Is there opportunity to shape and shift the L&D role in an organization in providing needed metrics to the C-Suite?

“Measurement Matters: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” quoted by David Norton, co-author with Robert Kaplan “The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action” 1996 – Published by The President and Fellows of Harvard College. (Chapter 2, page 21).

“What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get better.”

As we approach the FYE strategy and budget reviews with our senior management, executives and Board of Directors it is the time to impress the value of business and learning metrics to the C-Suite. The learning technologies are in transition as is social learning, just-in-time learning, simulations and game technologies. It is time to address the multi-generations in the workforce with measurement and treat the L&D role in an organization as a true P/L function. It is the L&D industries’ responsibility for not being taken seriously as a business unit and producing the needed metrics to the executive management. It is time to set aside business politics as usual. If you want other business units to take L&D seriously then it is time to change the outcomes of what makes us valuable.

Each type of learning, whether it is classroom, eLearning for compliance, product training, blended learning with webinars and instructor led components all require metrics for the business to determine the business cost ratio and the learning analytics to determine if learners improved.

The big question; why do we not measure thoroughly both business and learning metrics? It has been easy in the past to say that the C-Suite is not interested, or the business unit does not want it. It could appear there is lack of interest, yet this argument is as old as the historical posted hypothesis what came first, the chicken or the egg? Additionally, we have had old Learning Management Systems (LMSs) that just did not capture the needed requirements in a report tool generator to get useable learner metrics. Yet we know today, the analytic applications are available to get metrics that measure performance and other correlated improvements in the business, such as increase sales revenue, or improved performance.

As we move into social learning, collaborative training and just-in-time learning for the workforce – how will we capture the needed business and learning analytics to provide value in our learning programs, provide value to the L&D industry to garner the true support of the C-Suite? How do we build our programs so they are sustainable and deliver the proper metrics?

I recently attended an applied learning technology conference and all the wiz-bang technologies were available to show the audience. Yet what were positioned were the ‘cool’ technology and not the business and learning values needed to the C-Suite. There is no doubt in my mind that technology is the enabler of the education programs provided, yet the business and learning analytics are what are needed for the executive management team in order to transfer the value of what is important to the business.

Everyone talks about Social Learning and Just-in-Time learning and call this ‘learning’. Ok, if we look at program types (not evaluation/measurement types such as Kirkpatrick and Bloom) for social learning and Just-In-Time – are we really learning anything? Alternatively, are we providing helpful information such as mobile directions, or product specs to regurgitate information to our customer? It could be said we need not retain that information as we can find it again. Ok – yes, we can find the information again, yet how do we measure this information so we are showing value for our profession and value to the business?

As an L&D industry, it is our job to ask, what is the program type for the ‘training’? (See below) What are the expected outcomes for this training for the individual? How does this training align with the business strategy? What metrics can we provide to show that the training has value? How do we the L&D professional show we have value?

When will we, the L&D professionals start asking these? How can we assist our organizations by making metrics top of mind during the annual review strategies with the executives and to increase the budgets for workforce training? If we truly are going to increase performance we need to begin by providing business and learning analytics to our executives to engage their attention and shape shift their mindset to incorporate metrics as part of the learning strategy for their organization.

Program Types:

Type 1 – Information Broadcast
Type 2 – Critical Knowledge Transfer
Type 3 – Skills and Competency Development
Type 4 – Certification Programs

Lastly, the window of opportunity truly is open now as talent management teams struggle to retain and engage their employees. We start with change leadership to provide metrics and quality written content for our end-users. It would be very difficult to increase productivity margins as the current productivity of an American worker is stretched to the brink. The answer is to increase hiring and train all employees with a purpose in mind.

What’s Wrong with America’s Job Engine? – by David Wessel, WSJ

What’s Wrong with America’s Job Engine? – by David WesselWednesday July 27, 2011

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904772304576468820582615858.html

And… CEOs in Their Own Words: Don’t Plan on Hiring – Willa Plank

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904772304576470484142293112.html

In reading, both articles the winners are the temporary firms hiring folks for ‘just-in-time’ needs and those with college degrees. Yet that doesn’t explain the entire trend of what to do with the ‘Change’ in the demographics of our workers. Employers are also saying they can’t find the needed skill here in the U.S. In the past, several years since this financial debacle meltdown began people have returned to Universities, Community Colleges and updated their skills. What is it that the American worker is missing for skills?

