The best leaders are often defined not by their ability to lead, but by their ability to teach.
Learning and development (L&D) leaders play a pivotal role in shaping the success of an organization. For an L&D leader, the goal is not to simply guide employees toward a specific goal but instead to provide them with the skills, resources, and support they need to reach that goal on their own.
To become the architects of successful workplace learning, L&D leaders must understand the evolving needs and expectations of the teams they work with. With the right approach, an L&D strategy can act as the catalyst for talent development and professional growth for employees.
The question to answer is how, exactly, can L&D leaders achieve this high-level impact?
We must start with the workplace learning culture.
Why you need to foster a culture of continuous improvement
One of the most significant contributions an L&D leader can make to any organization is establishing a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
With the mindset of continuous improvement in place, an L&D leader can set a team up for long-term success and encourage them to actively engage with learning content and knowledge-sharing. Achieving this requires an environment where team members feel psychologically safe to explore new ideas, voice their perspectives, and dare to take risks for the sake of innovation.
Establishing a workplace culture of continuous learning and improvement entails three main steps:
- Enabling Stronger Internal Communication: Continuous improvement starts with clear communication. When employees can freely communicate and collaborate — both in learning and professional settings — they are more likely to share their thoughts, feedback, and ideas. This information can prove invaluable for improving business processes for learning and development.
- Offering Frequent & Flexible Learning Programs: L&D leaders hold the responsibility of creating, developing, and deploying learning programs in the workplace. By offering frequent programs that involve short sessions and flexible scheduling, L&D leaders can encourage more employees to participate without disrupting their busy day-to-day schedules.
- Rewarding Program Participation & Self-Directed Learning: To best encourage your team to actively participate in their own professional development, you need to reward learning in all forms. Whether a team member is participating in group learning sessions or following self-directed learning guides in their own time, acknowledging and rewarding this extra effort is vital.
Aligning your organization’s L&D initiatives with business goals
Establishing a culture of continuous improvement and learning is an excellent first step — but how can L&D leaders ensure this culture is advantageous to the business itself?
To make a substantial impact on an organization, L&D leaders must take the time to align their strategies with overarching business goals. This requires an L&D leader to tailor learning programs according to the company’s mission, strategic objectives, and evolving technological needs.
For example, if an organization is struggling to align its software development team with its marketing team, an L&D leader could create a learning program focused on cross-functionality. By helping these separate teams master cross-functional skills, the two teams can not only better communicate with each other but also improve their departmental decision-making to better align with organizational goals.
Aligning L&D goals with business objectives in this way often requires detailed tracking and performance measurement capabilities, such as:
- Trackable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): KPIs (also known as metrics) provide clear and measurable outcomes for L&D leaders to track. To align L&D and business goals, L&D leaders need to choose KPIs wisely according to what results they hope to achieve. For instance, if a company wants to boost overall productivity, KPIs like program engagement, completion rates, and participation are useful data points to track.
- Data Analytics: With advancements in learning technologies and tools, L&D leaders have greater access than ever to advanced data analytics. Data capabilities are crucial for not only tracking information but also for collecting, summarizing, and analyzing information. Couple this with a comprehensive learning platform, and L&D leaders can establish a single source of truth.
- Automated Feedback Collection: Speaking of data collection, L&D leaders need the ability to actively collect feedback from employees — especially those participating in current learning programs. Yet, there are often far more employees than there are L&D professionals within an organization, making automated feedback (such as surveys) a necessity.
- Report Generation: With all of the information and data gathered through tracking KPIs, performing data analytics, and leveraging automated feedback, there’s only one step left to better align business and L&D goals — generating detailed reports. L&D leaders need the right mix of tools to generate reports and visualizations that help to demonstrate data findings and insights.
The importance of future-proofing employee skills
The business landscape continues to evolve — and as it does, organizations across all industries need more flexible and adaptable teams.
To make the greatest possible impact on an organization, L&D leaders need to consider how to future-proof each specific team member’s skills. This often includes identifying emerging skill gaps within the workforce and developing the necessary programs to address these gaps.
According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report 2023, human skills (aka, interpersonal skills) remain some of the highest in demand across all industries. The top interpersonal skills that matter most in today’s modern workplace include:
- Management
- Communication
- Leadership
- Teamwork
Ultimately, L&D leaders are doing more than just preparing employees for changes in the business landscape — they are training employees to become the leaders of tomorrow.
As such, it is of the utmost importance to build a sense of both curiosity and confidence within a business team. Employees should feel empowered to pursue professional growth, as well as enabled to do so through the provision of adaptive and personalized learning experiences.
Unify all of your learning tools with PlusPlus
L&D leaders are the agents of change within any organization.
To best enhance a business and foster growth, L&D leaders must create learning programs that drive innovation and champion the importance of a culture of continuous improvement.
The PlusPlus Unified Learning Platform provides L&D leaders with everything they need to succeed at organizations across all industries. From centralizing your knowledge-sharing to providing self-paced, flexible learning content for your team, PlusPlus ensures you have the support and resources necessary to align L&D goals with broader business objectives.
Learn more about PlusPlus today and book a demo to find out how we help L&D leaders achieve their goals.
