SMEs and Learning & Development 5

Part 5 of 6 - Operations

Plan, Plan, Plan

Do you know what the organisations main business challenges are? Why not? Is L&D demand driven; unplanned. Always reacting to the next crisis or simply delivering what learners want to attend rather than what the business needs them to attend.

Never engineer a solution. What? Do not create a programme and then look for challenges or business issues to solve. The approach must always be the reverse of that; Understand the need, then look to offer solutions that fit.

Administration

Most companies today use a Learning Management System of some sort for administration.

An LMS has many functions including:

• Administration – The ability to easily manage and administer the learning function including classroom, enrolments, course catalogue, instructors, and more.
• Facilitating Learning – An LMS can be used to schedule and facilitate live learning, build eLearning programs and courses.
• Data analysis – collect learning evaluation and report on learning,

Events

Use a range of training intervention types

Do not fall into the trap of having a piece of eLearning and a classroom course and call this blended learning. Blended means using a wide range of learning tools appropriate to the learner and the organisational goals.

Combine ‘bite-sized’ learning events, do not forget to include coaching, in-house development programmes, on-the-job training; have you considered using social networking tools, creating peer groups to meet clearly specified development needs?

Integrate every element into a coherent programme

Make sure each component part of the programme – the pre-course assessment, e-learning and other blended activities, live training event and post-course activity – relate to each other with key content and themes reinforced and enhanced throughout the learning event. Every element should stand on its own merits, but also be part of a wider learning context.

Focus the learning on skills development

Blended learning is highly effective in taking a set of abstract skills, embedding them in the individual, and enabling these new skills to be applied at work. Developing management skills, managing change programmes, negotiating, selling, and enhancing customer relationships are all disciplines ideal for blended learning.

Vendor selection - Get value from learning interventions.

As a business owner, managing director or line manager, watching the bottom line and not wasting money is always important. Money is the lifeblood of business.

As business people we know that you have to spend money to make money. The key is to invest money rather than waste it. One of the best investments you could make is in the people that work for you. So, investing in training is vital. But how do you get the most out of your training budget? There’s always more you’d like to invest in, but the budget is always limited.

Below are some ideas on how to make the most of the available budget.

·      Understand needs - Make sure the learning offered is the learning that’s required. Carry out a needs analysis referring to competency frameworks or job descriptions.

·      Look for free training – Yes honestly, if you do some research you might find a provider that has a free session.

·      In-house learning – your employees have a great deal of experience and knowledge that could be shared within the business. Here are some suggestions to make the most of this”

o  Internal “Masterclasses”

o  Job shadowing

o  Peer to peer sessions

o  Mentoring

o  Closed courses

o  Virtual courses delivered in smaller “Chunks”

·      Public courses – This is by far the most common approach, however, don’t just pick the first one you come across. Compare pricing and content from different providers. Have you considered using a training broker, this can often give access to the courses you want but with some discount available?

·      e-Learning – this is also another well-established approach, but it should not be considered as the ultimate approach.

If you would like to discuss any of these areas, contact Nutshell Learning & Development to book an exploratory 30 minute call with Les Heath.