Learning Launch

Challenge  I am part of Human Resource Center of Expertise team and our challenge was to launch the  Learning and Development framework for the organization. Our organization is made of up of 6  different entities operating out of different geographies. Our aim was to bring the entire  organization under one L&D framework. The project scope included interviews from  employees, Business Unit Heads, HR on the learning needs of the employees, and the learning  and development requirements from business.     Selection  Our team had already signed an online learning portal with whom we were to collaborate for  the training content. Our team went through several design thinking activities/tools, to  consolidate the learning content into programs that are relevant for our employees and  business, so we are ready to try the learning launch tool.     Application  For our first application, we focused on a small group of employees pertaining to few business  units. We provided them with a predefined set of courses that they were required to do. The  courses were selected for each employee by their managers. We wanted to gauge how the  employees felt about the learning programs that they were provided. This tested our  assumption that the structure and execution were the main challenge that we were facing in  encouraging employees to take up learning. Our team got together and ran a mini survey with  these selected employees to understand why they were not interested in taking up learning.   What we learnt was that employees wanted a broader catalogue of courses to choose from and  to be able to choose their own courses and not limited by the mandatory choice made by HR or  their manager. Next, our team went through the program catalogues and instead of making it  employee specific we made it business unit specific; i.e. employees could view a variety of  courses to choose from which were aligned to the competencies that were required for the  development and growth of the business unit.     For our second launch, we focused on giving the employee a catalogue of courses to choose  form. A choice to learn the courses that they felt were most appropriate to hone their  competencies. While we kept the larger objective i.e. talent development to align with business  goals, we opened the learning programs for employees. This allowed employees to take charge  of their skills and competencies development. Instead of allocating a course to an employee, a  catalogue of courses were given to employee to choose from.

Insights   By applying the learning launch tool, our team identified our assumptions and designed  launches to test these assumptions. We thought through anticipated results, expecting to find  that a more agile approach would help improve adoption of learning and that both our  employees and Business unit heads would be open to the new concept of allowing employees  to take charge of their learning by selected the courses from the learning catalogues. Moving  forward, our team will review this insight and incorporate it into future launch designs. The  ongoing incorporation of insight is particularly important at this stage, as launches come before  a full rollout in the design thinking timeline.      Approach   Given that our team has already gone through several design thinking activities/tools and are at  this stage in the timeline, the learning launch is the appropriate tool. We will review the insight  gained from our first two launches and incorporate this insight into future launch designs for  the launch of the modules within our Learning and Development framework.