If I were a betting person, which I am not – I would say it has more to do with the geopolitical and worldwide economics than the skill set of the American worker. America still has top talent, yet can this talent compete worldwide at a price that the market currently is demanding? As mentioned in previous articles the burn out factor is significant in those who currently have jobs. People are working at the top level of their productivity and compensation is stagnant. The question we hear is how can we increase productivity in the American worker?

The answer is hiring more people, as the current people are tapped. The productivity can only be driven harder by incurring additional workers. The slogan is ‘doing less with less’ not ‘doing more with less’. Those working today are doing less with less as the productivity margins are at the tip point, and unless tipped the break-even state remains.
That brings us to the big question of change, no one likes it, especially when key motivators such as money, bonuses, perquisites, additional benefits hamper or benefit the change.

Will there be change?

This is a huge question and is truly to be answered by those in the C-Suite. The strategy and tactics that are employed have not significantly changed their motivators therefore their behaviors have not changed.

If we truly want the C-Suite to recognize the value of their employees as their competitive edge, the change then would begin with them. It is a rarer organization that has made any significant change in their own abilities to lead and receive compensation that shows they are changing with the times. Creative use of human capital is been through treating the worker as a product, to be used temporarily and just in time. What if the C-Suite was subjected to just in time hiring, would the end-results change in their organizations? I don’t know the answer to that, yet by continually changing leadership brought in from outside and promotions from inside the organization may yield more innovation and yes maybe more genuine concern for their employees.

…WSJ’s Willa Plank reports the nation’s CEOs do not see an economic recovery underway and do not plan to hire workers anytime soon. Also, over the past ten years, the American adult work force has dropped to 1983 levels. Photo: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Over the past 10 years:

• The U.S. economy’s output of goods and services has expanded 19%.

• Nonfinancial corporate profits have risen 85%.

• The labor force has grown by 10.1 million.

• But the number of private-sector jobs has fallen by nearly two million.
• And the percentage of American adults at work has dropped to 58.2%, a low not seen since 1983.

Something else is going on, too, a phenomenon that predates the recession and has persisted through it: Changes in the way the job market works and how employers view labor.

Executives call it “structural cost reduction” or “flexibility.” Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon calls it the rise of “the disposable worker,” shorthand for a push by businesses to cut labor costs wherever they can, to an almost unprecedented degree.

No one talks about that any longer. Between the end of 2007 (when American employment peaked) and the end of 2009 (when it touched bottom), the U.S. economy’s output of goods and services fell by 4.5%, but the number of workers fell by a much sharper 8.3%. Today’s puzzle: How and why employers managed to boost productivity, or output per hour of work, like never before during the worst recession in decades?

In a survey of 2,000 companies earlier this year, McKinsey Global Institute, the think tank arm of the big consulting firm, found 58% of employers expect to have more part-time, temporary or contract workers over the next five years and 21.5% more “outsourced or offshored” workers.

“Technology,” McKinsey says, “makes it possible for companies to manage labor as a variable input. Using new resource-scheduling systems, they can staff workers only when needed—for a full day or a few hours.”

More
CEOs Say Don’t Expect Much Hiring
Business Leaders Press for More Work Visas
In Their Own Words: Executives on Hiring

Even though the government counts 4.68 unemployed workers for every job opening, some employers insist they can’t find workers with the skills they need at wages they can afford.

Write to David Wessel at capital@wsj.com

CEOs in Their Own Words: Don’t Plan on Hiring – Willa Plank

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904772304576470484142293112.html

By WILLA PLANK
Wednesday July 27, 2011

The CEOs are speaking. And the message isn’t encouraging: Don’t expect many new U.S. jobs anytime soon.

WSJ’s Willa Plank reports the nation’s CEOs do not see an economic recovery underway and do not plan to hire workers anytime soon. Also, over the past ten years, the American adult work force has dropped to 1983 levels. Photo: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

These executives remained consistently cautious. They were willing to invest only in growth businesses or international markets, largely Asia.

Some of the most optimistic remarks came from temporary-staffing and labor-outsourcing companies. Much of this growth actually represents a negative for the overall jobs picture, as many of these posts represent short-term demand from other companies that are too cautious to hire full-time workers.

And even then, much of the growth is coming abroad.

Write to Willa Plank at willa.plank@dowjones.com