U.S. L&D Report: 2018 - Benchmark Your Workplace Learning Strategy

U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018 BENCHMARK YOUR WORKPLACE LEARNING STRATEGY 1

U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018 | FINDCOURSES.COM | 1

We are proud to release our premiere edition of findcourses.com’s U.S. L&D Report: 2018. This report was born out of a running dialogue with our visitors who have asked us to help disseminate more information about what features high-functioning L&D departments have in common.

As inspiring as it can be to look only towards industry giants for answers, there are examples of outstanding L&D departments from a spectrum of team sizes, budgets, and diverse organizational cultures. That’s why we’ve cast our net wide to look for the best practices that resonate across this spectrum and have surveyed and interviewed these organizations to ask them about what has made their initiatives successful.

In our survey results, we found a strong correlation between success indicators and several key practices such as interest in embracing new technologies, a tight process of reporting training ROI, and promoting a culture of learning in the organization. We’ve included these features in our report as well as links to the full interviews.

We hope you find our research gives you practical and actionable insights that will help better inform work inspiring lifelong learning in the corporate world.

We would like to thank our contributors who took time away from their exciting, and important work to share their insights in the hope of helping and inspiring more meaningful workplace learning.

— abby guthrie Editor

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Abby Guthrie, Emily Simpson, Shane Adams

LAYOUT:

Darrah Caughey U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018 | FINDCOURSES.COM | 3

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 06

L&D Benchmarking Survey: 2018 U.S. L&D professionals report on their employee learning budgets, biggest challenges, and more

22

VR: A New Reality for L&D Featuring interviews with companies using virtual reality to train employees

30

How to Promote a Learning Culture in Your Organization Insights from L&D professionals leading cultural change in their organizations

38

How to Calculate Meaningful ROI for Workplace Learning Advice from L&D leaders on how to keep and increase your budget

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L&D BENCHMARKING SURVEY: 2018

U.S. L&D professionals report on their employee learning budgets, their biggest challenges, and more Employee learning is a key element in nurturing talent and driving organizations forward. That’s why we surveyed over 100 L&D professionals from the U.S. to learn how their organizations are investing in talent, how they measure their impact, and what attitudes different levels in the organization hold about corporate learning.

We collected survey results through our member database and only included responses from professionals managing or directing learning initiatives in their organization. In order to better understand the relationship between L&D and company growth, we added an additional layer of analysis by segmenting companies with increased revenue in the last financial year.

Our goal in sharing this survey is to help you benchmark your L&D department and organization against others in the nation and shed light on the challenges and trends that will shape 2018.

HOW MANY EMPLOYEES WORK IN YOUR ORGANIZATION?

30+18+2014513N 13%

5%

10,000+

5,001-10,000

30% 1-50

14%

1,001-5,000

20%

251-1,000

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18%

51-250

WHICH INDUSTRY BEST DESCRIBES YOUR ORGANIZATION? 13%

Consumer Services

15%

29%

Arts, accommodation, healthcare

Industry

Professional Services

Mining, oil and gas, utilities, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture

Management, administration and support, finance

18%

Education

10% Other

9%

Trade

6%

Wholesale trade, retail trade, real estate

Public Administration U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018 | FINDCOURSES.COM | 7

20+40+24+10+6

HOW DO YOU THINK YOUR L&D DEPARTMENT PERFORMS IN COMPARISON TO YOUR COMPETITORS? 29%

32%

11%

20%

Over half (55%) of companies who don’t measure the success of L&D say they perform at a lower or much lower level than L&D departments in competitor organizations.

8%

At a much higher level

At a higher level

At the same level

At a lower level

At a much lower level

HOW DO YOU PREDICT YOUR L&D BUDGET WILL CHANGE IN 2018?

40+46+14B 14%

40%

Predict a budget decrease

Predict a budget increase

46%

Predict budget will stay the same

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100% of companies expecting a budget increase indicate they measure the impact of L&D.

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

95% felt better prepared

to address their business challenges as a result of the skills gained at Columbia Business School.*

Start now.

www.gsb.columbia.edu/execed * Sourced from the 2016 Columbia Business School Executive Education Global Past Participant Survey.

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54+ 1095+ 17311+ 1989+

WHAT IS YOUR ANNUAL TRAINING BUDGET PER EMPLOYEE? 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50%

31%

40% 30%

21%

21%

20% 10%

7%

7%

$601-800

$801-1,000

13%

0%

$0-200

$201-400

$401-600

$1,000+

HOW MANY DAYS OF TRAINING DOES AN AVERAGE STAFF MEMBER RECEIVE PER YEAR? 20%

19%

17%

15%

10%

10%

5%

5%

11%

9%

8%

9%

5%

4%

3%

0%

Less than 1 day

1 day

2 days

3 days

4 days

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5 days

6 days

1 week

1-2 weeks

2-3 weeks

More than 3 weeks

WHAT IS THE AVERAGE RETENTION RATE OF YOUR STAFF?

