What Makes a Top Learning Organization

People Development Must Embrace A Top-Down Philosophy: Leaders Mangers, Managers to Teams

In some ways, learning is the most natural and familiar part of what any organization does. All of us come to the workplace with a vast array of leaning experiences behind us: formal classroom learning from various schools, lessons learned from mentors and coaches in sports and activities, and the informal education of interacting with our families and friends, learning by watching their actions and experiences.

So while learning is fundamental to who we are as human beings, it has often been isolated inside of our organizations. Not only has learning been traditionally siloed from the business, but it has been siloed from the rest of the “people” processes within HR and talent management.

Smart organizations, however, have been bucking this trend over the past several years. For top learning organizations, these walls have come down, and learning has become an undeniable force for moving businesses and organizations forward.

AN ENGINE FOR GROWTH

As new technologies, new attitudes and new insights into how individuals learn best have come to light, learning within organizations has had to embrace a multifaceted menu of formal, informal, social, technology-enabled and in-person learning options. At the same time, learning has become a priority as one of the ways that organizations will ensure success.

In Aberdeen’s October 2009 study on learning and development (L&D), the top challenge that organizations were looking to address was the need to support growth goals, cited by 73 percent of respondents. That same study found that Best-in-Class companies saw a 31 percent year-over-year improvement in employee performance and a 6 percent year-over-year improvement in revenue per full time equivalent — vs. 12 percent improvement and 2 percent decrease for all other companies, respectively. This research has shown that organizations that are doing the best job of facilitating knowledge capture and transfer, and tightly integrating learning efforts with key business drivers, are improving employee performance and engagement, customer satisfaction and financial performance.

So what are organizations actually doing to achieve this top learning performance?

Best-in-Class organizations have some distinct strategies in place to enable organizational success. These include the need to align development programs with business priorities (cited by 67 percent of Best-in-Class organizations and 74 percent of Industry Average and Laggards combined, also referred to as “all others”) and improving leadership skills among managers (cited by 64 percent of Best-in-Class and 56 percent of all others).

This study focused primarily on front line and mid-level managers, as the individuals in these roles are in a position to promote learning and drive performance throughout the organization. They are where the rubber hits to road for executing business strategy, engaging employees, and bringing learning to life.

And one of the key research findings was the importance of involving senior leaders with developing managers, and managers with developing their teams. This attitude of “paying it forward”when it comes to developing others was critical to achieving learning success. Leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk when it comes to promoting learning within the organization. Ensuring learning is aligned with business priorities and giving leaders the tools to be capable of improving performance and developing others is the key to learning performance.

SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

When it comes to the key skills that organizations are seeking to develop in both front-line and mid-level managers, it’s all about the skill to manage the performance and development of their teams.

The top three skill or knowledge areas for both groups focus on people development, giving and receiving feedback, and writing/conducting performance reviews (Fig. 1). In Aberdeen’s July 2009 report, “Engaging Employees to Retain Customers,” one of the most critical capabilities identified for improving employee
engagement was managers holding regular, informal feedback sessions with employees on progress toward goals. Providing this type of feedback, plus manager involvement in the performance and development of their team, have
strong ties to both engagement and employee performance, so it makes sense that these skills are a main area of focus for Best-in-Class organizations.

And when it comes to the modalities used to develop managers, it is interesting to note that despite the increasing number of technology-enabled learning modalities available to organizations today, the majority of Best-in-Class — and indeed all other organizations — still use personal, high-touch, and often one-on-one modalities to impart manager skills and knowledge (Fig. 2).

While these more “traditional” modalities are currently being used most frequently, the areas of planned adoption paint a story of exploration of emerging technology. Mobile learning tops the list, followed by online social networking and blended learning.

LEARNING ON THE MOVE

Learning, collaboration and knowledge transfer have long been areas impacted by emerging technologies. As the Internet grew in adoption, organizations looked to leverage it to share information, enhance learning, and connect people in new
ways. Similarly, with the rise of mobile technologies, using them to enhance connections to improve the flow of information and learning is a top priority. Specifically, mobile learning was cited by 32 percent of organizations as an area planned for front-line manager learning and 30 percent of organizations for midlevel manager learning.

What is interesting is the type of learning activities currently conducted via mobile devices. Data from Aberdeen’s June 2010 study “Mobile HCM: Workforce and Talent Management on the Move” showed in more detail the types of learning are currently conducted via mobile devices (Fig. 3).

Informal interactions to identify and connect with subject-matter experts, find information quickly, and collaborate on projects are the types of activities most commonly conducted. In addition, the use of short, content-based learning modules to address just-in-time learning needs or “how-to?” questions were cited by nearly half of users.

MEASURING SUCCESS

Measuring the impact of learning and development activities has always been a hurdle for many organizations, but an increasing number are linking L&D efforts to business metrics. All organizations are looking for new measuring sticks to communicate the value of learning and development efforts, and have, for the most part, moved beyond mere compliance metrics that look at the numbers of people who have attended learning programs.

When asked to identify the most important metrics (on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1=not important and 5=critically important) used to measure the impact of L&D efforts for front-line and midlevel managers, those cited among the top were very focused on business-related measures (Table 1).

The pressures that are putting a focus on front-line and mid-level manager development are primarily focused on business issues - the ability to deliver on business goals, execute strategy and enable growth. By focusing learning efforts on business priorities, organizations are achieving the kind of impressive results seen by Best-in-Class companies (Fig. 4).

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

Becoming a top learning organization can have a tremendous impact on the performance of your business, no matter what business that is. Whether a publicly traded corporate giant or a local government agency, aligning the efforts of individuals with the goals of the organization, improving the ability to capture and
transfer knowledge through the company, and developing the next generation of organizational leaders is always important. And as Aberdeen’s research has shown, doing so also drives revenue and customer loyalty. Clearly, moving the bar on learning can move the bar on every aspect of organizational performance.

The recommendations below are designed to help organizations make that leap:

>> Get executives involved in manager development. Front-line and mid-level managers are not only the lynch pins that keep the organization together and headed in the right directions to execute current strategy, but they are the richest available talent pool for future executive leadership. Executives need to focus on developing these key players if they expect them to stay with the organization and have a true understanding of what their executives need from them.
>> Gain a clearer understanding of existing knowledge gaps. Having a clear understanding of manager competency profiles is so important because it allows organizations to test for gaps. Failure to have a clear understanding of knowledge gaps on both an individual and an organizational level may mean that the entire organization is being painted with the same brush and may be receiving development it doesn’t need while missing out on gaining insights that could move both individuals and the organization forward. In addition, being able to understand individual readiness gaps will allow for more focused development that will move managers and the organization forward.
>> Integrate learning and performance. Organizations today are all about performance, and unless learning programs can demonstrate an impact on organizational performance, the value of such programs may be questioned. Organizations must know how learning is impacting the business, and measurement by a business performance yard stick should be the goal of learning organizations.
>> Explore emerging technology. Learning has changed, and so have the expectations of learners. While more traditional methodologies are still critical, forward-looking organizations are exploring new methodologies both to enhance learning performance and improve engagement with learning.

—Author: Mollie Lombardi is a research analyst in human capital management for The Aberdeen Group, Boston, Mass. She focuses on how organizations enable business success by unleashing the potential and productivity of their workforce. Her passion is helping business and human capital leaders understand how to fuse business and talent strategies and processes to achieve breakthrough performance for individuals and organizations. Contact her at mollie.lombardi@aberdeen.com.

 

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