Article: A multi-facet L&D approach to attract talent

Learning & Development

A multi-facet L&D approach to attract talent

With the factors to business productivity getting increasingly complex the time is right for L&D initiatives to be strategic in driving success
A multi-facet L&D approach to attract talent

Across business positions today, recruiters often find themselves reaching out to a millennial talent pool to meet business requirement. As employer branding becomes a vital aspect of attracting talent, one of the key considerations for young people across the board has been the learning and development opportunities that a company provides. This is crucial for recruiters today as they redefine their value propositions for the talent outside.  But the mere act of redefining value propositions doesn’t effectively translate into the company acquiring desired talent. Without a genuine effort from HR leaders to establish a learning culture within the company, the outer shell of communicating value proportions shall soon become ineffective in today’s connected world 

L&D initiatives today need to address an ever changing demand of the talent environment while at the same time ensuring it adds to business productivity. Although these initiatives are an important part of the strategic processes of their organization, the recent study by Deloitte on Human Capital trends suggests that the readiness of L&D to up the organizational talent to execute strategy is very low. This not only impacts the current workforce within the company but also the future talent that the company hopes to attract. 

The challenge in the hands of most L&D professionals today is balance the institutional demand of the company while providing customized learning opportunities to its diverse workforce. And with the millennial generation becoming an ever more important portion of the talent pool, most organisations face the need to evolve processes and introduce more robust leaning processes, both in terms of content and in the way it’s shared with the workforce. 

L&D professionals are often driven by the need to push the organization’s ability to meet business outcomes by identifying core areas for talent improvement. For this there needs to be a comprehensive system in place that is supported by the managers and executives, has a clear understanding of why L&D is important to the learner and the company, and has access to tools for assessment and overall reinforcement of the learning content. 

But with L&D opportunities becoming a key differentiator of organization, it’s high time that leaders bring in the necessary innovations in their L&D initiatives today. And this doesn’t limit itself to mere adoption of a new LMS across the organisation. Rather the idea’s success pivots itself to the creation of an organization wide mandate to relook at learning modules from a fresh perspective. To leverage the opportunities that a strong learning program provides depends upon the ability of HR to adapt and introduce new concepts into the programs. By establishing a fluid learning culture, a company can provide good career development opportunities and with it the scope for employees to expand their horizon. Much more than what they would have experienced under a structured, ‘one size fits all’ approach. 

A way to avoid getting stuck in the ‘one size fits all’ approach to create learning modules is by providing individualized learning using both audio visual and textual mediums. Self directed learning, as its usually called, has now become the new focus of many successful L&D initiatives. Initiatives enabling an environment where individuals can take initiative and responsibility of her/his own learning have been able to increase its effectiveness. The ability to self-learn allows the individual get contextualised information. Learning occurs naturally and contextually as part of, rather than apart from, the daily flow of work. When this method is used in combination with data analytics, companies are able to guide the learning journeys of their workforce in a better fashion.  With a strong focus on developing employee’s skill and knowledge levels, self learning can be used to create an integrated solution that aims to accelerate individualized employee development by using big data algorithms that identify hidden patterns in content consumption, personalized learning plans that adapted to individuals need and strong analytics to quantify the business impact.

An organizations success today heavily depends on its ability to address the rapidly evolving business challenges by providing extensive learning and development opportunities to their employees. By knowing and engaging their employees, organizations can create a sustainable source of talent. But to do so, a robust learning paradigm within the company should be a sustainable act by the company. Learning leaders ought to define goals for adoption, and then to ensure their employees participate by embedding continuous learning activities into their daily workflow and remain highly accessible and at the same time remain visible across the enterprise. By knowing and engaging their employees, organizations can create a functioning pipeline that attracts the new entrants of the talent pool, more actively.

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Topics: Learning & Development, #LAndDLeague

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