7+61516138+19 Less than 6 months

6 months 1 year

7%

6%

14%

1-2 years

16%

2-3 years

13%

3-4 years 4-5 years

Companies without staff engaged in learning are twice as likely to lose staff before three years.

8%

20%

5-10 years

10-15 years

8%

More than 15 years

8%

HOW SATISFIED IS YOUR STAFF ACCORDING TO YOUR LATEST EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION SURVEY?

2+22+54B 2%

22%

Highly satisfied

Not at all satisfied

22%

Not very satisfied

Almost half (42%) of L&D professionals who indicated their employees were highly engaged in learning were also highly engaged overall at the organization.

54%

Satisfied

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WHAT SUBJECT IS YOUR TOP TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY? 25%

Leadership and Management Development

12%

Communication Skills 9%

Customer Service

7%

Information Technology

6%

Sales Business Analysis and Organizational Development Compliance Project Management Human Resources Engineering / Industry Data Science / Analysis Health and Safety Quality Management / Auditing Marketing Finance Supply Chain Administrative Support Design Accounting

6% 5% 5% 4% 4% 4% 3% 2% 2% 2% 1% 1% 1% 1%

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90%

of companies with strong learning cultures said that senior executives were actively engaged in L&D initiatives.

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Large companies

2x

were more likely to use

blended learning across all levels of the organization.

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2824+35128+4 12+756+1134+22625+ 1221+150+ 50+

WHAT TRAINING METHOD DOES YOUR COMPANY USE TO TRAIN SENIOR-, MIDAND ENTRY-LEVEL EMPLOYEES

Senior-level employees Mid-level employees

Entry-level employees

30% 20% 10% 0%

On-the-job In-house Coaching by e-learning Conferences Workshops, training training from managers seminars external and peers and open providers courses

Blended learning

Tuition reimbursements

External coaching

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOUR L&D DEPARTMENT FACES?

24+76+R L 17+ 14+86+R L 20+ 14+86+R L 12+88+R L 8+92+R L 34+ 6+94+R L 5+95+R L 3+97+R L 1L 1+99+R 0+100+R L 24%

21%

20%

12%

8%

Limited budget

The small size of our team

Showing ROI on talent development initiatives

Getting employees involved in L&D

Getting the top-level of our organization to support L&D

6%

5%

3%

1%

0%

Aligning our L&D goals with the company strategy

Keeping staff engaged during L&D programs and training

There is no way of knowing which efforts are most effective

Poor trainers

Poor training materials

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WHAT TECHNOLOGIES WILL YOUR L&D DEPARTMENTÂ UTILIZE IN 2018?

32%

E-Learning

22%

Virtual Classrooms

17%

Micro-learning videos

12%

Game-based learning

11%

Mobile learning

6%

Virtual reality

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97%

of departments planning to use VR for training said their department was important

or critical to

organizational success.

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100%

of the companies who had grown in the last financial year said they tracked the ROI of training.

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WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR ORGANIZATION AS HAVING A CULTURE OF LEARNING?

18+60+148 8%

18%

Our staff does not prioritize learning

Our staff lives and breathes learning

14%

Companies with strong learning cultures were avid users of learning technology and were 12% more likely on average to use them in 2018.

Our staff is neither positive nor negative about learning

60%

Our staff values learning

HOW DO YOU ASSESS THE IMPACT OF L&D ON STAFF?

33+291311+95 Feedback from employees

33%

Feedback from line managers that employees have been positively impacted

29%

Employee retention improves

13%

Employees are promoted internally

11%

Amount of employees completing training

We don’t measure the impact of L&D

9%

5%

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HOW MUCH DOES YOUR L&D DEPARTMENT CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR ORGANIZATION?

100+Q L 33+67+Q58 L +42QL8+92QL1 33%

58%

8%

1%

Our L&D department is critical to our organization’s success

Our L&D department is important to our organization’s success

Our L&D department is not important to our organization’s success

Our L&D department negatively affects our organization’s success

HOW DOES THE TOP MANAGEMENT OF YOUR ORGANIZATION VALUE L&D?

32+34+286B 6%

They do not value L&D

28%

They could value L&D more

32%

They are actively engaged in L&D

34%

They value L&D

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90% of companies with strong learning cultures said senior executives were actively engaged in L&D initiatives.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

From the U.S. L&D Benchmarking Survey: 2018

1. LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT ARE THE HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES Across industries and company-sizes, developing leaders in the organization is top-of-mind for L&D professionals in 2018.

2. LARGE COMPANIES APPEAR HESITANT TO REINVEST REVENUE INCREASES INTO L&D Although they spend above the survey average on training per employee, professionals from large organizations were less likely than their SME counterparts to predict a budget increase for their department.

3. PROVING THE BUSINESS IMPACT OF TRAINING IS KEY L&D professionals who track the ROI of training are more likely to have increased resources, higher satisfaction with how their department performs, and of course, executive buy-in.

