The basics of creating an L&D strategy — Lesson 1

Getting started

3. Brainstorm templates	4. Download the session guide
Download our powerfully designed step by step guides to gest started with your brainstorming sessions.	In order to better follow this video, please download this presentation and have a read through.
Download Activity A - Stakeholder map Download Activity B - Learning Audit	Download session guide

1.

The groundwork

Get quick tips in this bite-sized tutorial video to help you and your team be successful in our video course.

2.

Become an L&D strategy expert

Now it's time for the real thing: move on to this video to learn about best practices and listen to expert advice from our HR leaders.

3.

Brainstorm templates

Download your stakeholder map template #1

The first step to creating your L&D strategy is to do a stakeholder map to create your power team.

Activity A - Stakeholder map to create your power team

To prepare yourself and your team for both the informational and influencing interviews with your power team in the next lesson, we need to do some ground work.

First, you’ll need to find out who needs to be in the power team. Download our step-by step guide to help you with creating the stakeholder map. Depending on the size of your organisation and how familiar you are with it, this exercise will take you anywhere from 15 mins to 2 hours.

At this stage, there will be a lot of questions that you can’t answer as your create the map. This is perfectly normal! How can we know everything?! When you run into a question or an information gap, be encouraged to ask around your organisation to find the answers that you need.

Download your learning audit template #2

The second step to creating your L&D strategy is do a simple audit of all the current L&D activities that exists in the organisation.

Activity B - Doing a Learning Audit

Next, you’ll need to conduct an audit of all the current L&D activities that exist in your organisation. The good news is that this process and the stakeholder mapping often assist each other.

As you are seeking out who has run development activities before, you are also finding out who are your potential design buddies are, who will endorse and provide resources for learning activities and who should you turn to when trying to seek support and advocacy.

Download your brainstorming templates here

Activity A Stakeholder map to create your power team	Activity B Do an audit of current activities conducted including dept, type, frequency, cost
Download the guide here!	Download the audit here!

4.

Download the session guide

In order to better follow Alison in this video, please download this presentation here and have a read through when you have a moment.

When you are done with these activities, see you in lesson 2!

Learn from the best — Our L&D experts

Eveli Marconatto	Aki Friedrich	Anamaria Dorgo	Nina Haber	Lavinia Mehedintu
L&D Manager Netflix	People Development & Learning Partner Taxfix	Retail Learning & Development Manager Ace and Tate	Director People & Culture Nortal	People Experience Manager eMAG

Need some convincing to design an L&D strategy?

So, what happens if we develop our people? This one is a little bit of no-brainer - they will develop in their capabilities. The key here though is not that employees grow, but that they will develop capabilities that are essential for the organisation to thrive in the future.

Take “data skills” for example. Look at any organisations strategy and you will see digitalisation in focus. It’s tempting to think of hiring to close this gap, however there is a digital skills shortage in the marketplace. An L&D strategy can include a roadmap to systematically upskill all employees in data skills. This way in a year or two, everyone from branding and communications to HR and even sales would be able to analyse data and make informed recommendations to improve work.

Here is where we see the limitations of personalised feedback and individually driven development plans. Whilst they help an employee make incremental improvements, they often fail to align with and prepare for future business capability needs. Whilst L&D strategy in the past focused more on increasing productivity, learning is now increasingly relevant in attraction and retention of talent.

Let's have a look at the statistics if you still need convicing to implemet a successful Learning and Development strategy to set your company up for sucess:

• According to LinkedIn, 94% of employees will stay longer in an organisation if they have opportunities to learn. Furthermore, employees in today’s increasingly complex world understand what skills they need to survive.
• A study from PWC about Millennials at work found that the most important pull factor for employees is to have “opportunities for career progression”.
• Training employees also helps make employees more productive. Companies that spend at least $1,500 per employee annually report earning 24% more profit than those with smaller learning and development (L&D) budgets.
• A study by Capgemini found that 47% of employees would move to another employer that provides better digital skill development. Closely related to attraction and retention is motivation and engagement.
• According to research from Gallup, only 29% of millennials are engaged in their jobs. L&D can play a huge role in increasing engagement.
  

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Whilst there are other elements such as company growth that also impact that, L&D opportunities  can have a huge impact in supporting an individual's career progression.

These statistics show that L&D is no longer a nice to have. There are serious consequences on the attraction and retention of talent if employees don’t feel that they are learning what they need to thrive in their careers. A good L&D strategy can also impact your employer branding!

We’ve just learnt how much employees value learning opportunities. Investments in L&D can help to build your company’s reputation and allow you to get top tier talent. A study from LinkedIn found that a

• good employer brand results in a 50% cost per hire reduction,
• 50% more qualified applicants,
• reduces turnover by 28% and
• decreases the time to hire by 1-2x!

Those numbers are huge, aren't they? 

How to incorporate Diversity & Inclusion into your L&D Strategy?

Diversity and Inclusion plays a big part of any Learning & Development strategy. As a bonus to our “How to create an L&D strategy from scratch” series, Dr. Aditi Raghuram, organisational psychologist, workplace well-being & DEI advisor and coach helps us figure out how to incorporate D&I into any Learning & Development strategy.

Dr. Aditi Raghuram is an expert in Diversity & Inclusion. She is the co-founder of the women’s inclusion network committee at the society of industrial organisational psychologists and has advised several startup and scale up organisations such as SumUp.

In this video she shares with us:

• How to build D&I into any L&D Strategy.
• The best approach to include Diversity & Inclusion into their organisations for the first time.
• Important aspects to consider when creating a resource plan for the learning journey

Who developed the course?

Alison JY Lee

As a leadership coach and organisational psychologist, Alison is on a mission to create meaningful, vulnerable and courage-filled workplaces. She is a long-term partner of Kenjo and works closely with our team to help people thrive, and companies truly succeed.

Kenjo is here to support HR teams to become a strategic partner within their company, helping people to reach their potential, and the company to truly thrive.

Sources

• Nick van Dam, 25 Best Practices in Learning & Talent Development, second edition, Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2008
• Fujitsu study
• Capgemini study
• Gallup research
• PWC survey
• Linkedin Employer Brand Stats
• McKinsey’s Learning Academy’s model 
• Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)

What’s coming next?

In lesson 2, we'll cover the need to be aligned fully with business strategy and assess capability gaps. L&D must take a critical look into employee capabilities to determine which are most essential for supporting the execution of the company’s business strategy. A systematic approach to capability assessment will provide information for the prioritisation of and choosing of appropriate L&D interventions.

Would you like to learn more about learning and development from Alison? With Kenjo’s free Performance Management eBook, you'll learn how to design a performance management system that actually improves the performance of your employees. 

To learn more about Kenjo’s solution to increase employee satisfaction, click here.