March 3, 2024 • 19 mins
In this enlightening episode of the Connect Podcast brought to you by Talent Talks and Life Online, our Editor-in-Chief, Kerryn Kohl, engages in an insightful discussion with Linda van der Loo, an executive partner for learning innovation at Blue Pebble Consulting and EdCast Africa. The podcast delves into the evolving domain of learning and development, stressing the critical importance of being abreast of the latest advancements in the field. Linda contributes her unique insights from the Learning Health Index and ponders over the shift toward hybrid learning environments within organizations.
The narrative delves into the necessity of making learning content relevant to learners' needs. It offers advice on how Learning and Development professionals can tweak their strategies to cater to these requirements, particularly in the context of upskilling, reskilling, and multi-skilling. The conversation also covers the significant role of technology in facilitating learning and development and debates organizations' need to rethink learning and development as immersive experiences rather than simple digital content dissemination.
The podcast covers critical challenges in retaining engagement rates for learning platforms and emphasizes disciplined learning practices for consistent learner development. It also underscores the paramount role of learning and development functions in guiding employees through shifts in digital transformations.
A significant focus is given to the need for adapting learning and development strategies in the wake of the hybrid world. The episode wraps up by stressing the importance of data utilization for informed decision-making and improvements in strategies in the learning and development segment.
Further segments of discussion involve the marvels of real-time analytics in learning and development, and the evolution of learning models complemented by the role of data in deciding effective approaches. The conversation also scrambles around the increasing popularity of hybrid learning, the relevance of learning materials, and methods of gauging effect beyond mere engagement metrics. The podcast concludes on a thought-provoking note, questioning the recognition and importance of learning within organizations and preserving it in the era of Learning and Development evolution.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This Connect podcast series is brought to you by Talent Talks and Life Online.
Welcome, I'm Karen Cole, Editor-in-Chief of Talent Talks and Life Online. line.
Music.
(00:27):
Welcome everyone. In today's hybrid world of work, learning and development
is more important than ever.
Linda van der Loo, an executive partner for learning innovation at Blue Pebble
Consulting and EdCast Africa, and I are going to be discussing what learning
and development practitioners need to know to stay ahead of the curve.
Tune in and get all the information you need to stay on top of your game. So welcome, Linda.
(00:52):
Hello, Kerryn. How are you? Thank you for having me on the show.
Great to have you speaking with us again.
Now, Linda, we've recorded with you before specifically focused on the Learning
Health Index, but for those listeners tuning in for the first time,
give us a little bit of insight about your work specifically in in learning and development,
and then also some of the key findings from the Learning Health Index.
(01:13):
I've been in learning all my life. I started as a teacher, and my last stint
was head of learning at a large financial organization in Africa.
I'm passionate about learning. I'm passionate about people development,
but at the same time, I'm particularly interested in how we enable learning through technology.
With partnering with EdCast, they delivered this research report in India,
(01:33):
and we thought this would be something really good to do in Africa.
And it's actually played out quite nicely. We've got a lot of insights.
We had 56 clients across Africa and Mauritius responding, essentially really
looking at the health of learning in organizations with a benchmark that against themselves.
It's got eight components to the report. There were two key components.
(01:53):
One was learning and development competence and how they rated themselves.
And the other was how they believe the tools and technology in their organization
were in and A, being their learning.
And both of those didn't exactly come out shining stars in the research,
the big gaps in tools and technology, which is obvious given we went into lockdown with COVID, et cetera.
(02:16):
And then L&D competence really...
If you ask people if they think they're future-focused or future-oriented from
an L&D perspective, a lot of them are saying, no, they're not,
but they also didn't know what that was.
Essentially, the report was insightful, and a lot of the work that I'm doing
at the moment is looking at this report with clients and seeing where their
(02:36):
focus areas are based on their strategy,
to really get learning and development, what I would say, humming and singing
in their organization and making an impact.
So that's pretty much in a nutshell what we've been doing for the last two and
a half years since lockdown and thoroughly enjoying it.
Fantastic. And tell me, so that was the Learning Health Index was done during the pandemic.