4. COACHING IS CORRELATED WITH REVENUE GROWTH External and internal coaching as the primary form of workplace learning for senior members of staff is common-practice at companies which reported increased revenue in the last financial year.

5. THE KEY TO ENGAGED STAFF IS EXECUTIVE BUY-IN AND TECHNOLOGY A staff highly engaged in workplace learning is correlated with use of learning technologies and a close working relationship between L&D and executives.

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VR: A NEW REALITY FOR L&D

Featuring interviews with companies using virtual reality to train employees Once a curiosity occupying the edges of L&D conferences, virtual reality is stepping forward to take its place as a core training tool for departments daring enough to try it.

training in the future. Mining their experiences to look for best practice commonalities, we delve into deciding how VR can be helpful, what to look for in a technology partner, how to develop content for this new medium, No longer being used exclusively to train in conducting a successful roll-out, evaluating the military, aviation, and heavy industries, VR your success, and how it can complement training is being tested and deployed today rather than replace existing training. by companies like Walmart, KFC, UPS, and McDonalds. The expectations are high that the training medium will become more widely HOW ARE COMPANIES USING VR adopted with the VR training market forecast FOR EMPLOYEE TRAINING? to generate $216 million in 2018 and grow to Companies are finding new applications for $6.3 billion in 2022. virtual reality at a rapid pace, and as the We spoke with companies developing the technology further develops, the limits of your technology, as well as companies using it for imagination become the only ceiling. Here are training, to help you begin thinking about how just some of the examples of how virtual reality your organization might use VR for employee is entering the corporate training environment.

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DESIGNING FOR PRACTICAL EXPERIENCES The most common training need that triggered VR training in the companies we spoke with, was the need to expose learners to a large range of realistic experiences before they began a new role. Farmers Insurance chose their claims adjusters team as their first training audience to experience VR. The logic behind the decision was based on feedback that one of the biggest training challenges of entering the job is seeing enough property damage scenarios to recognize and respond to them on the job.

“Technology has finally gotten to a point where we’re able to help that process with virtual reality...they’re getting much more of a collection of experiences before they ever go out into a customer’s home,” says Jessica DeCanio, Head of the University of Farmers Claims who worked to develop their pilot VR training program.

at anything. When you think about corporate learning, one of the biggest elements that’s often missing is the ability to practice. We don’t often give trainees the ability to practice what they’re being taught to develop that new skill,” says Jeff Baumohl, Vice President of Product Marketing & Alliances at TalentQuest.

Allowing learners to practice in a realistic environment can also make the job of assessment easier and more accurate. “We’re not just talking about training. We’re talking about improving job performance and we’re looking at it not just from the context of what they’re being taught but also a more trueto-life picture of how people will actually perform,” says Baumohl, who has worked with companies to help them more precisely define individual training needs to calibrate their VR learning experience.

“ Providing genuinely authentic

Virtual reality training is not just a U.S. activities for our learners can be phenomenon. The Met Office, the U.K. difficult, expensive and in some equivalent of the American Meteorological cases dangerous, so VR has given Society, turned to VR for similar reasons. us an opportunity to replicate Previously, their L&D department had to depend some of the more experiential on a notoriously unreliable training event – the learning activities in the classroom weather – to train employees experientially environment. ” in different weather conditions. Now, they’re simulating those weather conditions and — Helen Caughey exposing “learners to a wider range of The met office meteorological conditions at the touch of a button,” says Helen Caughey, International Learning Consultant and Operational Meteorologist.

CREATING A SAFE SPACE FOR For L&D professionals worried that technology might take professionals out of the real world, it’s important to consider how much or how little classroom or e-learning gives employees the freedom to practice applying practical skills as they learn. “We’ve heard the analogy that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert

EMPLOYEE TRAINING

Although VR has long been used to prepare professionals to perform in hazardous environments, more and more industries are making use of the technology in new ways. For example, training members of a team together for shared learning is now possible.

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Thames Water, a U.K. company supplying water to London, worked with Igloo Vision, a company specialized in designing group VR experiences, to create a VR onboarding program to take their employees on a virtual team tour of the sewer systems. “It’s kind of a chicken and egg situation because they can’t send people down to real life sewers unless they’ve been trained and it’s difficult to train them on the hazards they will encounter as a team without actually putting them in sewers together,” says Peter Halliday, Director of Communications at Igloo.

Safety was also a concern for the Met Office.

“As with other industries, providing genuinely authentic activities for our learners can be difficult, expensive and in some cases dangerous, so VR has given us an opportunity to replicate some of the more experiential learning activities in the classroom environment,” says Caughey.

Creating a safe environment for training isn’t limited to physically hazardous situations.

Companies are also seeing the value of using VR to give learners the emotional security to slow down, make mistakes, and ask questions to achieve deeper learning. Fidelity Investments, who developed a VR training program to develop empathy for their call center associates, chose the medium because they wanted to “create a safe space to provide these experiences,” said Adam Schouela who leads Emerging Technology at Fidelity Labs.

