The L&D Interview

Degreed recently hosted a roundtable event focusing on how L&D can create buy-in and drive business value.

Degreed’s Conor Gilligan reports on the key takeaways, along with the event’s modertors Rachel Wood, Learning and Development Business Partner at Sopra Steria and Arash Rezaei-Mazinani, Learning Solutions Manager at Aggreko.

Conor - Rachel and Arash, firstly thank you for taking the time to share your expertise and experiences with the L&D community and for facilitating the last L&D community event in Leeds.

Why do you think an L&D community is important and how does this help you in your everyday role?

Rachel – It’s really easy to fall into a rhythm when working in a business – particularly if standalone, this comes with its challenges, when needing to push and influence those with differing priorities, in different fields to your own. Building a community of learning people has enabled me to stay true to my passion for the industry and share that with the organisation I work for, it gives me space to keep up to date with creative and innovative ways that things can be done and continue learning myself from all the brilliant minds we have in our industry.

Arash - I think it’s great we work in a profession where people are so willing to share what they’re doing, their insights, and challenges. It can be incredibly helpful if you work in a small team or a standalone capacity to learn from the experiences of others in the profession. People are so open and willing to share what worked well for them or what they would have done differently and perhaps challenge your thinking. I’d say a lot of the work I do has been shaped in some way or another by the little bits of wisdom I’ve picked up from the people I’ve met over the years.

Conor - At the L&D community event, we discussed the importance of creating buy-in and driving business value. How do you position this in your organisations and what were some of the learnings from the event you’d like to share?

Rachel – Organisations are complex. I’ve worked across industries, in varying roles but what they all have in common is that ‘value’ looks different for everyone. Positioning and creating the momentum needed (or ‘buy-in’) really is about building strong relationships with people. And you do this by treating them as people and not as the money!

Arash - I think it’s about building relationships with people and most importantly, something I learned more recently, show don’t tell. As learning professionals we’re passionate about learning and will often bamboozle stakeholders with jargon which they don’t care for and often just muddies the water, it’s easier to show them the destination you’re trying to reach than explain what you’re trying to do from a learning perspective. From the event several things came up. Collaborating with HRBPs to facilitate and foster connections within the business, leveraging L&D ambassadors within the business to support your case, looking at data and seeing what’s had buy-in before, avoiding HR language and making sure you’re being commercial, and finally making sure what you’re seeking to get buy-in for is relevant.

Conor - How important do you think involving key executive stakeholders in the process is and how do you go about this?

Rachel – Vital. The drivers of the vision, our leaders need to be able to lead from the front while creating an environment that allows autonomy and self-driven proactivity for initiatives. They can’t support what they don’t believe in themselves. Regular communication, sharing of stories, ‘ah-ha’ moments, and challenges/ lessons that we are learning and overcoming during the process keeps everything real. They will be beneficiaries of initiatives – either directly or indirectly as they will all be supporting the business objectives in some way so keeping stakeholders engaged is a (sometimes) lengthy but totally worthwhile pursuit.

Arash - Critical. To quote Nick Shackleton-Jones “people like the cake they bake”. It’s about making sure they’re brought in from the beginning and involving them in the process as much as possible. I’m sure we’ve all had instances where we’ve not done this, and they’ve parachuted in at the end undoing weeks of hard work.

Conor - When it comes to providing return on investment and / or showing the cost of doing nothing. How do you position this in your organisation?

Rachel – We like to see tangible results, but sometimes this can take some time. Keira (an event attendee) shared some great practice that she does with her programmes and that’s to breakdown results – and therefore return on investment – over 3 time periods. Short, Medium and Long term. I love this approach as it sets very clear expectations of what you are going to see and when you should expect to see it, be that monetary return or higher employee engagement/lower attrition etc. In my organisation, linking everything back to our values and our ambitions for being a great place to work helps to set the tone of what we will be missing out on if we do nothing. This generally gets people fired up. We hate to miss out!

Arash - Clearly defining the business outcomes you’re trying to achieve from the onset and determining how you’ll know whether you’ve achieved this. There were some interesting discussions at the event around this. For example, a discussion around ‘hard dollar’ and ‘soft dollar’ measures e.g., how does it reduce attrition vs employee engagement. There were also some discussions around whose job is it actually to… say increase sales?

A Head of Sales would say it’s their job and would never admit training has helped them sell more. So, you may have to look at a mixture of ways of measuring from direct expenditure – the cost of people doing the training – can this be brought down? To other things like feedback –what are people saying about the experience.

Conor - What are some of the tips that you can share when it comes to pitching for funding, were there any learnings from the event that you would like to share?

Rachel – In the organisation I work for, there is no centralised budget, this makes the total cost of any learning initiative seem excessive when that cost is never going to be borne by one specific area. So, when it comes it pitching, I find it best to break it down to cost per learner – this works for us, as each area can clearly see their contribution to the whole and it feels more manageable. This is also they way the business works for non-learning initiatives so to follow the same flow as the rest of our processes makes things feel more natural. My biggest piece of advice, which we discussed at the event, would be pitching for funding happens after the stakeholders are onboard. People first – money next.

Arash - There weren’t any tips that came out of the discussion I facilitated. I’d just say be clear on why you’re asking for it and how it’s going to benefit the initiative you’re planning on using it for.

Conor - I know there were lots of ideas from the L&D community at the event, what were some of the key takeaways for you personally?

Rachel – My takeaways are always around the value of talking things through, my group may have gone ‘offpiste’ and were talking about challenges and asking each other questions around skills frameworks, but that’s the joy of bringing together people, to share where they are at in the moment and connect them to others who are experiencing the same. I particularly enjoy and get a lot of value out of hearing about different business contexts. Having a varied background myself, I find this keeps us all a little fresher when thinking about what might or might not work for us and the cultures we all sit within.

Arash - As a whole these events are important, and people want to be a part of them. They’re an experience. They help give us a sense of belonging, which is really important if you are the L&D function in your organisation. I always enjoy meeting peers and hearing what subjects come up, what people care about, and what challenges they’re facing. The only other tip that hasn’t been mentioned yet was about working with external suppliers. There was a recommendation of spending the time to find a supplier who could be a trusted advisor and also making sure you immerse them in the culture of your organisation. By doing this, they’ll know what life is truly like working there and you’ll get more from the relationship with them.

Conor - Again, thank you both so much for sharing these insights - I am sure the L&D community will appreciate it. If you would like to connect with Rachel or Arash, please follow the links below.

Rachel https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-w-191848228/

Arash https://www.linkedin.com/in/arash-rezaei-mazinaniflpi-99a455116/