The question of whether you have an effective learning strategy is fairly subjective.
However, gauging that effectiveness is not as straightforward as it might seem. Speak to the training manager, who is deeply engrossed in curating training modules and overseeing learning pathways. They'll probably give you a confident nod of affirmation. They've seen the hours that have gone into the strategy and believe in its potential. But flip the coin, and there's the employee. This person is trying to juggle their daily responsibilities and grow professionally. If they feel their unique needs and aspirations aren't being addressed, they may have a very different perspective on the strategy's effectiveness.
How do you get it right, and where does the truth lie? How can you measure the genuine impact and effectiveness of a learning management strategy? And more importantly, how do you strike that delicate balance where most, if not all, feel they are gaining value from it? After all, it's a given – you can't please all of the people all the time.
But with a well-thought-out strategy, you can come pretty close.
At its heart, a successful strategy should empower learners, address diverse learning needs, and ultimately drive individual and organisational growth. Workplace learning is essential to an organisation's overall growth strategy, providing employees with essential skills and the motivation to support those plans.
If an organisation has an overall business strategy, one assumes that it also has a learning management strategy… and that the learning strategy provides the organisation with a plan of what is needed, where it is needed, and details how you measure the success of these interventions. However, this is not always the case.
In a perfect world, your strategy should consider the overall business strategy, people, processes, timelines and future plans. What about risk mitigation and planning for unforeseen events? Also, how will you coordinate and manage the complexity often involved in deploying your strategy?
Without the investment of time and effort to develop a well-thought-out plan, many organisations will find themselves woefully unprepared to deal with the all-too-certain parade of unanticipated events and circumstances that keep them from achieving their goals.
By developing specific and measurable goals, you can assess the benefits you expect and weigh them against the efforts and risks you are taking to achieve them. They provide focus and purpose.
Your goal with a learning management strategy will be to create an environment that helps your employees thrive while discovering the importance of their current and future roles.
Beyond employee growth, the learning management strategy seeks to streamline training processes, ensure consistent knowledge dissemination, adapt to diverse learning styles, and align individual development with organisational objectives.
While we can't answer all of your questions nor have a crystal ball, we can offer you some thoughts that will support the development of your learning management strategy.
Considerations for your learning management strategy
Open Channels of Communication
Ensure there's an open dialogue between trainers, managers, and learners. Feedback loops are invaluable. The more you understand learners' experiences and challenges, the better equipped you'll be to make necessary adjustments.
Long before the training is delivered, the organisation will need to understand and communicate what it expects to achieve from its training plan. As we have said, the training needs to align with the business needs and anticipated outcomes.
It is imperative that employees see that the training is an opportunity for their personal growth and the growth of the organisation.
Effective communication ensures everyone is on the same page and motivated to work towards common goals.
Promote a Learning Culture
The best learning management strategies can falter if not rooted in a culture that values growth and development. Encourage a mindset where continuous learning is celebrated and knowledge sharing is a norm.
Data-Driven Decisions
If you have collected data, quantitative analysis can provide insightful metrics. Look at course completion rates, assessment scores, and feedback surveys. While numbers don't tell the entire story, they give a strong indication of where the strategy might be faltering. Feedback surveys are quite subjective and catch someone on a bad day, and you may not see the real story. This is where your Learning Management System can support future development and decision-making.
Transferring learning to the workplace
One of the biggest hurdles faced even before you put a plan together is how to ensure that your employees can do more than recite theories. You want them to apply what they learn and how their new-found knowledge will support the organisation and its issues. This is what your learning management strategy seeks to address.
Training needs analysis
Recognise that everyone's learning journey is unique. Offering personalised learning paths, curated based on individual strengths, weaknesses, and career aspirations, can significantly enhance engagement and effectiveness. Acknowledging career aspirations can sometimes be a bone of contention.