DEVELOPING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS When developed and administered with the goal of facilitating critical thinking, virtual reality can be a powerful tool. By transporting learners to the physical space where they will later apply theoretical knowledge, and pairing them with a facilitator who can guide them through that experience, Farmers Insurance has found an ideal recipe to prompt critical 24 | FINDCOURSES.COM | U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018

thinking around the decisions that claims adjusters make in their role, before they’ve entered a customer’s home. “[Learners] really appreciated the opportunity to be able to slow down, think a little more about the decisions that they were making, and also be able to ask questions in the moment... That was something we were really happy to hear, that this module was helping them with that critical thinking process,” says DeCanio.

Bringing theoretical knowledge to life was always a challenge for the Met Office whose Operational Meteorology team need to apply deep theoretical knowledge in a tight timeframe to forecast emerging weather conditions.

Providing activities that authentically reflect the operational environment helps us provide some context and situate the theoretical stuff for our students,” says Caughey.

“ We’re not just talking about training.

We’re talking about improving job performance and we’re looking at it not just from the context of what they’re being taught but also a more true-to-life picture of how people will actually perform ” .

— jeff baumohl Talentquest

our customers are going through?” was the central question of their use-case according to Schouela. In the training, employees are transported from the contact center to the caller’s surroundings, seeing the environment, facial expressions and personal perspective of the voice behind the line.

Developing empathy is also being used in the not-for-profit sector. Alzheimer’s Research UK received help from Google and Visyon to develop an app that would act as a public awareness tool to convey a greater range of the many cognitive symptoms that people affected with dementia experience.

“We wanted to build a simple, engaging, kind of cool approach to help drive awareness and understanding of dementia. We didn’t really see it as a formal learning tool in the traditional sense... But what we found when we put it out there is that, while loads of members of the public were indeed using it, we were also seeing more of professional bodies, companies, and organizations approaching us saying: ‘Look we found out about this thing.

Can we get a load of Google cardboard sets from you so we can use this app a bit more meaningfully?” according to Timothy Perry, Director of Communications & Brand at Alzheimers Research UK. The organization is now partnering with a leading U.K. university to develop the app further as a training resource.

FOSTERING EMPATHY

HOW DO YOU GET STARTED WITH VR TRAINING?

Virtual reality has huge potential for building empathy and reducing bias by offering the opportunity to step into someone else’s skin and live their experiences. Fidelity Investments chose empathy-building as their first employee training VR program. “Can we create an empathy training module for our call center associates and really have them understand and get some rational compassion for what

Diving into a new training format is difficult.

Most companies we spoke with expressed that they were surprised by how much the pricepoint has lowered over the last years due to technological developments and a larger market. Depending on the equipment and how interactive and custom-built the content is, the initial investment can be substantial enough to make you carefully think through your launch.

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UNDERSTAND THE RIGHT REASONS FOR DOING IT

take the time and resources to learn about the complex claims decision-making process.

Although fear of missing out may drive many companies to begin experimenting with VR employee training, it’s not the right attitude to have when deciding how you will use VR to train.

Working with a supplier who has developed a program that closely matches what you’re looking to achieve may be impossible as VR is still an emerging technology for most corporate training. However, you can look for a supplier who has done work in the same vein of training for the outcome you’re looking to achieve.

Schouela from Fidelity Labs tried a bias training program from STRIVR, who had developed training on reducing bias for the NFL. “Trying it made a huge difference when choosing a partner for this type of technology,” according to Schouela.

Halliday, of the VR technology solution provider Igloo Vision, recommends not thinking about how your company will be left behind by not seizing on the technology, but instead considering what training challenges you can now solve by the permeation of VR technology.

Companies are only ready to launch a VR program when they have a specific training problem and recognize how VR can help them address it, states Baumohl. His company, TalentQuest only begins developing material when their clients have hit on a solid training application of the technology.

“ We’re making sure that we develop

more cutting-edge, innovative ways for employees to learn. I think that will be huge in attracting talent ” .

— jessica decanio farmers insurance

CHOOSING A SUPPLIER

When you’re shopping for a VR training supplier, it’s critical to experience their work first-hand.

“Virtual reality is actually a perfect case for this where it’s really hard to understand what the impact of virtual reality is on training by just reading about it – it’s a completely different thing when you actually try it to experience it,” according to Schouela.

DEVELOPING AND DEPLOYING VR TRAINING Developing content for VR training will be a unique and challenging experience. Each step of the process – from planning, to writing, to filming – demands a different mode of thinking.

“You’re creating experiences as opposed to creating content... There are a lot more things that you have to take into account when you’re creating an experience as opposed to creating content for someone to consume digitally. It’s new, it’s different, and so you have to think about it in a little bit of a different way,” says Schouela.

