Most L&D pros have probablyheard the question “What have you done for me lately?” from their stakeholders,often around budget season. You may have launched the most successfulleadership program in the company’s history in January, but your resources willhit the chopping block in September when it is time to hand out the money for nextyear. The programmatic approach that organizations have historically adoptedhas allowed for a constantly shifting continuum with regard to the value ofworkplace learning. This has been exacerbated by the radical increase inoptions that business leaders can use to develop their people without engagingL&D. As a result, L&D spends a considerable amount of time justifyingits existence rather than focusing on the needs of the business.
Who is “me”?
So how do we ensure our value isclear when partners ask, “What have you done for me lately?” This starts withrethinking the question. We spend a lot of time showcasing our capabilities tomanagement in hopes of solidifying our spot at the metaphorical table ofinfluence. If the budget holders like us, we aren’t going anywhere, right? Idisagree. After all, managers come and go. Organizational priorities shift at abreakneck pace. If there is one consistency in a modern workplace, it’s thatemployees need help keeping up with the speed of change. So, while many peoplemay think the “me” in “What have you done for me lately?” represents L&Dstakeholders, I believe it’s actually the front-line employee.
In real life, employees needsomeone to be there when THEY need help the most—at critical decision points whenemployees get hurt, customers get angry, and money is lost. That’s usually notL&D. No wonder we so often have to chase people down to get them tocomplete our programs. If employees don’t see L&D as a valuable part oftheir day-to-day lives, why would they give us their time and attention when wesuddenly require it? The key to sustained L&D value is to be (or become) avital part of how work gets done every day, not the aspirational—albeit alsoimportant—long-term learning and development initiatives on which we oftenexpend so much time and effort.
Being there
This shouldn’t sound all thatnew to you as a modern L&D pro. Everything I’m sharing aligns to the 70:20:10 framework as well as Gottfredson and Mosher’s Five Moments of Learning Need. While theseconcepts have been out there for several years, L&D pros still seem to havea difficult time wrapping their heads around what it means to be a part ofevery employee’s day. After all, there are a LOT of them and very few of us.How can an L&D team of 20 people be a meaningful part of the day-to-day foran employee population of 75,000?
Here are a few practical ways Ihave helped resource-strapped L&D teams improve their value to front-lineemployees by becoming a more regular partner in their job performance.
Get closer to the operation
Where do you do your L&Dwork? Where do the people you support do their work? Why aren’t you physicallycloser? Yes, this can be challenging if you work in a large, distributedenterprise, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook the importance ofpresence as part of your team strategy. Before employees can consider you animportant part of their work, they need to know you exist as more than just anemail address and an onboarding curriculum. It’s up to you to meet them wherethey are.
Here are a few suggestions forimproving employee awareness of L&D:
- Relocate your desk from siloed support officesinto the operational environment
- Budget time and resources for location visits,even if you aren’t currently involved in a major initiative
- Chip in and provide hands-on support during high-volumeperiods
- Go to meetings and events that aren’t about yourwork but that will include a variety of employees and partners
- Send messages directly to employees highlightingnew resources and learning opportunities
Foster knowledge connections
Having trouble addressing all ofyour organization’s requests? Traditional L&D can’t keep up with the paceof modern business. We just can’t. Therefore, focusing all of our resources onbuilding content in an attempt to meet employee needs is a fruitless effort.Rather, L&D must shift from a creation to a connection mentality and findways to bring together those who NEED and those who HAVE. This is where theconcept of “social learning” comes into play, but not in the “discussion boardwith questions” or “topical Yammer group” ways it’s often implemented. L&Dmust play a central role in fostering shared knowledge resources for the entireorganization. Because we can’t build all of the necessary content on our own,we must find formal and informal subject matter experts and enable curationbehaviors to get on-demand resources to those who need them.
Establish lines of communication
Are you able to communicatedirectly to the people you support, or do you have to work through a series ofpartners to get a message out there? An essential part of providing day-to-dayvalue to employees is making sure they understand they have someone to go towhen they need help. Yes, managers and peers should be a big part of this, butthey don’t always know—or care to provide—the right answer when needed.Therefore, L&D should offer simple ways for employees to raise their handsand ask for help as a form of performance support. You may have an emailaddress or similar today, but that can quickly become unruly and limit the scopeof your support to just the people on the message. Social technology, alongwith some light community management, can give employees a virtual place to gowhen they need help and open the support role to anyone who wants to join theconversation. At the same time, L&D can get a sense of the larger needs ofthe organization directly from the front line while identifying employees whopotentially have great knowledge resources to share.
Lean on microlearning
How can we expectalready-overloaded employees to fit “learning” into their day-to-day? First, bymaking shared knowledge and performance support the foundation of everything wedo, we can take advantage of the learning that already happens every day andlet employees decide how to best engage with readily available resources. Then,you can introduce microlearning as a personalized way to push the right contentto the right people at the right time, based on expressed knowledge andperformance gaps. This doesn’t just mean making our existing training modulesshorter. Rather, an effective microlearning strategy blends thescience of learning with reimagined content, targeted engagement tactics, andright-fit technology to help employees easily fit a dose of formal traininginto their daily workflow.
