Does Your Training Department Solve Business Problems?

By: Mary Elizabeth Murphy, President ASTD Charlotte, Managing Director S.T.A.R. Resources

Senior learning executives from leading organizations say the most important thing a training department can do is to solve a business problem according to “A View from the Top” (T&D Magazine April 2004.) “The metrics of success were about the business outcomes desired, and had nothing to do with traditional metrics such as the numbers of students trained” said Tom Kelly, vice president Internet Learning Solutions, Cisco Systems.

How can today’s leading learning and performance professionals, otherwise known as “Learning Leaders”, align their learning and development strategies to contribute to an organization’s overall strategy?  They need to be aware of the coming trends and begin to create strategies to meet the demand. The following are points taken from several checklists provided in T&D January 2004. Utilize these checklists to create your personal strategy so that you will be the preferred source for your company’s business solutions.

Business Understanding Checklist

1. Understand the organization’s business, its business model and how it makes money in its industry. Speak the language of the business to gain credibility
2. Provide advice on how human capital can be developed and aligned to meet current and future business needs (visit www.astd.org “The Human Capital Challenge” white paper). Recognize and act on emerging opportunities to quickly help prepare the workforce to respond to them.
3. Partner with senior leaders to establish learning and development strategies that support the organization’s business strategy.

What are the current trends in your industry? What curriculum is your learning and performance team preparing to meet these needs?  Who are you seeking advice from to insure that your initiatives are meeting the current and future business needs?

Business Performance Checklist

1. Focus your efforts on improving those areas that will enhance business performance – such as customer loyalty, product quality and innovation, speed of development and delivery, and sales effectiveness.
2. Make sure there’s a crystal clear business case for an initiative prior to any investment, including the identification of the initiatives drivers (such as increased market share, improved leadership capability, reduction of key talent turnover).
3. Demonstrate ROI and business contributions by tying initiatives to lasting and important business metrics that are differentiators – such as revenue, market share, quality, customer service and loyalty, retention, turnover, efficiency and innovation. Share those results with those who matter, such as business partners and senior management.

Today, job security is an illusion. You must continually prove your worth. Who are you telling about what you are doing? Who knows if your learning opportunities are paying off and in what ways? How are you showing value for the training, learning and other performance based initiatives your group provides?

Ethics Checklist

1. Advocate and model organizational practices that respect the individual and support a humane workplace in times of instability and change.
2. Operate ethically and with integrity – the old “walk the talk”.
3. Model personal development by actively identifying new areas for your own personal development.

Learning leaders believe in a culture of trust, continued development and ethical behavior. What did you do today to show that you support this belief?  What trusting behavior did you demonstrate toward a co-worker or the company? How did you show that you were trustworthy?

To learn more about these checklists and the Technologies, Diversity and Strategic checklists visit www.astd.org, look for T&D January 2004. 

Remember the most important question of all, “Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?” Use these checklists so that you will be a part of today’s and tomorrow’s business solutions.

Mary Elizabeth Murphy can be reached at info@starresources.biz or 704-535-5610

Contributions welcome: How you are insuring your future success? Do you have ideas on ways we can improve our viability in the marketplace by providing better business solutions through learning and performance? Are you currently utilizing the points listed in the checklists as your guide? Please e-mail me at president@astdcharlotte.org with your thoughts, solutions, and ideas so that we can share them with our members in next month’s column.  

Writers wanted: If you have an article or column you would like to submit please contact Chris Washington or Lee Shroeder our Co-VP’s of Communications – they can be reached at communications@astd.org .