Once L&D professionals have decided on the right training application of VR, it’s important to consider what’s most important to you from a supplier. As an L&D professional, Decanio had criteria that needed to be met by a supplier.

The platform needed to support a realistic virtual environment and be sustainable enough COLLABORATION IS KEY to evolve as technology moved forward. She Part of that difference includes as tight a also needed to work with a suplier who would collaboration as possible between L&D teams, 26 | FINDCOURSES.COM | U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018

the developers, and the people who live the experience that you’re trying to recreate. In the case of Alzheimer’s Research UK, they engaged with people affected by dementia to ensure their app was creating a true-to-life experience.

“We developed this program with the trainers and we brought in instructors, and potential trainees, to get feedback from the beginning even as we were storyboarding the training to really understand what they were going through and see whether we could develop an experience that would fit within their context,” says Schouela.

If you’re developing a more game-based VR approach, establishing a feedback loop between your technology supplier and target audience is critical to create a valuable training product. “It’s similar to a video game and so you have to think through every single scenario that learners might approach and if they make one decision how does that impact what happens next? We had to have our employees involved in that design process so that we made sure we got it as close to reality as possible,” according to DeCanio.

CAREFULLY CONSIDER YOUR FILMING Filming the training setting is a crucial part of keeping the environment realistic. Fidelity Investments opted to begin their empathy training with a video shot in one of their contact centers to make the environment as specific and realistic to their employees as possible.

Filming in 360° will also be a new experience for professionals accustomed to creating more traditional video content. “You can’t direct the shoot in the same way you could with a conventional camera, which is what I was used to. So you have to kind of give your actors their instructions and then you have to go to hide behind a bush – you have to get out of the

scene completely,” says Timothy Parry, who directed scenes for Alzheimer’s Research UK’s Walk Through Dementia.

DON’T FORGET FACILITATORS As with any digital learning, virtual reality is not a replacement for instructors and facilitators.

The Met Office uses VR simulations and e-learning as a lead-up to bringing groups of learners together to maximize the value of the time spent face-to-face.

According to DeCanio of Farmers, “It’s not a stand-alone where we’re just putting people in the headsets and saying: ‘Go learn!’ They still have someone facilitating the learning process. The facilitators have just been very excited about the ability to get into those deeper conversations about why you’re making the decisions that you’re making and to be able to answer more questions,” says DeCanio.

“ There are a lot more things that

you have to take into account when you’re creating an experience as opposed to creating content for someone to consume digitally. ”

— Adam Schuola Fidelity Investments

EVALUATING THE SUCCESS OF VR TRAINING Two typical ways to show the financial return of introducing VR training is to shorten the learning curve while producing equally or more proficient employees than more traditional training, and improve the quality scores of employee work and results. As with any training, U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018 | FINDCOURSES.COM | 27

keeping managers looped into the project will it creates a possible future where smaller help you design for outcomes that will have a organizations fall behind. “The fundamental sought after business impact. reality is that the kids that are going to be entering the workforce in the next five years Conducting a pilot program is a typical way will not tolerate the Powerpoint presentations to tightly monitor and measure the impact of turned into video recordings as training...

VR instruction. “Since we’re just now piloting So it’s going to be very eye-opening when it, it’s a really great opportunity for us to look organizations recognize that their traditional at those two different audiences in a really approach to training that they’ve been doing analytical way,” says DeCanio of Farmers for years is just no longer going to work.

Insurance who are measuring the time reduction Organizations who are progressive with of a successful onboarding and differences in technology, that’s going to be a recruiting tool,” quality scores of professionals receiving VR said Baumohl. versus non-VR training.

TRAILBLAZING FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION Virtual reality can be an area where L&D professionals have the ability to impact their entire organization in more ways than employee learning. “I personally think the sky’s really the limit,” says DeCanio who added that other parts of the Farmers organization are watching this pilot closely to see where else they can incorporate virtual reality to add value to the organization.

The Met Office promoted their VR training throughout the workplace, “there was a lot of interest and suggestions for using it in a wide range of activities beyond the learning and development opportunities already identified,” says Caughey.

Developing cutting-edge training practices can also be used as a leg up on talent recruitment.

“As we look at bringing more and more millennials into our organization, they’re becoming more and more used to this type of platform in their day-to-day life as virtual reality becomes more mainstream. We’re making sure that we develop more cutting-edge, innovative ways for employees to learn. I think that will be huge in attracting talent,” said DeCanio.

As industry leaders move towards VR training, 28 | FINDCOURSES.COM | U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018

To read the full interviews featured in this article, click here.

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HOW TO PROMOTE A LEARNING CULTURE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION

Insights from L&D professionals leading cultural change in their organizations

Top-performing organizations are five times more likely to have learning cultures, suggesting that a culture of learning is a key component of business success. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage,” according to Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric.

