The role of Chief Learning Officer is to spread relevant knowledge across an organization but with a plethora of workers owning disparate job roles and personalities, it is essential to perceive the wider picture of the company in order to align the learning initiatives to the overall objectives that the business has been built to achieve.
There are three core spheres that need the attention of CLOs in order to enhance the learning capacity of workers and this article shall throw light on all three of them.
- Performance Transformation – it’s time to evolve from mere trainers to competent performance consultants
As per the Chief Learning Officer survey, almost twenty-seven percent of Chief Learning Officers believe that their learning schemes are not in line with the company objectives and that being the case, it is no possible to upgrade the performance of the business.
Performance transformation is one tough nut to crack, epically because in most Learning & Development organizations, professionals have out a wider focus on creating programs that are enjoyable in the pursuance of helping learners consume what the trainers are wanting to convey. So basically, their prime concern is to improve the quality of the training sessions and not the overall performance of the trainees.
Therefore, bringing a change in the mindset is essential but it is still just half the battle. The Learning & Development department needs to revive their modes of transferring knowledge along with expanding their reach across the smallest of arenas that can make a huge difference in the volumes of skills that learners can acquire.
Widening the horizons of their knowledge to assist trainees is another route that L&D specialists must take to elevate the performance of workers and consequently the whole organization. They must become a helping hand to employees from different departments. From helping the sales team in improving sales conversions to counseling the customer service team in boosting their listening skills, there is a multitude of domains that the L& D division need to spend its time on.
- Chief Learning Officers must take ownership of Business Transformation
Evolution doesn’t take overnight unless the mission and vision of the Learning & Development department are aligned to those of the entire company. The unfortunate part is that the L&D role is typically associated with fabricating learning programs and conducting them rather than putting the learning strategy in sync with the comprehensive strategy of the firm which can only change if learning becomes the primary agent of organizational advancement.
It is completely up to the Chief Learning Officer to drive this agenda center-stage which can be done by making it a focal area of the success criteria.
Top Requirements for Transforming Business Performance
- L&D has to act as an agent of business change.
- L&D must attain a deeper understanding of tasks and roles across the entire company.
- Aligning L&D efforts and strategy to that of the organization.
- L&D practitioners should develop themselves into performance consultants.