(03:00):
Now that we've emerged and we see that businesses is not going back to business
as usual, that we are stepping into this hybrid organization, how has that shifted?
What is the role that L&D will play in this hybrid organization?
What are some of the skills or functions that we will continue to play as L&D practitioners?
(03:21):
Yes, it was done. It was done early stage of COVID in India,
but in South Africa, we did it deep into lockdown.
The timing, I think the timing is right to look at where the potential shifts
were because what we didn't know at the time was that we're never going to go
back to work like we say never, but I'm sure not certainly in our lifetime.
(03:41):
Go back to work as we knew it before the COVID lockdown.
Essentially, some of the challenges, My sense is that still grappling with classroom,
online, digital, the classic blend that we used to do a long time ago.
But I also get a sense that during the pandemic, as L&D practitioners,
we threw a lot of digital content at our learners in the hope that they would
(04:05):
go through it and learn and become relevant and reskill themselves.
And my sense is coming out of the pandemic.
Again, I need to move away from just being digital, obviously,
but more importantly, making sure that we're giving people an experience.
So connecting with the individual, connecting them with mentors,
(04:25):
with coaches, with teachers, a more immersive kind of experience in our learning.
And in the hybrid world, when they are back in the office, that experience cannot
be staring at a computer or staring at a death by PowerPoint presentation in a classroom.
It's certainly going to have to be a lot more engaging, a lot more socially
connected to the individual in order to really encourage them to learn.
(04:49):
I hope that kind of answers the question because it's quite a broad question and interesting.
There are lots of answers and there are lots of organizations doing things very differently.
I think there is a challenge, and you're right. I don't think we have that clear
answer yet, but we're certainly in that experimental phase.
And if I look at some of the research and the rates, so we know there is a definite
kind of want to learn from individuals because we see that in the uptake rates
(05:14):
of people jumping onto various learning platforms.
And these are not only ones within organizations, but if you look at the rise
of them, we have a very high take-on rate.
The problem is that we have an even higher drop-off rate.
So somewhere in between, people are keen, they're wanting to get involved,
they're wanting to start, but we just don't seem to have developed that muscle
(05:37):
yet to maintain over a long period of time.
And I think that's what we're needing to figure out is it's a little bit dangerous
given where we are and this push to self-directed learning and this need for
people to step up and really develop themselves that we just are not seeing those retention rates.
So something is going on. And obviously, we know it's time is a big factor.
(06:00):
So we're all enthusiastic in the beginning, but life happens in between.
And perhaps we just haven't developed that discipline
muscle yet as adult learners to sit
through the tough part we've got so much else competing for our attention all
the time that we need to be very deliberate around learning as a practice learning
as an everyday practice or learning in the flow of work practice making sure
(06:24):
that we're learning and not just taking in information if that makes sense.
It makes perfect sense. In the world where I'm consulting, and I consult across
quite a wide range of sectors, so financial services, telco, and then in retail.
And there's some common themes that come out all the time that I talk to the
L&D folks about. The first one is relevancy.
(06:45):
And relevancy is, please give people content that's relevant to their world
of work now or relevant to their world of work in six months' time.
And make sure that you're clear on what that learner needs to talk about.
Walk two days in the shoes of your learner. The other thing that we're starting
to see certainly here, Kieran, is this concept of reskilling,
(07:09):
upskilling, and multiskilling.
There's lots of variations to it.
But the reality is it's connected by relevancy.
So through the digital process, through digital transformation.
Lots of roles are shifting and changing.
And L&D's duty is to provide in what I call a GPS or like a Waze mechanism to
(07:29):
guide people through that relevancy journey,
either to reskill themselves, to upskill themselves or to multi-skill themselves.
And that I think is the place that learning, if I look at the research that
we did and we look at the real, one of the big downfalls that L&D said is they're
not sure they're future orientated.
My sense is if you're providing relevant content or you're providing relevancy
(07:51):
to your learners or your employees, if you're providing a GPS that gives them
the re-skidding, the up-skidding, and the multi-skidding, and at the end of
it they get some kind of certification,
be it a big certification, be it a micro-certification, that really enables
them to continue working, you're doing your job as L&D.