Stephen Gill co-owner of Learning to be Great, LLC, a resource for creating and sustaining a learning culture in organizations, characterizes a “learning culture [as] a work environment that supports and encourages the continuous and collective discovery, sharing, and application of knowledge and skills at the individual, team, and whole organization levels in order to achieve the goals of the organization. [It] is a culture of inquiry; an environment in which employees feel safe challenging the status quo and taking risks to enhance the quality of what they do for customers, themselves, shareholders and other stakeholders. [It] is an environment in which learning how to learn is valued and accepted.

In a learning culture, the pursuit of learning is woven into the fabric of organizational life.”

What does that look like in action? To find out, we’ve identified several L&D leaders who have worked to lead a holistic cultural shift in the communities of their organizations. They come from a diverse array of industries and organizational sizes, and have shared their experience and insights in leading cultural change.

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“ ...by empowering more people

in your organization, that's where huge change happens. ”

— steve garguilo johnson & johnson

THERE IS NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL LEARNING CULTURE Learning cultures come in “a lot of different flavors, a lot of different smells, and a lot of different styles, because every organization is different,” says Steve Garguilo, who led a cultural revolution at Johnson & Johnson through a grassroots movement which included the world’s first global corporate TEDx program.

Everyone who we spoke with described finding an optimum organizational learning culture as an ongoing process; one of continuous exploration and discovery of what works best for their tribe.

KEEP EMPLOYEE IMPACT AT THE HEART OF WHAT YOU DO A healthy professional learning culture is “one which puts the employee at the center of everything,” says Kim Edwards, Talent and Leadership Development Manager at Getty Images and co-presenter of Learning Now TV. It is crucial to help learners understand how their individual learning makes a positive impact on business success; to connect personal learning as the driver of organizational success underpins a learning culture.

After solidifying the connection between what employees do and how that contributes to the organization, Edwards says Getty Images employees have “more awareness that they’re always absorbing information and making decisions in all that they do – therefore always learning and applying that learning – and realize that our company encourages and appreciates that time and effort.”

WORK WITH SENIOR LEADERSHIP Executive-level support is key in any learning initiative but it is more essential than ever when taking on the endeavor of transforming company culture.

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In our survey to U.S. L&D departments, the number one comment from professionals about how they encourage a culture of learning is through meaningful and overt support from senior leaders. This support may look like personally modeling engagement in learning, connecting employee learning directly to promotions, and giving L&D leaders the funding to support research, creation, and implementation of programs.

“Our senior leadership team champions the initiative,” says Edwards regarding each launch of a new learning campaign. If you need to attain buy-in, we recommend pitching senior management with specific desired business outcomes that can be met with an improved learning culture and tying each culture campaign tightly and measurably to organizational goals.

important to draw on key influencers, and they may not be individuals you have previously worked with. Driving a learning culture can be helped by “building a relationship with the internal communications team. They’re always in the know, with direct partnerships at the executive level, and can help promote L&D activity, aims and brand,” according to Edwards.

“ Our senior leadership team champions the initiative. ” — Kim edwards getty images

You can also work with catalysts in your organization who exemplify the culture you’re CONNECT WITH KEY CULTURAL trying to create. “As opposed to trying to drive INFLUENCERS change from within an HR function or from the Although executive buy-in is paramount, it’s senior executive level, it’s critical to amplify

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voices buried within the organization who are connectors and who are making new ideas happen. So if you’re an L&D professional, what can you do to start building up an army of people in diverse places in your organization to help you with your goals? We all know that we never have enough resources in L&D to do everything that we want to do, but by empowering more people in your organization, that’s where huge change happens,” says Garguilo.

organization wins. This behavior needs to be modeled by the L&D department.

Embracing accountability as an L&D department by encouraging and acting on feedback, will go a long way. “I think [a healthy professional learning culture] is one where feedback and recognition is encouraged and appreciated, and valued as an important aspect of development and progress,” says Edwards.

This also means prioritizing your department’s professional development. “As a team we are practicing what we preach, with several of our USE TECHNOLOGY AS AN ENABLER L&D members undertaking further studying for Technology can be a powerful ally in cultural further or higher qualifications,” says Musial. transformation. “If we’re not tech literate as L&D teams, then we’re at risk of falling incredibly far behind,” says Garguilo.

What all high-performing learning organizations seem to agree on is that technology is the enabler and not the starting point.

“ [A learning culture is] an

environment in which learning how to learn is valued and accepted. ”

Technology has played an important role in increasing knowledge-sharing and — stephen gill collaboration, according to Sian Musial, an L&D Learning to be Great, specialist at Pepper Financial Services Group.

LLC However, they “remain committed to bringing people into a room to experience training in group settings where the status quo can be challenged and productive discussion can BE SPECIFIC ABOUT THE IMPACT drive the change and improvement agenda.” YOU’RE LOOKING FOR AND THEN Technology has endless applications in helping you enhance learning culture. It could take the form of encouraging learner groups in social platforms like Slack, enabling learners to share their knowledge through video platforms, or helping employees track and visualize their learning progress through an LMS.

