6 things to look at when starting L&D from scratch (or reviewing an L&D strategy)

So you're thinking about how you're enabling, growing and developing your people?

Great 👏🏻

But where to start? Especially when there's not much data, insight or past experience to go off?

There's lots of things you could do, but what should you do?

Here's 6 things to consider, from an L&D Consultant 🧚🏻‍♀️

1. Be clear what you mean

Is there alignment on what L&D is, what’s expected of you, and how it’s positioned in your business?

We can talk about learning cultures, impact and business problems all we like, but if the business expects you to deliver ‘stuff’, then you might want to start working on that mindset and culture.

There’s a legacy experience to work on in our industry, and we’re all part of shifting the narrative, one business and it’s leadership team at a time.

Show them what they’re missing, if they don’t already know.

2. Business leadership

Is the business leadership team actually leading, or are they stuck in the weeds?

It’s a tricky one this. And not always easy to handle - but someone’s got to do it.

Do you need to start with educating and developing the people at the top?

As businesses grow, the role of founders and leaders needs to shift. But do they have the awareness and capability to do so?

Does your business have the leadership and infrastructure in place for people and teams to perform?

3. What ‘good’ looks like here

Are you crystal clear about what success looks like in your business?

What ways of working are non-negotiable?

What processes do people need to stick to, and where’s the flex?

How do you measure this?

If there’s expectations, make sure they’re known!

Being clear about expectations helps people to not underperform.

Seems fair to me.

4. People managers

Do your people managers have the knowledge, skills and capability to lead their teams to high performance?

People managers are important, their behaviour ripples across the business.

They’re responsible for things like setting team and individual expectations, building culture, communication, performance & productivity.

And lots of other things!

If they’re making mistakes, going to HR for things that they should be able to handle, or you’ve never been clear about what good leadership and management looks like, you could start there.

5. Onboarding

Does your onboarding process set people up for success?

This is not just about brand new employees, but promotions, transfers, new people managers & long term absence returners count too.

Do they have the information, tools, skills and infrastructure to get up and running and make a positive impact quickly?

If not, you’re looking at potential low productivity, low performance, high churn and low engagement. No thanks.

Your businesses customers won’t thank you either.

6. Compliance

Are you meeting the compliance and regulatory training requirements of every region your business operates in?

All right, I agree, it’s not the most exciting thing L&D teams do, but compliance training is important.

It’s an exercise in mitigating risk. It’s the law.

It might save a life, save a lot of money, or save the business.

It matters. Do you need to get this sorted?

If this stuff isn’t going well, you’ll struggle to influence, build trust or get people to listen to you.

You’ll find it hard to secure that illusive ‘seat at the table’.

Sorting the ‘to-be-expected’ challenges first helps you prove yourself as an expert and demonstrate L&D’s value. It also helps you secure future budget!

It means you can get out of reactive mode, and into proactive problem solving mode.

Lay solid foundations and grow sustainably from there.

#learninganddevelopment #strategy #consultancy #leadership hashtag#learning