And that doesn't mean I've got to think about the hybrid world.
(08:12):
It means I've got to think about the learner.
And the environment might be hybrid. And when you're in the hybrid space,
you do things differently.
And I think that's where the real tipping point is going to be if the L&D folks
can honestly orientate them into that space.
And we've seen that with some clients. I've got a client that has got,
on a daily basis, 8,500 people coming back onto their platform to learn.
(08:36):
And it's material as a number because it's significantly more than what it was
three years ago. Yeah, I hope I'm answering your question.
But at the same time, I hope I'm giving people some advice on where I think
they can start and certainly what I think they can start doing and what they
can continue doing in order to shift into the hybrid world and the hybrid organization,
but also in order to make L&D folks more relevant.
(08:58):
Absolutely. And just as you're speaking, I think from an L&D perspective,
we should not confuse the need for immediacy and relevancy with the need to micro-size learning.
Because I see that playing out quite often in organizations.
And I understand the concept of chunking and trying to bite-size learning components
(09:18):
for people to be able to consume in short periods of time.
But I think we've jumped too far onto that bandwagon. And it really is compromising
the quality of learning that we're putting out into organizations.
The other thing that came out of this research was the value of data.
And again, what are people doing with data? and one of the key things was real-time analytics.
(09:41):
And a lot of organizations in that study said they didn't have real-time analytics.
And again, we're working with Ed Koskos to provide real-time analytics because
if you can see what's happening in your world of learning on a daily basis at
the push of a button, that is really hot off the press.
(10:01):
You're able to make those shifts,
a little bit quicker. And to your point around the micro learning and the cluster
learning and bundled learning, whatever you want to do, the data is going to
tell you the kind of learning you should be putting out to your organization.
When I say the kind of learning, the model of learning you should be putting
out to the organization, that's essentially going to allow you to stay on top
(10:23):
of what the learning needs are.
But at least people have data, at least you have data and insights.
Gone are the days where, I don't know about you, But we used to spend six weeks
putting together an Excel spreadsheet to present to some ex-co.
And honestly, when they saw the data, it was six weeks old, if we were lucky.
So a lot of it is around data and analytics. And again, to go back to the L&D
space, there's a lot of work that I'm doing.
(10:45):
In fact, in some of the telco areas is, what's the story the data is telling
you? Because it's telling you a story.
How are you reacting to that story? How are you responding to that story?
Absolutely. How do you make decisions? And that is a key skill that hasn't been
necessary or needed by L&D practitioners before because we always had this retrospective view.
We didn't need to. We could tell a look back story from that.
(11:08):
And usually it was to justify that people were, we were measuring bums on seats,
which is not really learning.
So it is about evolving and really upping our own game as practitioners in terms
of our ability to analyze data, to tell a story with that data,
but most importantly, make in the moment decisions based on that data.
Complete. One of my clients said to me, so he said, so I'm looking in the rear
(11:31):
view mirror and I'm looking through the windscreen.
I said, that's exactly the analogy to me. Absolutely.
And again, to go back to your point around hybrid, the data in hybrid was insane
in terms of some of the stuff we saw with clients.
Microlearning was being consumed, video was being consumed and the TikTok type
stuff was just being absorbed ad nauseum.
(11:53):
And the challenge to the L&D focuses? Was it relevant? Did the person learn something with it?
And in learning something, were they able to apply it to A, their job now,
B, their job in six months, and C, their career in 12 or 24?
Very different conversations.
Absolutely. It's not just the uptake we should be measuring.
And that's always, unfortunately, been an area that L&D has traditionally not
(12:16):
been that strong in, is that measurement of learning itself.
Is it actually affecting enough change within the organisation?
And if it's not, why are we investing so much time in these particular things?
So we've got to get better at measuring learning as learning,
not just tracking what activities are taking place in our environment.
(12:38):
No, absolutely. And one of the elements of the survey, the Learning Health Index,
was this concept of learning culture.