MEASURE IT

During Stephen Garguilo’s time at Johnson & Johnson, he focused on measuring the rise of employee engagement throughout the company through metadata on digital and social technologies, their improvement in critical skills, and net promoter scores. But for him, “stories were also a really important measure.

I’d constantly be on the lookout for impact PUSH FOR ACCOUNTABILITY ON ALL stories of product development and people ENDS development, and collecting dozens of those Individual accountability for learning is a stories was really valuable in being able to linchpin in any learning culture; when corporate demonstrate value as well as inspire others to learning becomes “pull” instead of “push,” the realize similar outcomes.”

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At Pepper Financial Services, one of their desired impacts was for progress in their business measure of being an employer of choice. They became specific in what they considered impacts, including enhanced internal promotion and movement, lowered attrition, and brand and cultural awareness.

MAKE IT PART OF A LARGER CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION It’s no surprise that a learning culture is intertwined with business performance, so if your overall company culture is suffering, your battle can be an uphill one. On the flip side, your department has the capability to positively impact your organization for years to come.

“What happens culturally throughout an organization is linked to what happens with learning and career development and viceversa,” says Musial.

In order to inspire a learning culture, organizations that we spoke with recommended promoting learning from failure as well as success, advocating for employee freedom to challenge the status quo with new ideas, supporting and publicizing innovation that springs from learning, and if possible, giving learners encouragement and a platform to collaborate with each other after training events have taken place.

To read the full interviews featured in this article, click here.

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My hope and dream is that you find a life in which you get to express the unique spirit that is you, in the most intelligent, most contributive, most meaningful way possible.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Marcus Buckingham Founder of the Strengths Revolution, Head of ADP Research Institute—People + Performance, New York Times Bestselling Author

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE & EXPOSITION Learn more at www.td.org/18conference.

U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018

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LEARNING CULTURE VS. TRAINING CULTURE

Stephen J. Gill, co-owner of Learning to be Great, LLC, shares his expertise result in short-term gains for those units and even for the organization as a whole (e.g., drug In a training culture, the assumption is that the development in pharmaceutical companies). most important learning happens in events, such as workshops, courses, e-learning In a learning culture, knowledge and skills are shared freely among units. Everyone is programs, and conferences. working to help everyone else learn from the In a learning culture, it is assumed that learning successes and failures across the organization. happens all the time, at events but also This creates a more sustainable and adaptable on-the-job, through coaches and mentors, organization. from action-learning, from smartphones and tablets, socially, and from experiments.

WHEN DOES LEARNING OCCUR?

IS L&D CENTRALIZED?

HOW IS INFORMATION SHARED? In a training culture, departmental units in the organization compete for information. Each unit wants to know more and control more than the other units. This competition can

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In a training culture, the training and development function is centralized. The CLO, or HR, or a training department controls the resources for learning. Employees and their managers assume that if new competencies are needed, they should rely on this centralized function.

In a learning culture, everyone is responsible for learning. The entire organization is engaged in facilitating and supporting learning, in the workplace and outside the workplace.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR LEARNING? In a training culture, responsibility for employee learning resides with instructors and training managers. In that kind of culture the assumption is that trainers (under the direction of a CLO) drive learning.

In a learning culture, responsibility for learning resides with each employee and each team. In that kind of culture, employees are expected to seek out the knowledge and skills they need, when and where that knowledge and those skills are needed.

HOW IS LEARNING IMPACT EVALUATED? In a training culture, the learning and development function is evaluated on the basis of delivery of programs and materials.

Typically, what matters to management is the courses that were offered and how many people attended.

In a learning culture, what matters is the knowledge and skills acquired and applied in the workplace and impact on achieving the organization’s strategic goals. It’s less about output and more about the difference that learning makes for individuals, teams, and the entire organization.

To read more about Stephen Gill and Learning to be Great, LLC, click here.

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HOW TO CALCULATE MEANINGFUL ROI FOR WORKPLACE LEARNING Advice from L&D leaders on how to keep and increase your budget Learning professionals know that proving the value of L&D is essential to keeping and increasing the resources at their disposal.

According to our survey of L&D departments in the U.S., one of the key differentiators of top performing departments, regardless of industry or size, is their close relationship with senior executives and their commitment to measuring the ROI of corporate learning.

Unsurprisingly, these departments were most likely to hold more days of training per employee and consider their departments more competitive than their industry peers.

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and a finalist for the HR Excellence Awards’ Best L&D Strategy in 2017, employee learning is fueled by an underlying belief that, “People can be more,” says Jo Rapley, People and Culture Manager. Your senior executives may believe this in theory, but at BPS World, a close alignment between the executive and L&D team make it a reality.

