Most people don’t realize that learning and development is something they have to plan and work towards every moment in their profession. You may be a business development or technical person, but that  does not make a difference. You still need to plan your own learning and development.

Unfortunately, many companies do not have the proper structure to implement a learning and development framework. This is because of various reasons.

Reason #1: Lack of management support

Whenever you have poor management support for learning and development, it basically means that such activities are merely going to be lip service and not actually acted upon. You will want to honestly consider whether such an organization is supporting you as an individual. By developing its human resources, a company helps to retain its employees while increasing productive potential. Sadly, many companies have a corporate culture where the belief in training is limited and fail to logically assess the usefulness of talent development in their organizations. It is in such organizations where training and development must have even higher management support because employees are waiting for the opportunity to leave whenever they can – especially after they feel they have “gained” enough to quit while they are ahead.

Reason #2: Lack of internal competence in learning and development activities

More and more, larger organizations have a Learning And Development team because they feel the need to enhance their capabilities as part of the strategic plan for developing their employees. Unfortunately, there are many companies that assign the L&D function to the Human Resource team that may be competent in the technical aspects of HR (administration, payroll and benefits) but have no clue about the training and development cycle. When asked what they want to achieve, they basically shoot in the dark.

Reason #3: The belief that only training is the answer

At some level, training is useful. However, there are many times when this is implemented and yet, talented people leave. Hence, training is not the only answer. The main issue is not just training, but the organizational climate that matters. Are your appraisal systems in place? Are your managers empowered to support training efforts? Do they even lead by example? Are training results actually monitored and appraised? Furthermore, a proper plan of action will also include the organization’s ability to build their own ongoing capabilities for development, such as (1) a learning and development tool for planning goals; (2) internal coaches and champions who are trained to deliver impact back to the individuals; (3) appraisal criteria that assess the effects of such coaching, planning and achievement of intended goals.

Plan, Starting With Individual Development Plans

To start off, you need a way to have managers learn how to use individual development plans to discuss, monitor and coach subordinates. A simple structure would be to plan goals that are specific, measurable, targeted, time-bound, frequently reviewed for feedback, and challenging enough to help an individual become motivated to improve. Later on, this can evolve into assessing training programs that individuals can attend because they develop pre-specified competency sets based on your development plans. This simple move actually increases retention and employee satisfaction.

For more information about how to implement a learning and development structure within your organization, and to show support for employee development, contact us for a more in-depth meeting and presentation.