And learning culture and organisational culture in my mind are Siamese twins
attached at the hip. But we ask people to talk about the perceived value of learning.
So how is learning being perceived in your organization as a grudge purchase
(12:58):
or as something that is really enabling the business?
And interestingly enough, a lot of people say people in the world of COVID appreciated
learning, appreciated having access to digital libraries, having access to a
platform that would enable or push content to them.
But one of the big gaps in that learning culture piece was rewards and recognition.
(13:19):
And so to get back to some of the comments we were talking about earlier,
it's not all about the money.
If you're learning, it's not necessarily all about your career.
It's about what you're doing.
Someone is learning something that's doing something for them, if that makes sense.
And if you look at this great resignation and the great exploration and all
(13:39):
of that stuff that's trending at the moment in organizations.
I think that we're going to need to rethink think
as L&D in a strong partnership with
the rewards department and organizations how are
we rewarding people differently for the
learning that they the effort they're putting into learning things like
you talked about balance and flexibility things like
(14:01):
access to mentors and coaches things like
access to subject matter experts that kind of stuff for me is going to to be
seen as as much more of a reward than possibly an extra 500 grand on the salary
and it's a shift it's a partnership shift that that L&D needs to really look
at in terms of partnering in the organization to really make learning stick.
(14:24):
Big shifts having said what you've just said from an organizational perspective
are organizations recognizing the importance of learning and I think there's
often two conversations that are here and obviously Obviously,
from our perspective or learning's perspective,
we see how important this is.
But I think sometimes I get the feeling or sometimes I hear a lot of comments around organizations.
(14:45):
We can literally outsource this. Why are we bringing this in-house? Why is this necessary?
Do organizations or does the C-suite, do we have a seat at the table?
Should we have a seat at the table?
I think there's a few sort of very short, sharp responses to that.
I do believe learning has a seat at the table, often through the HR door.
I absolutely, there's no doubt in my mind that anyone in a senior position or
(15:10):
an executive position in an organization recognizes that people's ability to
learn and learn new skills at the speed of business is critical.
The big question here is, do you need an L&D partner in the mix?
And I think the risk is potentially that unless the NAD folks move away from
(15:32):
being the typical order takers to the consultants,
to the change agent or the change maestro, to someone that's future focused
that can see what's coming downstream and order,
engage with business in a way that they're building skills that are future focused.
I think that seat at the table is going to diminish. And so,
yeah, are organizations recognizing
(15:52):
that learning and skills are key to their survival? Absolutely.
Do they sometimes think they need L&D?
Possibly questionable. And it's really how L&D shows up. Do we show up as consultants?
Do we show up as role models? Are we learning ourselves?
Can we show up and show our own data around where we're learning?
(16:13):
And then the skills and capability that we have.
So short answer to your question, yeah, skills are key and any organization will know that.
And I'm working with an organization that have recognized the lack of skills
as a massive risk to their growth. I'm not sure that they're knocking on the
L&D door to say, how do we solve this?
They're knocking on the business doors. They're knocking on the vendor doors.
Absolutely. And that is key as L&D. We need to reinvent ourselves today. We are in the know.
(16:37):
This is our game. This is how we do this. And I think in our next recording,
we'll really look at the skills crisis within L&D itself and what those core
skills are needed by L&D practitioners as we emerge into this new post-COVID
hybrid world that we're in.
And it is essentially up to us. We have to go through a rebrand.
(16:58):
Completely. And a lot of the work that I'm doing as well, Kieran,
at the moment is about repurpose.
I'm working with a client at the moment that's reimagining how learning shows
up, what learning does, how learning is delivered in the organization.
Lots of focus on rebranding. So rebrand your L&D team in a way that people phone
you and ask you to come and help them solve their learning problems, firstly.
(17:20):
And part of that rebranding, and maybe this is a place to close off,
is we L&D sit often in the background doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
And I don't think we showcase enough. I don't think there's enough case studies.
I don't think there's enough showcase.
I don't think we showcase enough the impact that learning and development is
making in an organization. And that's maybe because it's the nature of the individuals,
(17:42):
but we need to, in my mind, learning needs to put on a serious marketing hat
and go out there and sell their services.
