Business alignment: Improving the value of LTD

As demonstrating the value of talent development becomes more pronounced, there is also an increasing sense of urgency to adopt effective and practical ways of measuring the impact of learning and talent development solutions on employee’s performance in their workplace, and in turn, the value that this adds to organizational objectives.

If the Learning & Talent Development (LTD) function is going to be respected as the true strategic partner that it is, it has to specify first and foremost what ends it wants to deliver to the organization before it determines how it wants to use its resources. This means that in response to any request for “learning solutions”, it has to first define the tangible results the solution(s) is to deliver to the organization, and why it should be delivered in the first place. How will this learning solution move us closer (or away) from our strategic aims? Without this up front ‘business alignment’, preferred means such as courses, events, activities, technologies and other tactics become solutions in search of no known problem or opportunity.

You can certainly see the predicament this presents for LTD “after” solutions have been implemented…it can be frightening to evaluate something when you are unclear about how it was supposed to add value to the organization in the first place. Where would you start? Where would you focus your evaluation efforts? The motivation to “demonstrate” value has essentially been designed out of the equation if this is an afterthought rather than the starting point.

You see, demonstrating the value of LTD solutions and initiatives doesn’t start with evaluation, though it is true we confirm value after what has been implemented has had a chance to deliver what it was intended to deliver. Rather, demonstrating value starts before you select what initiative will be implemented, essentially…it starts with your assessment or validation of the need.

The perpetual challenge of transfer of training has many factors of course, from those that relate to the actual design of learning initiatives, to those that deal with effective delivery, and of course, those that deal with actual performance management once the learners are back on the job and hopefully ready to ‘apply’ what they learned. But before any of these sets of factors plays a role on the potential success of LTD initiatives, we have to consider the actual need.

Needs can present themselves as gaps in results at various organizational levels from employee outputs (for example, items produced; sales quotes generated); to organizational outcomes (for example, sales revenue; margins), to long-term impact (for example, customer loyalty; sustained market share) and other performance indicators in between.

Unfortunately, many LTD professionals start and stop at “training needs”, and often leave out ‘business needs’ out of the story. Training needs sometimes relate directly to specific gaps in skills and knowledge of employees at best, and often merely reflect “preferred topics” that may or may not relate to actual gaps in skills and knowledge. While skills and knowledge are certainly relevant issues for LTD professionals, they are not sufficient.

Gaps in skills and knowledge are certainly important to address…provided that these specific skills and knowledge sets have been clearly linked to specific business objectives, gaps, or opportunities. To this end, the questions that the LTD professional asks are central to establishing such links. Questions that relate to what employees should “know” will of course generate information about knowledge. However, questions that relate to business needs will generate information about business alignment. Both are important of course, but one without the other introduces the risk of making faulty assumptions about the inherent link between learning and performance.

Traditional training needs assessment approaches will have prospective learners “list” their training preferences, and maybe even assign a weight to their preferences so as to provide more confidence by placing them in priority order based on some numerical value. The truth is that having a number attached to how strongly you like a topic or a delivery approach doesn’t convert it into a real need.

Conversely, an LTD professional with a business alignment orientation would focus on employee outputs, products or deliverables and determine whether there are any gaps between the target and the actual level of output, and if so, how these gaps affect business results and impact. If a business need is validated at this point, only then would the LTD professional’s time and energy be well spent in determining if the root cause of the gap stems from a lack of skills and knowledge or something else (for example, unclear expectations, inconsistent feedback, inefficient processes; negative consequences, etc.).

So in a nutshell, it is this root cause analysis that clarifies the link between business needs and effective solutions. LTD solutions should address the root cause of business needs/gaps. If this alignment is not made prior to selecting and designing solutions, good luck showing value after implementation. The new era of LTD demands that they shift their paradigm from providing learning products and services, to first and foremost aligning LTD solutions to legitimate business needs.