Achieving this is not just a matter of establishing best practice within the L&D community – it’s about building the right links with the rest of the business. Relationships at all levels up and down the business are important to ensure that L&D understand the needs and provides the right interventions at the right time, to the right people, on budget.

Alignment of learning to business goals is increasingly recognised as the vital factor in helping L&D make a demonstrable impact on your organisation’s bottom line. The CIPD’s ‘Value of Learning’ research, carried out by the University of Portsmouth Business School, concluded that what really matters is the ‘Alignment’ of learning: if you get alignment right, everything else falls into place.

Knowledgepool’s Learning Consultancy team can assess the current alignment of your L&D provision to business goals and make recommendations on how to tighten the alignment, to make training more effective in supporting your business. It’s a compelling up-front alternative to the retrospective justification of learning through ROI.

Benefits:

• Better workforce productivity through more targeted training

• Easier to demonstrate the impact of training

• Easier for L&D to gain buy-in from the business

What is alignment?

All too often, learning is developed and delivered without considering how and where it contributes to business goals. A common assumption by training professionals is that training is ‘a good thing’ and the more we do, the more it helps the business. But experience and business budget holder expectations, tell us that is not necessarily the case. So, when budgets are tight, it’s vital that learning activities are carefully prioritised.

Tight alignment of learning to business goals:

• helps learning to be seen as a tool for business improvement and not just a cost to the business

• facilitates assessment of the return on investment and return on expectation of training

• makes L&D’s contribution to the business clear to the senior stakeholders.

A key skill for modern L&D practitioners is the ability to design effective blended learning solutions. This often entails the deployment of e-learning for the first time.

Our Learning Consultancy team have many years’ experience in designing and deploying e-learning: our learning architects know what works, how it works, and we acknowledge that every situation is different.

Whether e-learning is appropriate or not, our learning architects will consider a whole range of potential learning delivery options when considering the most effective solution design to meet your learning needs.

Our learning solution design methodology considers:

• The learning content. Is it the learning of facts, rules, processes, practical skills, cognitive skills and what level of judgement must be gained?

• The learners. What is the learning gap? What is their access to learning like? What past experiences of learning modes do they have? What sorts of informal learning goes on?

• The organisation. What is the organisational culture? What budget and other resources are available?

The most important aspect of any training programme is its context, and we recognise that the best understanding of the context of your learning requirement lies within your organisation.

KnowledgePool’s Learning Consultancy team has a group of highly skilled and experienced training needs analysts who provide a blueprint for the design and delivery phase of programmes by exploring and documenting:

• The business drivers behind your programme.

• The expectations of the stakeholders.

• Gaps between current and desired levels of performance.

• The required outcomes and means of measuring achievement.

• Financial and timescale considerations.

• Where the subject-matter expertise lies.

• How your culture and infrastructure might influence the programme.

• The learning preferences of the target audience.

• How the programme links to internal competencies.

• How the programme can be externally accredited or contribute towards national qualifications.

The training needs analysis will provide recommendations based on the finding from this research. These include:

• The learning objectives, which can vary from role to role.

• The most appropriate media for delivering every element of the programme.

• Learner support requirements.

In every area of every industry, directors and senior managers are being asked to justify their expenditure and find ways to make savings and cuts where they can.

We all know that training is important for the development of staff, but all too often the axe falls heaviest on L&D as executives look to eliminate what they consider surplus expenditure. It is vital that L&D teams can effectively demonstrate that effective training is integral to the company achieving its organisational goals. Viewing learning as an investment rather than a cost allows savings to be made without damaging the essential skills of your workforce.

Knowledgepool’s Learning Consultancy team can help to develop key performance indicators that are directly linked to business goals. In addition, we will agree the processes and mechanisms required to regularly track these measurements. Using a combination of our own industry experience, our bespoke technological solutions and tried and tested learning assessment methodologies, we can help formulate an evaluation strategy for anything from a single course, to your entire learning portfolio.

Our consultants design and deliver effective training evaluation strategies based upon work by Donald Kirkpatrick, Jack Phillips and Robert Brinkerhoff, but we also monitor the latest emerging information, such as the ‘Value of Learning’ research project from the CIPD and Portsmouth Business School.

A case study: Predicting the ROI of training

Knowledgepool conducted a skills assessment for a well-known IT organisation. This consisted of a series of carefully chosen competency-based questions and was issued electronically.

6,000 responses were collected, collated and merged with other organisational data. Using the findings, Knowledgepool’s consultants were able to present a detailed analysis to the client which was followed up with an in-depth feedback workshop. The workshop resulted in:

• a focused training plan which addressed skill shortages

• an estimate of the cost of the skill shortage to the organisation

• a business case for the training programme, showing a predicted ROI of 10 months

By using Knowledgepool’s unique technology and consultancy expertise our clients are able to make business decisions based on factual information, rather than (often conflicting) anecdotal evidence.

We can help you to ensure that the skills and qualifications of all your employees are compliant with the necessary legal and industry requirements.

Knowledgepool’s Learning Consultancy team, together with our Training Administration team can implement a bespoke competency framework for your organisation, which includes ongoing recording of certifications and accreditations needed for compliance purposes. In addition, we will provide regular expiry reporting for all those individuals who are due to become non-compliant and we will recommend the appropriate training and exams they need to take to take.

This compliance training tracking integrates with our Managed Learning Service offering and our Eclipse learning system to provide a seamless link between reporting an upcoming expiry and then actually booking the appropriate training course, giving you piece of mind that your organisation as a whole will remain compliant.

You get:

• Certification and accreditation recording
• Expiry reporting
• Skills and Competency gap analysis
• Proactive scheduling of re-accreditation training