Go out there and sell their services. And essentially, from my perspective,
I think learning is core.
I think if we get it right, we could be the powerhouse of organizations.
And essentially, that is what we should be. We should have a strategic view on this.
We should know what is happening out there in the environment.
(18:04):
And bring it back, translate it, understand the learning needs and start getting
people ready for these massive change curves that we're on.
And I'm really hoping that in our next session when we discuss this,
we can really start looking at more practical ways of how L&D can start practicing
this every day just by what are those core skills that we're needing to develop
and how do we get out there and actually start leading this charge.
(18:25):
Linda, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our time together.
Any closing comments before we finish off our discussion for the day?
No, Karen, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the next session.
I've got lots of stories I can tell, good and bad, around capabilities.
So looking forward to it. Looking forward to hearing them.
Music.
This Connect podcast series is brought to you by Talent Talks and Life Online.
Welcome, I'm Karen Cole, Editor-in-Chief of Talent Talks and Life Online. line.
Music.
(00:27):
Welcome everyone. In today's hybrid world of work, learning and development
is more important than ever.
Linda van der Loo, an executive partner for learning innovation at Blue Pebble
Consulting and EdCast Africa, and I are going to be discussing what learning
and development practitioners need to know to stay ahead of the curve.
Tune in and get all the information you need to stay on top of your game. So welcome, Linda.
(00:52):
Hello, Kerryn. How are you? Thank you for having me on the show.
Great to have you speaking with us again.
Now, Linda, we've recorded with you before specifically focused on the Learning
Health Index, but for those listeners tuning in for the first time,
give us a little bit of insight about your work specifically in in learning and development,
and then also some of the key findings from the Learning Health Index.
(01:13):
I've been in learning all my life. I started as a teacher, and my last stint
was head of learning at a large financial organization in Africa.
I'm passionate about learning. I'm passionate about people development,
but at the same time, I'm particularly interested in how we enable learning through technology.
With partnering with EdCast, they delivered this research report in India,
(01:33):
and we thought this would be something really good to do in Africa.
And it's actually played out quite nicely. We've got a lot of insights.
We had 56 clients across Africa and Mauritius responding, essentially really
looking at the health of learning in organizations with a benchmark that against themselves.
It's got eight components to the report. There were two key components.
(01:53):
One was learning and development competence and how they rated themselves.
And the other was how they believe the tools and technology in their organization
were in and A, being their learning.
And both of those didn't exactly come out shining stars in the research,
the big gaps in tools and technology, which is obvious given we went into lockdown with COVID, et cetera.
(02:16):
And then L&D competence really...
If you ask people if they think they're future-focused or future-oriented from
an L&D perspective, a lot of them are saying, no, they're not,
but they also didn't know what that was.
Essentially, the report was insightful, and a lot of the work that I'm doing
at the moment is looking at this report with clients and seeing where their
(02:36):
focus areas are based on their strategy,
to really get learning and development, what I would say, humming and singing
in their organization and making an impact.
So that's pretty much in a nutshell what we've been doing for the last two and
a half years since lockdown and thoroughly enjoying it.
Fantastic. And tell me, so that was the Learning Health Index was done during the pandemic.
(03:00):
Now that we've emerged and we see that businesses is not going back to business
as usual, that we are stepping into this hybrid organization, how has that shifted?
What is the role that L&D will play in this hybrid organization?
What are some of the skills or functions that we will continue to play as L&D practitioners?
(03:21):
Yes, it was done. It was done early stage of COVID in India,
but in South Africa, we did it deep into lockdown.
The timing, I think the timing is right to look at where the potential shifts
were because what we didn't know at the time was that we're never going to go
back to work like we say never, but I'm sure not certainly in our lifetime.
(03:41):
Go back to work as we knew it before the COVID lockdown.
Essentially, some of the challenges, My sense is that still grappling with classroom,
online, digital, the classic blend that we used to do a long time ago.
But I also get a sense that during the pandemic, as L&D practitioners,
we threw a lot of digital content at our learners in the hope that they would
(04:05):
go through it and learn and become relevant and reskill themselves.