Your employee has dreams and wants to expand their career, you may have a limited budget, and there may be other conflicts of interest. This needs to be taken into account. Naturally, you will want to work with the employees to ensure that they are the right fit and that the training will support the employee, their career path and the organisation.
With all of that said, without a doubt, the first point is to undertake a training needs analysis which aligns learning outcomes with organisational goals and then plan the strategy to meet the most urgent needs, followed up with a list of other priorities.
Align training with jobs roles, responsibilities and needs
Of course, this makes perfect sense. Training enables organisations to remain competitive. A well-planned learning management strategy that creates a fully aligned training and development program helps to engage and motivate employees, improve retention, and fill skill gaps, and it is critical to business success. This works alongside the training needs analysis to ensure that you are training the right people for their roles and any priorities and growth plans you have.
Communicate expectations
Long before the training is delivered, the organisation will need to understand and communicate what it expects to achieve from its training plan. As we have said, the training needs to align with the business needs and anticipated outcomes.
It is imperative that employees see that the training is an opportunity for their personal growth and the growth of the organisation.
Effective communication ensures everyone is on the same page and motivated to work towards common goals.
Create a training plan
This goes without saying that the organisation will need a training plan. This is where Ligtas can support you to ensure that it fits in with your learning management strategy and overall business needs. Regularly revisit and update your strategy and plans to keep them relevant and aligned with organisational goals.
Set training objectives and measure
Once you have the training plan in place, the organisation will need to decide what the employees will gain once they complete the training, how this will be applied and how the investment can be measured.
To help justify the training cost, measurement must occur throughout the whole learning experience. Add meetings with employees into your plan. If you don’t ask, you will never know if your spend is justified.
Deliver the right training
The right training will be the training the organisation identifies it needs to reach its goals, which also supports how the employee learns best. Check out our article Lifelong Learning Which Is The Best, Online Or Classroom?
Feedback
Assessing the training as an ongoing activity can allow the organisation to identify and adjust weaknesses accordingly.
ROI of Learning
Lastly, measure the return on investment (ROI). Beyond course completions and assessment scores, gauge how the training translates into real-world performance improvements.
Even before you put a plan together, one of the biggest hurdles is ensuring that your employees can do more than recite theories, especially in health and safety. You want them to apply what they learn how their new-found knowledge will support the organisation and its issues. This is what your learning management strategy must address.
Are the employees better at their jobs? Is there a noticeable boost in productivity or innovation? These are indicators of an effective strategy.
What if you don’t plan?
If an organisation doesn't place enough importance on employee training, it will lead to high staff turnover, an unengaged workforce and a wasted training budget.
Training is not merely a token gesture or a checkmark on a company’s to-do list; it's an investment in an organisation's most valuable resource: its people. When a company overlooks the importance of structured and strategic training, the repercussions can be many.
Add reduced competitive edge, gaps in skill sets, potential decreased customer satisfaction to, high staff turnover, an unengaged workforce and a wasted training budget, and you might want to rethink your strategy.
And, of course, keeping staff trained on the latest regulations and practices is not just a matter of best practice; it's a legal requirement. Neglecting this can lead to costly fines, legal actions, or even business closures.
What about a Learning Management System
So, have you considered a Learning Management System (or LMS) as part of your strategy?
Learning Management Systems save organisations valuable time and money by enabling them to easily manage the training of every employee through a web-based environment with any time, anywhere accessibility.
Not only that, they can handle a wide range of other documents, transforming your LMS into something even more valuable, a Knowledge Management System.
When the LMS and the KMS are integrated, your learning management strategy has a tighter fit with your overall business strategy. Learning and content are delivered where you want it, when you want it, and in a measurable way. Perhaps more importantly, the LMS becomes a repository for a wide range of your organisation’s knowledge – capturing best practices, reliable methods, demonstrations, words of wisdom from process and product champions, and emerging learning where online communities within your organisation can discuss, debate and develop key ideas.
Call us to find out more and discuss how to create an all-embracing learning management strategy!