If your organization doesn’t demonstrably act on a belief that employee development is a crucial catalyst to keep your organization competitive, it is essential to make an airtight business case for learning. If you don’t advocate for employee learning by proving positive business impact “[Executives] will think that learning is a necessary evil. We should want them to look at it as a business driver,” according to Jack Phillips, Ph.D and

Chairman of the ROI Institute, an organization champion the successes of your initiatives, which helps the L&D community demonstrate you have to take ownership of failure as the value of learning. well. “We have this philosophy that we can’t control what employees do with learning so if When an L&D department hasn’t demonstrated they don’t ever use it, it’s not our fault. Well, their impact on business results, they become that may be true, but it’s the organization’s an easy target for budget cuts. “Executives budget that you’re spending. You better be just say we can’t afford to do this. If they see concerned about it because it’s ultimately the connection, we can make the case that we your budget that’s going to be cut if your top can’t afford not to do this,” says Phillips. executives don’t see that connection,” says Phillips.

REDEFINE WHAT YOU CONSIDER A TRAINING SUCCESS

If your departmental objectives revolve around participation in training, or positive learner evaluations, proving ROI in financial terms verges on the impossible. The added value that learning provides to business can only be solidly proven in the application of knowledge, skills, or re-engagement on the job. “We have to redefine learning success. Success doesn’t occur in the classroom or a keyboard or on your mobile phone. Success occurs when you actually use what you’ve learned and had an impact in the organization – with your work, with the customer, with the people around you.

That’s the business connection. Until you have a business impact, you’re not successful,” says Phillips.

“ We have to redefine learning success. ” — Jack Phillips roi institute, inc.

OWN YOUR RESULTS IN TERMS OF BUSINESS IMPACT

If training misses the mark, it’s still critical to take responsibility and make changes to future training. “In the end, we compare the business metrics we originally identified in the impact map as the goal to the ones after the training event and see if we attained those metrics. If not, we can then use the different measurements we’ve taken throughout the process to go back and see where the ‘weak link’ is and address it,” says Parker.

Taking ownership of the results is what will empower you to prove positive impact and hold a strong position in securing future or continued investment in employee learning.

At BPS, “when we have had a successful quarter there will be a number of people/factors that try to ‘own’ that success. We therefore set clear qualitative and quantitative objectives at the start of any program. Participants are asked to keep a learning log of how that learning has had an impact on their job/team/business and it’s collated when calculating ROI,” says Rapley.

GET MANAGERS INVOLVED TO ENSURE LEARNING IS USED ON THE JOB

What’s a solid strategy for making sure that training is used by employees? Phillips Accept that whether or not employees apply advises working with the managers of learners. learning on the job: it’s ultimately your “They’ve got to be a part of the process. responsibility. If you want to be able to Because the number one influence of the U.S. L&D REPORT: 2018 | FINDCOURSES.COM | 39

person using learning on the job is their “[The] decision to invest in L&D is made when immediate supervisor,” says Phillips. one of the executives sees learning as an investment rather than a cost because you’ve Bringing senior managers into the training just shown a ROI in the same way that a Chief process not only helps you ensure business Financial Officer was going to show them,” impact after the training, it helps you says Phillips. calibrate training to better serve the employees who need it. “L&D should adopt a consultative At BPS world, one ROI case reported a higher approach with senior managers whereby they retention rate for a team struggling with seek to understand their L&D needs. It is turnover. They intervened with a leadership paramount that there is open and honest development program focusing on coaching communication, gaining feedback, and acting and motivation. “The financial return came on it, in pursuit of continuous improvement,” from increased revenues generated by the says Rapley. It has the added benefit of team due to an increase in their motivation. getting a window-in on talent that you can tap Additionally, there were cost savings in the into as a future training resource. “Working recruitment of new team members as the with senior managers has the added benefit of retention rate had increased,” says Rapley. helping to “identify subject matter experts in Although proving ROI may involve more the business – who can deliver relevant training quantitative measures than you already collect, – can help engage managers in creating a Phillips recommends including intangibles in learning culture,” says Rapley. your report, which can include powerful stories from employees and departments who were impacted by your training.

“ L&D should adopt a consultative

approach with senior managers whereby they seek to understand their L&D needs. ”

— Jo Rapley bps world

PRESENT SOLID RESULTS TO YOUR SENIOR LEADERSHIP Phillips recommends working closely with the CFO of your organization because they are most adept at understanding how investments convert into returns and commonly work with other departments to synthesize this information into a presentation that the executive team will find credible.

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By aligning your definition of success with senior leadership, working with business impact objectives throughout your programs, and presenting your results credibly, you can reinvigorate your L&D budget. More than that, you can become a key player in helping your organization overcome the fear and uncertainty that will stunt its long-term growth. “In the U.S., we’ve got record economic performance going on, high stock market, low unemployment rate, businesses are booming but learning and development budgets in major companies have been frozen because of uncertainty,” says Phillips. “Uncertainty is the time to have more investment in learning, not less. But if L&D departments don’t have data to show that, they’re going to be faced with those kind of consequences.”

To read the full interviews featured in this article, click here.

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