And my sense is coming out of the pandemic.
Again, I need to move away from just being digital, obviously,
but more importantly, making sure that we're giving people an experience.
So connecting with the individual, connecting them with mentors,
(04:25):
with coaches, with teachers, a more immersive kind of experience in our learning.
And in the hybrid world, when they are back in the office, that experience cannot
be staring at a computer or staring at a death by PowerPoint presentation in a classroom.
It's certainly going to have to be a lot more engaging, a lot more socially
connected to the individual in order to really encourage them to learn.
(04:49):
I hope that kind of answers the question because it's quite a broad question and interesting.
There are lots of answers and there are lots of organizations doing things very differently.
I think there is a challenge, and you're right. I don't think we have that clear
answer yet, but we're certainly in that experimental phase.
And if I look at some of the research and the rates, so we know there is a definite
kind of want to learn from individuals because we see that in the uptake rates
(05:14):
of people jumping onto various learning platforms.
And these are not only ones within organizations, but if you look at the rise
of them, we have a very high take-on rate.
The problem is that we have an even higher drop-off rate.
So somewhere in between, people are keen, they're wanting to get involved,
they're wanting to start, but we just don't seem to have developed that muscle
(05:37):
yet to maintain over a long period of time.
And I think that's what we're needing to figure out is it's a little bit dangerous
given where we are and this push to self-directed learning and this need for
people to step up and really develop themselves that we just are not seeing those retention rates.
So something is going on. And obviously, we know it's time is a big factor.
(06:00):
So we're all enthusiastic in the beginning, but life happens in between.
And perhaps we just haven't developed that discipline
muscle yet as adult learners to sit
through the tough part we've got so much else competing for our attention all
the time that we need to be very deliberate around learning as a practice learning
as an everyday practice or learning in the flow of work practice making sure
(06:24):
that we're learning and not just taking in information if that makes sense.
It makes perfect sense. In the world where I'm consulting, and I consult across
quite a wide range of sectors, so financial services, telco, and then in retail.
And there's some common themes that come out all the time that I talk to the
L&D folks about. The first one is relevancy.
(06:45):
And relevancy is, please give people content that's relevant to their world
of work now or relevant to their world of work in six months' time.
And make sure that you're clear on what that learner needs to talk about.
Walk two days in the shoes of your learner. The other thing that we're starting
to see certainly here, Kieran, is this concept of reskilling,
(07:09):
upskilling, and multiskilling.
There's lots of variations to it.
But the reality is it's connected by relevancy.
So through the digital process, through digital transformation.
Lots of roles are shifting and changing.
And L&D's duty is to provide in what I call a GPS or like a Waze mechanism to
(07:29):
guide people through that relevancy journey,
either to reskill themselves, to upskill themselves or to multi-skill themselves.
And that I think is the place that learning, if I look at the research that
we did and we look at the real, one of the big downfalls that L&D said is they're
not sure they're future orientated.
My sense is if you're providing relevant content or you're providing relevancy
(07:51):
to your learners or your employees, if you're providing a GPS that gives them
the re-skidding, the up-skidding, and the multi-skidding, and at the end of
it they get some kind of certification,
be it a big certification, be it a micro-certification, that really enables
them to continue working, you're doing your job as L&D.
And that doesn't mean I've got to think about the hybrid world.
(08:12):
It means I've got to think about the learner.
And the environment might be hybrid. And when you're in the hybrid space,
you do things differently.
And I think that's where the real tipping point is going to be if the L&D folks
can honestly orientate them into that space.
And we've seen that with some clients. I've got a client that has got,
on a daily basis, 8,500 people coming back onto their platform to learn.
(08:36):
And it's material as a number because it's significantly more than what it was
three years ago. Yeah, I hope I'm answering your question.
But at the same time, I hope I'm giving people some advice on where I think
they can start and certainly what I think they can start doing and what they
can continue doing in order to shift into the hybrid world and the hybrid organization,
but also in order to make L&D folks more relevant.
