As businesses focus on growing out of the recession, it is essential that they do all they can to make the most of their existing talent. So says Chris Philips VP EMEA marketing at Taleo in his recent article Boost your business’s bottom line through a culture of learning. Philips strongly believes that having a strong culture of learning in an organisation can significantly boost the company’s bottom line.

“Making talent development part of your DNA is essential to this,’’ he maintains, “and organisations are increasingly implementing learning platforms in order to support this objective.” Philips believes that a learning management system adds value across the talent management spectrum by replacing outdated, isolated and fragmented learning programmes with a methodical means of tracking, assessing, and ultimately raising the competency of employees and performance levels throughout the organisation. In his article, Philips highlights the fact that learning works best when it is aligned with the goals and objectives of both the organisation and its respective employees, explaining that such an approach is essential to gaining a competitive advantage.

He remarks: “Integrated learning programmes enable businesses to align goals between workers and the company as a whole or, alternatively, to cascade objectives down to each individual contributor. This can best be achieved by integrating learning initiatives with on boarding processes and performance management tools, and putting learning and development at the heart of everything – from inducting new employees through to setting development goals.”

Unfortunately, as Philips rightly explains, the reality remains that while many businesses understand the crucial role that training and development play within their own organisation, very few actually know how creating a culture of employee learning, training and development can add value to their organisation’s bottom line. Here, Philips quotes research by Bersin Associates, a research and advisory firm that focuses on research in enterprise learning, talent management and talent acquisition. This study revealed that organisations with a strong learning culture are 46 per cent more likely to be strong innovators in their markets, 34 per cent of them are more likely to get to market before their competitors, 33 per cent are more likely to report higher customer satisfaction levels, 18 per cent are more likely to currently be a market-share leader in one or more of their markets, 39 per cent are more likely to report success in implementing customer suggestions and finally 58 per cent are more likely to be successful at developing the skills needed for meeting future customer demand.

As such, it becomes clear that organisations should aim to formalise learning plans that are tied to the business objectives and job roles in order to help achieve a competitive advantage. Philips explains how a learning plan should include information on the individual and the organisation, a summary of the initial assessment where needs are identified, details of the agreed programme delivery and a summary of arrangements for supporting the learner. Such an approach allows businesses to address individual skill gaps, increase the knowledge base and develop a pipeline of future leaders. In addition, this approach also helps employees to gain relevant skills in-house, rather than having to invest time and money in finding those skills outside the company.

Collaborative and social learning enables companies to lever the expertise within their own organisation and allows employees to easily share and access content. In his article, Philips talked about how recent developments in social media mean that today there are more channels than ever for knowledge sharing, including discussion and chat forums, comments and ratings tools, social profiles and other communication channels.

Having said all this, what would an ideal training programme look like? According to Philips, the ideal training programme is one that pushes training out to the employees by assigning it to them and enables them to acquire learning by finding and registering for their desired course.

“Push learning is necessary for mandatory training and certification, while pull learning allows self-driven employees to build out their skill sets at their own pace. Offering employees both options will help them to increase their skills and will also help to improve morale, allowing staff to perform to the best of their abilities,’’ he maintains.

Philips went on to say that a training programme should combine a mix of instructor-led training, web-based training and social learning with user generated content and discussions. Using this approach ensures that all different types of learners in an organisation will be satisfied and that the relevant training programmes are always available to those who want and need them. Learning management systems should be designed to easily integrate custom and off-the-shelf courses.

Finally, Philips emphasises the importance of organisations monitoring and assessing their training programmes on a regular basis in order to ensure that they are being used by – and are benefiting – the employees and the business. Assessments should be aimed at verifying the acquisition of new skills, tracking assessment results to identify skills gaps, and developing surveys to gauge learner perception of training events and instructors. In this way, skills gaps can be measured and managed at organisational, departmental and individual levels. Philips continues by saying how some businesses may actually prefer to develop their own content or leverage existing professionally developed content to reduce costs. Learning programmes can even help boost company profits as expertise, content, and intellectual property can be sold on to partners, customers, or other groups outside the organisation. Branded learning portals and sub-portals can encourage higher levels of adoption, brand awareness, and revenue.

Nevertheless, Philips says that developing content in-house cannot be a way for organisations to cut corners, and they must be able to clearly show to regulatory agencies that their employees have received the required training with an electronic audit trail. Learning management systems need to be Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and Aviation Industry CBT (Computer-Based Training) Committee (AICC) compliant to satisfy the standards and specifications of computer-based training, web-based training, and related training technologies.

Therefore, having a learning management system is a crucial investment for organisations that want to develop the skills, competencies and knowledge of their workforce with the aim to improving productivity, retention, and engagement. As Philips rightly puts it:

Organisations that invest more time and money per employee may generate more revenue than those who invest less. This is because when learning is implemented as a strategy that is aligned with business goals, employees accrue the skills and experience necessary to achieve those goals, and they derive more revenue. Learning is a key enabler of Talent Intelligence, and the insight that companies need in order to unlock the power of their most critical asset – their people. By aligning learning with business goals, pushing the right content to internal and external audiences, and tracking their progress, an organisation will be able to improve time-to-market, become a market leader, ensure customer satisfaction and ultimately increase profits.

Angele Camilleri is a researcher

with the Foundation for Human

Resources Development