Transformer skills for HR and Learning & Development

It’s a great time to be in learning

With the COVID lockdown, we had no choice but to do things differently, because overnight, our world of learning shifted dramatically, into a world where digitization and Fourth Industrial revolution is now a reality.  Overnight we lost our face-to-face classrooms, “pivoted” to delivering learning digitally and as a result learning became the flavor of the month with the business because they require new skills at a speed and pace that historically we as learning have been unaccustomed to.

“We’ve always done it this way”

The reality is that you know we actually can’t keep developing and delivering learning into organisations as we’ve done in the past. Reskilling starts with L & D, new mindsets, new roles, new skillsets, new mandate.  Practitioners and L & D professionals need to be really on top of their game. Armed with the skills that the organization needs, but more importantly with the skills that they need in order to make sure that everybody is on board.  L & D has now become a focal point in an organization and what organisations are expecting is for people to develop their skills at the pace of the organization and the pace of their strategy.

Stepping in to deliver learning at the speed of business

What we learnt from 2021

• We learnt to be more flexible and enable workers to do their jobs with more autonomy and in new ways.
• We learnt to be more human-centric, bringing a stronger focus on empathy, are and wellbeing at work.
• And we learnt about digital transformation.  We now know that we can do things faster than we previously thought and build solutions that get better over time.
• The HR profession has also transformed.  We’re no longer talking about “getting a seat at the table”; we are now sitting there.

Josh Bersin

So once you’ve got the seat at the table, what conversations are you having?  What skill sets are you bringing to the party in terms of making sure that your business has trust in you? Do you really know that you can deliver on the learning mandate and the skills mandate of the organization and see delivery at the speed of the strategy and the demands of a strategy?

How do we shift our perspectives as HR and L & D?

• We need to deeply understand the world of our learners and employees and by doing that we need to immerse ourselves as a learner.  You need to be a constant learner and you can’t be in L&D if you’re not a learner by heart and you don’t have that growth mindset.
• We need to develop a different skill set for our HR and L & D teams.
• We need to partner closely with our business.
• And then I think that the main thing is also to get to a place where you are re calibrating learning solutions to be more future fit.
• More future fit in terms of untrained skills and more future fit in terms of the delivery mechanisms and the ecosystems with which we are delivering skills into the organization.

The Super 8 Transformer Skills (HR & L&D) – EdCast LXP

We need to build capability and proficiency within these 8 skill sets.

STRATEGIST

A strategist who can really get to a place where they can literally align decisions and plans against the short term, medium term and long term needs of the business and people.  You don’t have to be an executive to do that.

PORTFOLIO MANAGER

A portfolio manager who can optimize the entire content portfolio and ascertain what generates maximum returns

MARKETEER

A marketeer  who can make known the value of learning, especially in times of business slowdown and embrace the opportunity to change the brand perception of learning and improve the value proposition in terms of employee engagement.  Solutions are going to be outliers to that broader employee ecosystem.

TECHNOLOGIST

Drive adoption of remote working and digital learning tools, really understanding the tools that would enable learning to flow in in the workplace.

AMBASSADOR

Role model the mindset and  behaviours of an everyday learner.  You need to be deeply passionate, deeply immersed in the world of the learner, flying the flag for learning in an organisation.  You can’t really be an ambassador if you don’t have the change in your mind.

DATA SCIENTIST

Develop a robust framework of  metrics and use analytics to make data-driven decisions. One of the first things you need to take to the table when you’re engaging with business or with your executives is data and the story and the insights that come with it, and more importantly, what you are going to do with the data.

CHANGE MAESTRO

Lead and accelerate change efforts through  proactive communication and stakeholder management.

You want to get to a place where you are orchestrating change and mindset shifts in the organization, using learning and development, learning tools, learning portfolios, learning programs.

SCOUT

Seek and identify experts in the organisation and make tacit knowledge explicit.  Tell the story of what learning is happening in your organization.  This is tightly linked to being a strategist

So, what are you?

Are you finding mentors?

Are you finding coaches or tools and technology that will enable learning in your organization?

How well are you orchestrating and connecting them into your learning programs, a learning ecosystem?

It’s really about how they show up and how they are energized to ensure that everybody is learning and in people learning they become relevant.  Through that relevancy, you have retention, non resignation and engagement. And you certainly see and, and I’ve seen it in one of our clients where it leads to such engagement in the organization that the strategy is just flying.

So learning plays a big big, big role in an organization and I get a sense that we kind of sit on the fence as to whether we step in and step up or wait for HR to do it.

To quote Steve Jobs, “Learn continually.  There’s always one more thing to learn”

The question will be asked in corporates as to whether they need an LED team.  Of course there is relevance in an L & D team, but they run the risk of being marginalized if they are not stepping up to really drive the learning agenda, the skills agenda for their particular organization.  The transformation of skills is key.