(08:58):
Absolutely. And just as you're speaking, I think from an L&D perspective,
we should not confuse the need for immediacy and relevancy with the need to micro-size learning.
Because I see that playing out quite often in organizations.
And I understand the concept of chunking and trying to bite-size learning components
(09:18):
for people to be able to consume in short periods of time.
But I think we've jumped too far onto that bandwagon. And it really is compromising
the quality of learning that we're putting out into organizations.
The other thing that came out of this research was the value of data.
And again, what are people doing with data? and one of the key things was real-time analytics.
(09:41):
And a lot of organizations in that study said they didn't have real-time analytics.
And again, we're working with Ed Koskos to provide real-time analytics because
if you can see what's happening in your world of learning on a daily basis at
the push of a button, that is really hot off the press.
(10:01):
You're able to make those shifts,
a little bit quicker. And to your point around the micro learning and the cluster
learning and bundled learning, whatever you want to do, the data is going to
tell you the kind of learning you should be putting out to your organization.
When I say the kind of learning, the model of learning you should be putting
out to the organization, that's essentially going to allow you to stay on top
(10:23):
of what the learning needs are.
But at least people have data, at least you have data and insights.
Gone are the days where, I don't know about you, But we used to spend six weeks
putting together an Excel spreadsheet to present to some ex-co.
And honestly, when they saw the data, it was six weeks old, if we were lucky.
So a lot of it is around data and analytics. And again, to go back to the L&D
space, there's a lot of work that I'm doing.
(10:45):
In fact, in some of the telco areas is, what's the story the data is telling
you? Because it's telling you a story.
How are you reacting to that story? How are you responding to that story?
Absolutely. How do you make decisions? And that is a key skill that hasn't been
necessary or needed by L&D practitioners before because we always had this retrospective view.
We didn't need to. We could tell a look back story from that.
(11:08):
And usually it was to justify that people were, we were measuring bums on seats,
which is not really learning.
So it is about evolving and really upping our own game as practitioners in terms
of our ability to analyze data, to tell a story with that data,
but most importantly, make in the moment decisions based on that data.
Complete. One of my clients said to me, so he said, so I'm looking in the rear
(11:31):
view mirror and I'm looking through the windscreen.
I said, that's exactly the analogy to me. Absolutely.
And again, to go back to your point around hybrid, the data in hybrid was insane
in terms of some of the stuff we saw with clients.
Microlearning was being consumed, video was being consumed and the TikTok type
stuff was just being absorbed ad nauseum.
(11:53):
And the challenge to the L&D focuses? Was it relevant? Did the person learn something with it?
And in learning something, were they able to apply it to A, their job now,
B, their job in six months, and C, their career in 12 or 24?
Very different conversations.
Absolutely. It's not just the uptake we should be measuring.
And that's always, unfortunately, been an area that L&D has traditionally not
(12:16):
been that strong in, is that measurement of learning itself.
Is it actually affecting enough change within the organisation?
And if it's not, why are we investing so much time in these particular things?
So we've got to get better at measuring learning as learning,
not just tracking what activities are taking place in our environment.
(12:38):
No, absolutely. And one of the elements of the survey, the Learning Health Index,
was this concept of learning culture.
And learning culture and organisational culture in my mind are Siamese twins
attached at the hip. But we ask people to talk about the perceived value of learning.
So how is learning being perceived in your organization as a grudge purchase
(12:58):
or as something that is really enabling the business?
And interestingly enough, a lot of people say people in the world of COVID appreciated
learning, appreciated having access to digital libraries, having access to a
platform that would enable or push content to them.
But one of the big gaps in that learning culture piece was rewards and recognition.
(13:19):
And so to get back to some of the comments we were talking about earlier,
it's not all about the money.
If you're learning, it's not necessarily all about your career.
It's about what you're doing.
Someone is learning something that's doing something for them, if that makes sense.
And if you look at this great resignation and the great exploration and all
(13:39):
of that stuff that's trending at the moment in organizations.
