Four Tips: Building Learning and Performance Ecosystems for Small-to-medium Businesses

As most readers whoare in small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) can attest, there’s never enough timein the day or money in the bank to tackle every challenge your business mightbe facing.

One of the criticalchallenges facing SMBs is training—namely, how can you put in place a trainingprogram that is current, complete, and effective while at the same time keepingit affordable?

If you’ve found stafftraining and development a difficult beast to tame, you’re not alone. Bersin byDeloitte reports that while virtually every company wants to improve theircapabilities in people management, a scant 14 percent can actually say they’ve made real progress.

Part of the reason somany businesses are spinning their wheels is indecision and paralysis on thepart of business owners. With so many options for training programs andplatforms available, wading through all of the noise to find a system thatworks well for your business is a daunting task.

On thing’s for sure,however…

Not training is not anoption

Intimidating as thedecision on how to train employees might be, failure to find an answer comeswith enormous risks and tangible drawbacks:

• Ambiguousand unclear expectations that frustrate your team members
• A lack ofprocess and documentation that creates inconsistent quality in the products andservices delivered while creating more work for experienced team members
• Pooronboarding of staff means that it will take much longer for them to become productive

And maybe worst of allis the loss of staff members who have become frustrated with the lack of clearprocess. The cost to replace and re-train an employee is as high as 20 – 213 percent of that employee’s salary. In aresource-limited small business where every penny counts, that’s a HUGE chunkof change to be pouring down the drain.

You may also bemissing out on the chance to acquire top talent and more qualified candidates.Prospective employees are attracted to organizations with strong training programs. With propertraining, prospective staff get a greater sense of security in the fact thatthere are defined processes and rules to play by, and steps they can follow tosucceed on the job.

Even knowing this is notenough

Often, bottlenecks inthe development and delivery of training can bring progress to a crashing halt.

In most smallbusinesses, training employees becomes the sole responsibility of onedepartment (those poor HR people), or even worse, just one person.

This creates a naturalbottleneck where there’s a constant struggle to keep up; developing trainingprograms becomes a longwinded process, and by the time something is created, itmay already be outdated or require improvement.

There’s also aninherent knowledge gap—can one department really know enough about all theothers to deliver training that’s effective on the job?

This bottleneck ispart of the reason the HR world is now buzzing with recommendations forbusinesses to move away from individual training solutions and towards a“learning and performance ecosystem” comprised of multifaceted learning and performance options thatenhance the environments in which we work and learn.”

Which is all well andgood—but where do you even begin?

Ifyou’re not sure where to start, there’s one thing you need to know

Whether you’ve set itup formally or not, your business already has a learning ecosystem.

No matter how smoothor broken your existing process, on-the-job learning is already happening. Youjust may not be able to see it from where you’re sitting.

Your staff are actively seeking out answers—whetherthat’s by asking other members of the team or searching for the missinginformation required online. In a recent survey conducted by Towards Maturity, 70 percent of staff said they sought out theanswers they needed on Google, while 88 percent said they learned bycollaborating with other colleagues.

There’s power in thesecasual and unprompted interactions; something you can channel into a moreformalized training program. There’s no need to start from scratch, you justneed to harness the power of the collaborative learning that’s already goingon.

Here’s how to get thisgoing.

1. Start by recognizing whoyour subject matter experts are

Subject matter experts(SMEs) are your go-to people that other staff members are turning to when theyneed advice on a process or task. They’re the ones with the experience andinformation locked up in their heads, far away from a documented process—andnow, it’s time to bring that information out and capture it for everyone elseto use.

In a smallerorganization, these people can be fairly easy to recognize, but here’s a littlehelp finding them if you need it.

1. Speak tomanagers in every department and ask who they believe might qualify (includingthemselves).
2. Often,subject matter experts are those who have often come forward with usefulsuggestions (especially those you’ve implemented) and solutions to issues thathave been raised, or that they’ve encountered on their own.
3. Don’tassume that a manager is your subject matter expert just by virtue of theirrole. Often, managers sit too high up the ladder to see into the weeds, wherethe real process and progress is happening. It’s not uncommon for assistantsand coordinators to have deeper insights into how the work actually gets done.
4. If allelse fails, look to your highest performers—for example, those on your salesteam. These are people who have found ways to win in your business, and withthe right incentives (and the diffusion of any idea that business is acompetition), you can get them on board to share the approach they’ve developedwith the rest of the team.

2. Get those subject matterexperts to collaborate on training

Enter this phase havingan attitude of you, “don’t know what you don’t know.”

You need discussionssurrounding knowledge gaps you’ve identified, guidelines you’ve put in placefor the training, and the systems for delivery you’ll use to capture all ofthis information. You need to discuss formatting (videos, quizzes,questionnaires, and more are options available).

But keep itopen-ended. You will learn things in discussions just by listening to yourstaff, uncover previously hidden problems, and identify opportunities you wouldhave otherwise missed.

Then, come togetherand create.

3. Share it with everyonewho needs it, get feedback, and refine

Once you and yoursubject matter experts have collaborated on the training, take it to the massesand test it out. You want to send as polished a product as you can from thebeginning, but realize that revisions and improvements are not only inevitable—they’llmake everything better long-term.

Distributing yourtraining doesn’t need to be onerous; remember that you have access to two ofthe most world-changing technologies without a whole lot of effort: the Internetand mobile devices. These can serve as your ever-ready access point for staff,and empower them to take on just-in-time training as they need it.

4. Encourage new subjectmatter experts to come forward, and keep stoking the fire

Your first wave oftraining is only the beginning—you need a way to sustain, improve, and continueit. People like to be recognized for their knowledge and contributions; lookfor ways to publically recognize this and facilitate sharing. Learning mustbecome a cultural effort; you must work to let staff know that theircontributions are having a very real impact on the way business is done. Whenthey can feel this sense of meaning and control, it’s much easier to get themto want to contribute into building a better business.

Just start moving!

With the myriad ofoptions available, it’s easy to get stuck in neutral while thinking abouttraining. As I’ve outlined here, training is already happening—you just need togive it structure and a voice.

Once you’ve recognizedthis, democratizing training becomes much easier, and the mechanisms you choosefor collecting, distributing, and organizing the training may be the onlydecisions left to make.

The bigger thing is that you’ve begun movingtoward a better learning ecosystem; one that will help you retain staff,improve efficiency, and build a stronger culture of learning in the process.