When choosing to join a company, there are many things to keep in mind. The salary package, the scope of promotions, the perks offered. However, many organizations miss out on L&D Strategy, a crucial thing.
What is L&D?
L&D stands for Learning and Development. It’s a holistic process adopted by companies to facilitate personal and professional growth for their employees by teaching them additional skills that benefit the employee and the employer.
Why L&D?
According to a 2021 report by LinkedIn, over 94% of employees prefer working with organizations that provide learning and development opportunities to enhance their careers further. Upskilling is an essential feature considered by employees to be extremely valuable in this global market where competition for jobs is rising.
An effective learning and development plan also gives an edge to companies over others who don’t adopt L&D practices. Learning also boosts the morale of employees and leads to higher job retention and happiness amongst workers.
Building a Learning and Development Plan
An efficient L&D plan Template needs a proper approach and strategy to be followed. Clear-cut expectations and goals are vital. An adequate learning and development framework brings out the maximum efficiency for the employees and the employers.
Here are some strategies for building an effective L&D plan Template.
- Systematic Framework
When it comes to building an effective employee learning and development plan, it’s not an overnight process. All organizations have a different set of employees with varying cultures of work. Inculcating L&D and expecting results by comparing it to some other organization wouldn’t be fair.
Also, the process is slow but effective. You need time to set up a systematic framework wherein the needs of employees and employers match, and you set goals for the future. Additionally, you should customize the plans to bring out maximum efficiency.
- Realistic Goals and Objectives
Additionally, something to keep in mind while setting up a learning and development framework is that the goals need to be realistic. Like how companies and organizations differ in their work culture and goals, individual employees differ in their skill set.
While preparing an L&D strategic plan, it needs to be customized to suit the needs of individual employees. Customizability leads to higher involvement from employees, which in turn brings out better results.
- Identify Company Goals
Not every company can implement the same L & D Strategy. To create an effective strategy, the company needs to identify their goals, where they currently stand and tailor the training and development strategy according to those criteria.
- Mutual Development
When it comes to an excellent L&D plan Template, development should focus on both the company and the employee. While the employees benefit from upskilling, the company benefits from increased productivity and employee retention. Thus, you need to bring a healthy balance where there’s mutual development between the company and the employee.
How to Build an L&D Strategy?
Since you have a fair idea about the learning and development strategy and its potential benefits by now, it’s vital to have a systematic plan to develop a practical framework for facilitating development. It would help if you had the following in mind while building an effective learning and development plan.
- In-House Coaching
Various studies have shown that employers who coach their employees in multiple skills related to their field and nature of work lead to more satisfied employees and increased productivity. Coaching forms the base of a learning and development plan. Managers receive training to effectively coach employees, leading to higher employee satisfaction.
- Learning Culture
While it’s true that most employees prefer organizations with opportunities to upskill themselves, the organization needs to imbibe a learning culture. A learning culture effectively promotes team bonding, with knowledge shared across the board.
Companies sometimes face selfishness where employees believe the only way to rise is by putting someone else down. An influential learning culture ensures that respect for each other is vital. Skills and knowledge are to be something that is to be shared rather than hidden.
- On-Demand Learning Opportunities
Another effective strategy to facilitate training and development strategy is to customize learning strategies suiting the employees’ needs. Creating short courses on various content relating to the field would help employees learn at their own pace without time pressure or a lack of interest in a particular course.
Short courses also help employees quickly identify whether it’s of interest or not rather than wasting time and resources on a long monotonous course.
- Individualize
Not every employee is the same. While some might be comfortable with the digital medium, some might prefer physical learning. While some might like the teaching pace to be slow, some might get bored finding the rate too slow. In short, every employee has different skill sets and comfort levels.
A one size fits all solution wouldn’t be effective while implementing an employee learning and development plan.
Customized plans to suit individual needs help to produce better results. After all, the organization’s goal is to facilitate maximum growth for the employee and the employers. Thus, customizing tailor-made plans leads to better interest in learning by the employees.
- Potential and Rewards
Every individual has different skill sets. Some might be perfect for a particular course, while others might be better at something else. It does not mean that employees who aren’t quick to respond are bad. But, employees who possess and showcase the potential for a particular course or skill need to focus on bringing out their best potential.
In the future, they could share their experience and take lectures teaching others through the skills they learned.
Similarly, the human brain works on rewards. It does not have to be a monetary reward, yet, if you reward employees for working hard on a learning and development plan, it increases motivation for working hard and, in turn, produces better results.
- Preventing Exclusivity
There’s often a problem faced in large settings. Extroverts and people who are loud get in focus, whereas introverts usually aren’t focused. In comparison, this might not be a problem in a smaller environment where course teachers can give individual attention. But on a large scale, it gets tougher to pay attention
to every individual. Often, it leads to a situation where some employees don’t receive enough attention. Consequently, the lack of attention leads to a lack of concentration and produces fewer quality results.
When developing an effective L & D strategy, it’s vital to prevent this exclusivity and promote holistic learning wherein the groups are short and due attention is paid, especially to people who aren’t the loudest.
Conclusion
With a fair idea about the learning and development framework, you can bring out the best result for your organization and employees using the above strategies.
An individually customized plan, while imbibing a learning culture in the organization, will ensure that the employees are more motivated and, in turn, utilize their full potential. Understanding the needs of employees and setting out clear goals will help an organization create a practical training and development strategy, producing the results that they want.