I think that we're going to need to rethink think
as L&D in a strong partnership with
the rewards department and organizations how are
we rewarding people differently for the
learning that they the effort they're putting into learning things like
you talked about balance and flexibility things like
(14:01):
access to mentors and coaches things like
access to subject matter experts that kind of stuff for me is going to to be
seen as as much more of a reward than possibly an extra 500 grand on the salary
and it's a shift it's a partnership shift that that L&D needs to really look
at in terms of partnering in the organization to really make learning stick.
(14:24):
Big shifts having said what you've just said from an organizational perspective
are organizations recognizing the importance of learning and I think there's
often two conversations that are here and obviously Obviously,
from our perspective or learning's perspective,
we see how important this is.
But I think sometimes I get the feeling or sometimes I hear a lot of comments around organizations.
(14:45):
We can literally outsource this. Why are we bringing this in-house? Why is this necessary?
Do organizations or does the C-suite, do we have a seat at the table?
Should we have a seat at the table?
I think there's a few sort of very short, sharp responses to that.
I do believe learning has a seat at the table, often through the HR door.
I absolutely, there's no doubt in my mind that anyone in a senior position or
(15:10):
an executive position in an organization recognizes that people's ability to
learn and learn new skills at the speed of business is critical.
The big question here is, do you need an L&D partner in the mix?
And I think the risk is potentially that unless the NAD folks move away from
(15:32):
being the typical order takers to the consultants,
to the change agent or the change maestro, to someone that's future focused
that can see what's coming downstream and order,
engage with business in a way that they're building skills that are future focused.
I think that seat at the table is going to diminish. And so,
yeah, are organizations recognizing
(15:52):
that learning and skills are key to their survival? Absolutely.
Do they sometimes think they need L&D?
Possibly questionable. And it's really how L&D shows up. Do we show up as consultants?
Do we show up as role models? Are we learning ourselves?
Can we show up and show our own data around where we're learning?
(16:13):
And then the skills and capability that we have.
So short answer to your question, yeah, skills are key and any organization will know that.
And I'm working with an organization that have recognized the lack of skills
as a massive risk to their growth. I'm not sure that they're knocking on the
L&D door to say, how do we solve this?
They're knocking on the business doors. They're knocking on the vendor doors.
Absolutely. And that is key as L&D. We need to reinvent ourselves today. We are in the know.
(16:37):
This is our game. This is how we do this. And I think in our next recording,
we'll really look at the skills crisis within L&D itself and what those core
skills are needed by L&D practitioners as we emerge into this new post-COVID
hybrid world that we're in.
And it is essentially up to us. We have to go through a rebrand.
(16:58):
Completely. And a lot of the work that I'm doing as well, Kieran,
at the moment is about repurpose.
I'm working with a client at the moment that's reimagining how learning shows
up, what learning does, how learning is delivered in the organization.
Lots of focus on rebranding. So rebrand your L&D team in a way that people phone
you and ask you to come and help them solve their learning problems, firstly.
(17:20):
And part of that rebranding, and maybe this is a place to close off,
is we L&D sit often in the background doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
And I don't think we showcase enough. I don't think there's enough case studies.
I don't think there's enough showcase.
I don't think we showcase enough the impact that learning and development is
making in an organization. And that's maybe because it's the nature of the individuals,
(17:42):
but we need to, in my mind, learning needs to put on a serious marketing hat
and go out there and sell their services.
Go out there and sell their services. And essentially, from my perspective,
I think learning is core.
I think if we get it right, we could be the powerhouse of organizations.
And essentially, that is what we should be. We should have a strategic view on this.
We should know what is happening out there in the environment.
(18:04):
And bring it back, translate it, understand the learning needs and start getting
people ready for these massive change curves that we're on.
And I'm really hoping that in our next session when we discuss this,
we can really start looking at more practical ways of how L&D can start practicing
this every day just by what are those core skills that we're needing to develop
and how do we get out there and actually start leading this charge.
(18:25):
Linda, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our time together.
Any closing comments before we finish off our discussion for the day?
No, Karen, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the next session.
I've got lots of stories I can tell, good and bad, around capabilities.
So looking forward to it. Looking forward to hearing them.
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