Dogmatism vs Development Driving Performance

Last year many organisations around the world were facing extreme uncertainty as they tried to navigate through the height of Covid-19 pandemic. In many cases they were forced to cut costs, and in particular, their workforce to keep themselves afloat. Many individuals were, and still are, affected by this across sectors, industries and functions. I myself know a number of people who were directly affected in the L&D space.

This makes me think about how L&D is perceived, i.e. Is L&D seen as a nice luxury to have when the business is operating well, perhaps it's a boast for talent acquisition and a perk for employees? Or, is it seen as directly impacting the performance of the organisation and therefore critical during the tough times?

Unfortunately, for many people outside of development (and a few inside the industry) L&D is seen as a nice to have, icing on the organisational cake to aid image and credibility.

One year on and interestingly the job market in Australia is resurgent, closed national borders and low infection rates have resulted in a positive market and more jobs than suitable applicants. I have noticed many roles for trainers, facilitators and instructional designers whose roles are all important in bringing development to life.

What I haven’t seen as much of, is the push for strategic L&D, specifically the architecture that brings to life the step-change in performance that development should be offering. It feels like too many organisations, buoyed by the brightening market conditions, have busily rehired professionals within the L&D space without thinking strategically about their performance impact. Rather, sending them off the a dark corner of the organisation to create training on generic presentation skills, resilience and mindfulness or knocking up some compliance modules. It's not just me saying this; if you want to be truly scared of L&D wastage, check out the stats in the HBR article ‘Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development’ (Glaveski,S. 2019).

The good news is some organisations are leading the way and reaping the rewards. Their realisation that L&D can drive performance when senior leadership understands and utilises it as such (DeVito,E 2021). That's not to pass the buck of responsibility, those in L&D must do the right things: start with the end in mind, measuring impact, human-centred design, performance consultancy, agile thinking and processes especially minimum viable product, coaching, influencing and showcase to senior leadership team. 

Just like a plant, for the green shoots of best practice to take root they need watering. L&D needs the space to grow, to demonstrate and most importantly to impact. In the less developed organisations leaders need to step back from their “let's get L&D to run a training on (insert ‘theme of the month’ impulse) and instead let the experts do what they do and watch that bottom line grow !

If you would like to discuss how development can drive performance get in touch!

Sources:

DeVito,E. (2021) People power! Why L&D is driving business survival

Glaveski,S. (2019) Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development