L&D stands for learning and development. It is the training programs that organisations provide their employees to improve their skills, develop their roles within the company to improve efficiency and promote team unity.
In this article, we will take a deep dive into the L&D meaning, the key objectives of an L&D program, how to apply L&D strategies to your own business, and why our company, myAko, is the best partner to help you succeed.
Learning and development (L&D) is designed to help companies grow their business by growing their employees.
Often part of HR, whose key role is to help the organisation ensure their employees have the right skills, at the right time, to enable the organisation to grow and achieve their strategic objectives.You may have also heard the term “professional development”. This term also falls under the same category as L&D.
What does it mean to grow your employees? It means you provide them with specific skills training designed to improve their professional skills, social learning, and employee engagement, all of which benefit both the employees and your business.
L&D benefits the employees by giving them the tools, training, information and opportunity to excel in their work and rise up in the ranks of a company. It benefits you, the business owner, by turning your employees into trusted representatives of your company who will grow your brand, your clientele and your bottom line.
L&D training can cover a wide range of skills, including but not limited to:
Side note: we offer all this training along with 2000 online courses at myAko. Check it out here.
What should business owners hope to gain from an L&D program? When it comes to L&D training companies should focus on the following 5 key objectives.
Millennials, who will soon occupy 75 percent of the workforce in the United Kingdom by 2030, are desperate to learn. Not only do they want to improve their skills, but they want opportunities to grow and move up within the ranks of their parent company.
The statistics don’t lie. A Gallup survey from 2014 found that 87 percent of millennials believe L&D is important. This means that by 2030, 87 percent of three-quarters of United Kingdom workers will look to their employers for learning and development opportunities.
It’s crucial for employers to start embedding L&D programs into their companies now, so that more millennials join their workforce allowing them to compete better in a tough job market.
It costs a lot of money to hire new employees. From recruiter fees, the cost of interviewing, onboarding, expenses and hiring a new worker can cost a company thousands of pounds.
One way to save on hiring costs is to retain your current employees. To entice your employees to remain on your staff long term, you need to offer them learning and talent development opportunities.
It’s a viable strategy: in a recent LinkedIn report, 93% of employees who participated in the report stated that they would stay longer at a company if it showed a vested interest in their future career paths.
Through a robust L&D program, your employees will gain new skills that will help qualify them for promotions and raises. In return, you will gain loyal, competent and knowledgeable workers for (hopefully) years to come.
Providing your employees with learning and development training doesn’t just improve their career prospects. It also improves your capabilities and competitiveness, often leading to improvement in your bottom line.
It makes sense. Employees who are well-trained and well-equipped with the skills they need to perform optimally in the workplace will naturally bring in more sales. Furthermore, it’s been demonstrated that companies that focus on building their employees’ strengths and skills see anywhere from 14-29 percent increase in profits.
It’s also general knowledge that if you treat your employees with their best interests at heart, this often leads to increased employee and customer satisfaction, with higher employee and customer retention.
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Untrained employees who lack basic L&D such as communication and teamwork are not assets to your company. They are liabilities. An employee who lacks the knowledge skills for how to be a good teammate, an effective leader, and an ethical representative of your company poses a huge risk to the success of your business.
These types of employees often don't proactively engage in L&D programs because they are not always fully committed to their role. Often they do not leave an organisation but are fired for incompetence, as they do not reflect your company culture or achieve their individual objectives. Fail to meet the industry compliance requirements, as well as relevant laws, your organisation could be financially penalised should this lead to an adverse incident.
By providing your staff with training and a valuable learning experience, you immediately eliminate that potential risk that could come from the inside of your business.
It makes sense that the more you invest in employee development to improve their skills and workplace competency, the more satisfied your customers will be. They will appreciate the expert knowledge that your employees demonstrate, as well as the initiative, communication, and positive attitude they apply to provide an enjoyable customer experience.
Below are 6 steps you need to take to apply an L&D strategy to your business.
Your first step is to build a team to manage and coordinate your L&D program. You may want to assign the entire L&D strategy development and implementation to human resources or delegate it to multiple department heads who will work in tandem.
The latter may be a more effective strategy, as each head will possess unique insight into their department’s L&D needs.
It is vital to identify the employees or heads who will manage L&D, as well as what roles they will serve on the team. This way, there is no confusion going forward as to who is in charge of L&D, or what the vision is for the business’s L&D goals.
That brings us to step two, which is to define your business goals for L&D. What are your employees’ skills gaps? Or do they need more opportunities for growth within the company? How are you performing in the market against your organisation goals? What are your strategic objectives over the next 1-3 years.
Align this with identifying what skills you require to achieve these objectives. Undertake an organisation training needs analysis to identify what skill gaps exist. This then gives you the information to develop your HR and L&D strategy.
It's normal for these to be aligned, as you may need to recruit people with new skills, whilst also developing your team internally. Once your strategy is defined, the Director/Head of HR and the L&D manager, will be responsible for supporting the organisation to meet their people strategic objectives.
It’s important to invest in L&D software that provides easy-to-use training for your employees to take on or off the clock. Such software can also provide reports of how well the training is going, as well as performance management programs.
myAko is one such software. As we mentioned earlier, we provide over 2,000 online courses for continuous learning for employees, real time monitoring and reporting and intergration to other software such as payroll or performance management programs.
Step four is to implement the L&D strategy you have developed with the software you purchased. It may be helpful to launch it with a select number of employees to test how well they are able to use it, and how effective they find the training.
This soft launch is also a wonderful opportunity to test the software’s reporting and analysis capabilities, to find if it works for your team.
During and after your soft launch, measure the effectiveness of your L&D strategy. This is a great opportunity to obtain employee feedback and engagement with the new solution. Giving great real time feedback to your L&D team and other managers within your organisation.
Depending on how you wish to measure success this can also include external measures for customer facing employees, such as customer satisfaction or increase in sales.
adapt the strategy dependant on the survey outcomes. Tweak, change or refine the program until it achieves your L&D strategic goals. Remembering as your organisation strategic objectives or your market changes, it's essential to ensure your HR and L&D strategies are aligned.
Investing time and energy into the health, wellbeing, and professional success of your employees can only lead to greater success for your business as a whole. Therefore, learning and development shouldn't be seen purely as a cost to your business, it should be a proactive tool to drive your success.
myAko is a team of L&D professionals here to help you make the most of your L&D strategy. Our software provides everything you need to manage and implement training, all run from a cloud based SaaS LMS system that is quick to set up and easy for your employees to use.
With myAko, you will be able to:
All with myAko, a premier learning management software. Why not get hands-on and try out our system today by booking a demo here.
One of the team is ready to show you how everything works and answer any questions you might have!
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