support

When leaders take an active role in the reinforcement of the attitudes and behaviors that

are desired within the organization, they help to curb the tendency in others to fall back

into old ways of doing things. Leaders can support the momentum the training created

by acting as coaches for their teams, leading by example, and encouraging employees as

they learn new ways to approach situations at work.

Providing leadership support is not a one-off, so leaders should be prepared to provide

ongoing coaching and assistance in the days, weeks, and months after a training event.

As employees continue to find new ways to apply what they learned in training, leaders will

need to be available to help with the day-to-day challenges that will undoubtedly arise.

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Develop and Implement a Practical Reinforcement Strategy

A thoughtful and effective learning retention strategy ensures you are maximizing

training impact and minimizing the opportunity for learning decay. Ongoing post-course

reinforcement keeps lessons from training top of mind and ensures that employees

remember and apply what they learned once back on the job. To keep employees engaged

and focused on ongoing development, it is necessary to organize reinforcement activities

as easily digestible lessons, full of practical takeaways that can be applied at work. Some

examples of reinforcement activities and options include:

Line Manager Reinforcement: Direct supervisors model, coach, and require

new behaviors among employees.

Mobile Reinforcement: Learning content, questions, and feedback from

training are delivered to employees’ smartphones or tablets.

Knowledge Reinforcement: Using gamification, participants play short games

that test their knowledge of content and reinforce its relevance to their job.

Elements of gamification include leaderboards, ROI reporting, rewards, and an

interactive learner experience.

Content Reinforcement: Using various media formats, employees are

reminded of training content and have the opportunity to look more closely at

its relevance to their own work environment.

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Gather Data with a Measurement Strategy

As with any initiative, the path to success is filled with hurdles, challenges, and

unforeseen obstacles. But the journey also includes successes, high points, and the

satisfaction of reaching significant milestones.

Given that training initiatives often come with their share of highs and lows, you will

want to collect data from the very beginning so you can see the short-term and long-

term impact of training. With a focus on tracking and measuring employee learning

progress and behavior change, you will develop a better sense of the return on the

investment. It’s the measurable ROI that separates a decent training program from

a highly effective one, and by measuring progress on key metrics relevant to your

organization, you’ll develop a better sense of where training is working and where

more extensive training is needed.

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PARTNER WITH EAGLE’S FLIGHT

Maximizing the success of training initiatives takes more than selecting a training course

and waiting for employees to begin behaving differently. It requires thorough preparation,

the support of company leaders, and a trusted training partner who can guide you through

the discovery process, training delivery, and ongoing learning reinforcement. At Eagle’s

Flight, we understand how to design and deliver training programs that change employees’

hearts and minds, resulting in lasting behavior change. In 30+ years of applying our

expertise in experiential learning, we have helped organizations of every size and industry

achieve results in leadership development, culture transformation, and a range of skills

including teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and more. Contact us today to

learn how we can help you build and implement a successful training initiative.

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CONNECT TODAY

Toll-Free North America: 1-800-567-8079 International: +1-519-767-1747 www.eaglesflight.com

Asia Pacific: +65-6805-0668 Europe: +44-0-175-353-3010 South America: +55-11-3050-2210

Since our founding in 1988, Eagle’s Flight has developed and refined a framework

for creating predictable, sustainable behavior change. We specialize in experiential

learning and provide organizations with a better outcome by truly engaging the learner.

Successful organizational development programs require ongoing work, but this can

easily get lost in the shuffle of daily tasks that feel more urgent. Partnering with a

provider that has a strong track record of helping organizations achieve long-term,

measurable change will help ensure that your development goals are met.

If you would like to learn more about how Eagle’s Flight can support your

corporate culture goals, contact us today.

© and TM, Eagle’s Flight, Creative Training Excellence Inc. Not to be copied or reproduced without permission.

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References

1. https://www.mercer.com/content/dam/mercer/attachments/private/nurture-cycle/global-talent-hr-trends-report-2016-mercer.pdf

2. https://www.mercer.com/content/dam/mercer/attachments/private/nurture-cycle/global-talent-hr-trends-report-2016-mercer.pdf