We’re certain that you commit much time and effort to set your organization’s business objectives, because you recognize how important they are to realize the company’s long-term vision. But have you paid attention to the synergy between your company’s business and learning objectives? How, you may ask, are the two connected? To put it simply — smart employee learning and development (L&D) objectives lead to improvements in employee performance, which in turn leads to improvements in overall business performance. We don’t really need to spell out what that means for your company, but if we do, it means you steadily get closer to achieving your business objectives.
Setting Strategic L&D Goals
You already have well defined strategic business goals and a clear understanding of the end result you expect within a certain period of time. Your L&D goals need to stem from these well defined strategic business goals. Let’s break it down further. What is the purpose of your employees successfully learning new skills and deepening their knowledge through training initiatives, if these don’t directly contribute to their productivity?
Sure, your employees may be happier and feel wiser, but the question that you should be asking yourself is, are my employees in a better position to drive my business forward?
The most effective L&D programs are not only about empowering employees and increasing engagement. They also need to successfully address the needs of the organization, so that the entire business moves towards achieving its goals.
The following steps can help you align your training goals with your organization’s business goals:
Outline your vision
What gets you excited about the future of your business? Is your goal to double your customer base? Is it to increase production output? Or do you want to venture into new markets? Whatever your business objectives are, ensure that you clearly define them in a strategic, measurable and timely manner.
Identify gaps
Your next step should be to conduct a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). This will help you understand how well your employees are equipped to achieve your business goals. For example, if you want to double production output using new machinery, do your employees have the skills and knowledge to handle the upgrade? Furthermore, are they engaged with the organization? Do they even believe in your vision for the future? Identifying the gaps in skills and knowledge will give you a clearer understanding of what your training and development goals need to be. This in turn will help you develop learning and development programs to target the problem areas.
Set strategic development objectives
Now that you have identified the gaps and understood what the focus areas need to be, set strategic L&D objectives for your business. They should lead your employees to equip themselves with the skills and knowledge they need to work towards realizing your business goals.
Communicate
It’s not sufficient that the management and HR team know what the organization’s business goals are and how the newly defined L&D goals will help achieve them. Your employees need to know this too. It is only if they understand the importance of completing their training, and how the new skills and knowledge they acquire can help the business move closer to realizing its vision that it will make sense to them.
Execute
Once you have clearly defined your business goals, identified training gaps, translated business goals into strategic L&D objectives and communicated these objectives to your employees, the next step is to deliver effective training programs.
Your training programs need to be engaging, targeted and easy to access in order to be of value. One of the most effective tools at your disposal is a comprehensive learning management platform (LMS). An LMS can help you tailor-make your L&D programs for different employee groups, make training content more interactive and interesting, make programs accessible at any time and across geographies.
It helps increase retention, as content can be presented in a variety of different ways. You can also include modern social tools such as leader boards, gamification, forums and rewards to keep employees engaged and interested.
If your organization is looking to deploy an effective LMS platform to improve the quality of its L&D programs, and to ultimately increase business performance, visit us at www.getlayup.com or email us at contact@getlayup.com and we will be happy to help.
