If you’ve been following learning and development (L&D) industry trends for the past couple of years, the increased emphasis on measurement and demonstrating impact in a way that resonates with the business cannot be missed. While industry guidance for measurement and impact is vast, there is generally agreement on evolving our approach to enablement so we are “thinking like the business.” Some of us may feel confident iterating our work and business partnerships so our effort is reflected in business impact aligned to business priorities. Others may intellectually understand why this is important but may be uncertain about what to do next. For those of us in the second group — fear not. We have an example that will hopefully demonstrate how this approach could be applied to similar enablement requests.

Getting to the Heart of Training Requests

“My team needs time management training.”

If your L&D team is aligned to the business, you’ve likely fielded a similar request. It can be tempting to immediately sift through your in-house content library or identify a vendor with a relevant course but — do we know why the business partner is requesting time management training? Are we certain time management training (or any training at all) can solve the problem that led to the request?

There is an art and a science to L&D. When we receive requests, thinking like an investigative journalist will help us get to the root of the challenge instead of simply addressing symptoms of the problem. Your training intake can start with the following series of questions to determine if training is a viable solution and to help the business connect the dots between the idea of time management training and the reality of increasing time management skills.

1. What business problem does time management training solve?
2. How will learners’ behavior change as a result?
3. What impact will the business experience because of these changed behaviors?
4. How was time management identified as a viable solution?
5. How confident are you that time management training is the problem?

By asking these questions, we can determine what else is prompting this request. For example, the business leader may be responding to the engagement survey feedback that their team lacks time to prioritize their professional development. Upon deeper probing, we may learn managers haven’t received training on how to have development conversations and may not be challenging teams to set skill-building or stretch goals. If we took action on the initial time management request, the business wouldn’t see the engagement data improve because we haven’t enabled managers’ career development coaching skills or supported teams with career pathing resources and managing up skills.

Once we’ve identified the root cause of the training request, we can validate alignment to business goals and priorities. While the team may benefit from their managers receiving career development training and we know emphasizing career growth is important for engagement and productivity, this may not be the most important business priority. It also may not be the only component of the request.

Here are two other factors to consider:

• Performance gaps: If the business has missed their revenue goals three quarters in a row, we may need to prioritize helping them build product knowledge or objection handling skills first. Career development training may be important, but it may not be the right time given more pressing performance gaps. Using our consulting skills to help our business partners rank their requests will ensure L&D is positioned to deliver business impact and focused on the right initiatives.
• Accountability challenges: If we only trained individual contributors on identifying and setting professional development goals, this may not solve the wider issue related to a gap in leadership skills. Managers will be key in driving a sustainable solution that will lead to behavior change — and business impact.

Your enablement plan should include training and change management for the most senior leaders of the business, for direct managers and for teams — and ideally there is an opportunity to train leaders ahead of their teams. Working with your business leaders to identify which metrics align to the enablement request and identifying to what extent training can actually influence the outcome is vital to demonstrating business impact. In this example, the most senior leader of this business unit will still need to drive accountability with their leaders to implement the career development framework and prioritize career development conversations with team members.

Putting It Into Practice

Here is a hypothetical breakdown of how you can turn these tips into a training reality.

Business challenge: Poor employee engagement (score of 55) has led to increased attrition rates (40%), costing the business $XX annually in replacement and onboarding costs. Limited opportunities for growth and advancement are cited among the top three reasons employees exit the company.

Business goal: Improve employee engagement to score of 75 by enabling managers and teams with a career development framework and associated resources to decrease attrition to 20%, saving the business $XX annually in replacement and onboarding costs.

Enablement solution: (using the Think, Know, Do framework)

• Think — Change management: leadership buy-in and business unit buy-in.
• Know — Training and reinforcement: managers and teams.
• Do — Accountability: senior leaders, managers and teams. Additional business strategies influencing employee engagement.

Once you confirm the business goal and associated metrics, ensure you have access to the data source allowing you to track progress against the goal (in this example, engagement and attrition data). From here, you can design your program objectives, change management/communication approach, evaluation plan, learning methodologies and associated learning objectives to meet the needs of your program objectives.

While this seems like a lot of work — it is! It requires a mindset shift for L&D professionals and business partners alike on the role L&D can play to drive business impact. If we had enabled the time management request submitted to us initially, we would have spent less time on the strategy and execution (with a quicker deliverable) but we would have missed the opportunity to address a deeper challenge costing the business talent and overhead. By taking a step back and identifying the associated business challenge, goals, and metrics of enablement requests, we can ask better questions, uncover more pressing needs and focus on the right things for our learners.

By “thinking like the business,” we can drive learner-centricity which is what led many L&D professionals to this industry in the first place.