Developing a Corporate Learning Strategy
Learning Strategy Pyramid
The
key to developing a Corporate Learning Strategy is to understand
the relationship between the corporate goals and the people who are accountable
for the results. It is also important to comprehend the culture that drives
the business and its people.
The Learning Strategy Pyramid illustrates the components of a Corporate Learning Strategy; Goals, Processes, Job Roles, and People.
Goals
The corporate goals should always drive the goals of every organization within it. The Training or Learning organization is no exception. These goals usually represent the top priorities of what the company is attempting to accomplish. The goals need to be clear and specific as to the expected results. The priorities of the business are usually aligned to topics such as Customer Satisfaction, Revenue Growth, Quality, Cost Management, and Leadership Development.
The goals of the Corporate Learning Strategy are aligned to the corporate goals. The goals must be clear and specific in its alignment in order for it to be effective and measurable. To determine these goals it will be important to consider the current situation and to define the desired state to reach. The current situation can be further analyzed for root causes to determine what kind of action would need to happen to reach the desired state.
It is always important to begin with the corporate goals and to avoid using trends in the Training industry to define your goals, such as the move to e-learning and m-learning. Evolving to an e-learning environment does not in itself represent a goal, it is the corporate goal that should drive the move to e-learning. For example, if a corporate goal related to Cost Management has been defined to reduce overhead expenses by 5%, then reducing travel expenses associated with classroom training would contribute to that goal, and therefore moving some of your classroom training to e-learning could be defined as one of the goals of the Corporate Learning Strategy. Certainly there will be other goals that need to be defined. The next step for this particular example would be to further qualify the goal by determining how much classroom needs to move to e-learning. In order to determine that, we need to continue analyzing the Learning Strategy Pyramid to the next level of Processes.
Processes
Processes are the standardized tasks or steps taken to produce a desired result. Having clearly defined goals and expected results are critical to a process achieving those results. Having stable repeatable tasks to execute not only insures consistency and predictability in delivering results, but also enhances the development of training programs to support them. Additionally, when the process is improved it is a critical element to include training to make sure that as new people are brought on-board they will be learning the latest process. Processes may or may not be documented, but they do represent the repeatable actions that are needed to achieve the goals. Every process is made up of output, input, tasks, and resources.
Output
The output represents the deliverable or product that is being produced by the process. It is defined by the requirements of the customer or receiver of the deliverable. Several processes can be chained together to produce an overall process, with each predecessor process contributing to the output of its successor.
Input
The input represents the information and materials needed to produce the output. The input may be the output of a predecessor process and therefore must be defined by clear requirements to produce the desired output of the current process.
Tasks
The tasks represent the steps taken to produce the output.
Resources
The resources represent the requirements, tools, procedures, training, and knowledge and experience needed to produce the output.
Job Roles
The training and experience resources of the process will define the Job Roles required to execute the tasks within the process. The process may specify a single job role or more likely multiple job roles to perform the tasks. The documented procedures will spell out the expectations of the job role, and therefore define the training objectives to execute the process.
The resulting job description should spell out the job responsibilities as defined by the process, and the qualifications as defined by the knowledge and experience required.
People
The People are the individuals who will perform the responsibilities of the job roles, and thus execute the processes that produce the results as defined by the corporate goals. It is the job of Human Resources to locate the right people for the job role and to consider the potential return on the investment in this human capital. The more experienced the person is, then the less training they will need to get up to speed.
The people are the foundation of the Learning Strategy Pyramid and who will achieve the results, and much of that is driven by the corporate culture. The culture is a set of beliefs and values that are shared among all the people. It is propogated through leadership and action, and is reinforced in training.
Training the People to Achieve Results
The Corporate Learning Strategy must consider the entire Learning Strategy Pyramid from the goals to the people. A strategy is a plan of action to achieve a goal and the goal of the Corporate Learning Strategy must be aligned to the corporate goals which represent the expected results. Therefore, the first objective of the Corporate Learning Strategy is to train the people to achieve the results.
A
second objective of the Corporate Learning Strategy is to develop
the Learning Organization itself to achieve the results. After
all, the Learning Organization will be made up of people
performing job roles to execute processes to achieve results.
This means that part of the Corporate Learning Strategy will involve
analyzing the current processes and services to determine if they
are indeed achieving the desired results. This will require asking
a lot of "why" questions to truly grasp the present situation
and to determine a desired state to reach. This may produce a change in
the processes which may redefine job roles and shift people.
A third objective is to consider the resources that can be applied to the Learning Organization. This is where a strategy of moving to e-learning may be considered, and is determined by the processes being taught. The tasks and procedures will indicate how much can be taught by e-learning and how much may need to have a different delivery medium or delivery method. This is what determines how much might move from classroom to e-learning.
The resulting Corporate Learning Strategy will be specific to each organization since it will be defined by the corporate goals, processes, job roles, and people.
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©2006 E-Learning Engineering
Last modified:
April 25, 2006
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