L&D Strategy Examples: Yelp, Google and itsu

L&D Strategy Examples What you can learn from high-impact organisations.

The L&D Strategy The learning and development (L&D) strategy plays a fundamental role in high-impact organisations. It outlines how an organisation uses employee training to achieve business objectives.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but there are common approaches that can be applied in most circumstances.

Key Elements of Impactful L&D Strategies

Forethinking Many organisations wait until a problem arises and then use it as a trigger for formal training. An effective L&D strategy looks at predictive analytics (like skills gaps analyses) to determine what is needed in the future business environment and then tailors training to fulfill these needs now.

Employee-Centricity Employees are at the heart of what you do as they literally drive business strategy. A functional people strategy supports this. But what supports the constantly evolving culture and talent pipeline as your organisation grows?

Learning and development.

Learning Institutionalisation On the job learning happens every day. Creating a culture of learning is important because it ensures employees stay motivated to contribute to your organisation’s mission by seeing how valuable their impact is.

Example: Yelp

An L&D strategy for learning culture

Approach Activations such as lunch and learns or company hackathons were used in the everyday flow of work by Yelp. Anonymous surveys provided further insight into how things got done vs what things got done.

Impact 90% of employees rated their managers as effective as a result of training actions taken from those anonymous surveys. 98% of sales management roles became internal hires.

Applying It Lunch and learns get employees experienced with speaking authoritatively on areas of expertise in a familiar environment.

L&D ROI Win Low-cost and employee-run learning events that encourage collaboration are shown to improve the employee experience as they rest on individual motivation to share critical knowledge.

Example: Google

An L&D strategy for continuous learning

Approach Google utilises microlearning through ‘Whisper Courses’ – a series of emails that suggest something for managers to try in 1:1s or team meetings.

Impact New ‘Whisper Course’ series were sent to managers based on their weakest skills.

Google managers improved on that behaviour by up to 40%.

Applying It The program helps contextualise learning within the working environment and helps encourage behavioural change.

L&D ROI Win Nurturing skills on the job means you’re meeting people where they’re already applying them, and using technology means you can get analytics on engagement rates.

Example: itsu

An L&D strategy for employee experience

Approach The company made their training masterclass for fish cutters an accredited course.

Trainees graduated with a recognised certificate, pay rise, new title (Fish Pro) and ongoing support post training.

Impact itsu saved almost $1 million in decreased labour costs and almost double that amount on otherwise wasted food. The number of itsu shops without a Fish Pro dropped from 40% to 9%.

Applying It Tie individual courses more closely to your overall business strategy with something like a Capability Academy. This is a digital spot for mapping learning content to capabilities and capability gaps.

L&D ROI Win Connecting L&D needs to business outcomes means you’re able to prove the direct line of causation between L&D and business impacts. This helps employees feel more confident in their abilities, positively impacting their employee experience.

You can learn more about this topic by checking out the full article: https://acornlms.com/resources/learning-anddevelopment-strategy-examples