HR AND TRAINING professionals need to better understand the business issues in their organisations if their learning initiatives are to succeed, a leading expert has cautioned
HR AND TRAINING professionals need to better understand the business issues in their organisations if their learning initiatives are to succeed, a leading expert has cautioned.
Kevin Oakes, the California-based chair elect of the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), said one of the main reasons these programs fail is because HR is not able to communicate with executive managements in a clear and effective way.
“Learning professionals need to synthesise the benefits of learning, whether it’s technology-led or not, and talk about them in terms of tangible business benefits to the organisation,”he said.
“These benefits should always focus on four core items: how learning will (1) increase revenue; (2) help reduce operating expenses; (3) improve customer satisfaction; and (4) how it will shorten time to market.”
Training professionals also become too insular and often don’t spend enough time talking with the various departments and stakeholders involved, particularly IT.
Oakes, who is also president of SumTotal, a major provider of technologies, processes and services for the business performance and learning technology industries says that in most organisations, the two departments that are furthest apart are IT and HR.
He pointed to cases where HR and training professionals have developed an outsourced training management solution only to find out IT has a policy which will restrict it, “such as not storing employee data outside their company’s firewall”, he said.
In Australia the stand-out example for getting this right was St George Bank, he said. “St George has an award-winning learning technology environment, and through it they’ve been able to show remarkable results in areas like compliance, and getting just-in-time information to their employees – all with incredible cost savings along the way.”
Oakes claimed the bank’s attention to the learning component was a major factor in its recent award wins, including “Best Bank” for 2005 at the annual Money magazine Best of the Best awards.
“In New Zealand, I’ve seen two companies – the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Telecom New Zealand – do progressive things with technology-enabled learning,”Oakes added.
“ACC is using learning technology to improve customer service, and Telecom New Zealand is using it to improve sales readiness – or to shorten the time it takes to have its sales team ready to sell new products and services.”
Oakes also warned against choosing learning solutions based on the perceived product features alone. Not placing enough weight on the viability of the vendor was a potential pitfall, especially in risk management terms.
“Business executives understand the importance of vendor security, but I find that people who are new to buying technology, and many in HR, often do not,” he said. “And I’ve found the number one reason that a technology selection will fail is for the vendor itself to fall short in supporting the product. This could happen because the company gets into financial trouble, or the technology that you like is not their main focus.
