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I originally published this article on IntelligentHQ.
Studies show that business leaders’ satisfaction on corporate learning is as low as 20%, which in a global industry worth $200 billion, is low. Shlomo Ben-Hur & Nik Kinley outlined five changes to make corporate learning work. Globally, figures suggest over $200 billion is spent on corporate learning each year and it seems that the general feeling is that over $100 billion of that may well be wasted.
$100 billion, people. That’s a whopping figure that definately should be optimized. The five changes for successful corporate learning as provided by the European Business Review are:
Focus on behaviour change, not learning
The first priority is a big, hairy, fundamental one and focuses on the overarching question of ‘What is corporate learning?’ This may sound dull and theoretical, but it has massive practical implications. For the most part, at present people tend to talk and think about corporate learning in the same terms as they talk about traditional, academic learning. It is assumed to be about the accumulation of knowledge or the acquisition of skills.
Focus on functional alignment
The second priority focus is on how corporate learning teams are set up to deliver. Much of the thinking about corporate learning during the past decade has been about how it needs to be strategically aligned with a company’s business objectives. And this is undoubtedly important and critical to the success of corporate learning. But in order to translate such strategic alignment into operational results, learning functions also need to focus on how their internal systems, processes and people are functionally aligned both with their objectives and with one another.
Step in and out of the business
The third priority is to optimise the relationship between learning teams and their customers in the business.
Apply market forces
Corporate learning is effectively a market with competing products and services, and if we want quality, efficacy and efficiency to prevail, we need to apply market forces.
Share accountability for learning
Research into corporate learning has persistently thrown up a critical, but often unrecognised finding: namely, that contextual factors such as the workplace environment are actually more important in ensuring the application of learning than the quality of the learning event. This is pretty staggering when you think about it.
The sixth I will add is:
Anchoring
It does fit with the first point on the focus on behavioral change, but the anchoring is key to make sure behavioral change is embedded, is adopted and doesn’t fade away after a couple of days or weeks.
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If corporate learning is not embedded, does not sustainably drive real change, you keep on training and coaching without achieving sustainable success. Are you surprised about the $100 million waste? How do you experience corporate learning?
