session overview

Wednesday 25th January 2012

11:30 - 12:30 Track 3 Session 1

Business aligned learning

“We must be aligned to business needs” is a common cry among L&D professionals - but how? The devil of this is in the detail. In this session Laura Overton details the ways in which learning can ensure that it is part of the fabric of the organisation. Her research-based presentation reveals the practices of those that integrate learning into the business successfully. Meanwhile Dr Brian Chinsamy has a dramatic tale of overhauling learning at a retail bank, moving it from a department that pushed out courses to one that was truly aligned with the business.

P1: How L&D can lead on business agility

Laura Overton, Managing Director, Towards Maturity

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, private and public sector organisations alike know one thing is essential for success: agility. This ability to adapt rapidly and cost effectively to change is crucial, and the L&D function can play a leading part in making it happen. In this session Laura Overton draws on Towards Maturity's recent ‘Boosting Business Agility’ report based on 8 years’ research with over 1,800 organisations, to help L&D limber up for the future by considering:

Readiness: preparing business for change
Adding value: creating effective business partnerships
Results: demonstrating impact
Preparation: Creating an agile L&D function
Change: 3 things we must do differently in 2012

P2: Learning as a competitive advantage

Nic Laycock

Eskom, the giant South African power utility, is facing massive challenges in expanding rapidly to meet the country’s burgeoning energy needs. To achieve the necessary growth the company needs to attract and retain large numbers of young professionals from many disciplines, especially engineers. In seeking to do this, Eskom faces competition for skills from other sectors of the economy. However its L&D activity, typical of companies in the sector, was traditional and not aligned to the values and practices of a networked and technologically enabled generation. Coupled with this non-alignment, there are additional challenges from the widespread location of plant, communications issues, a lack of sufficient subject matter experts to provide traditional training and coaching.

To meet those challenges, Nic Laycock is assisting Eskom in putting in place a leading edge solution that embraces the full range of technology and the social media, aimed at creating leverage in recruitment, faster time to competence, the development of a new cohort of subject matter experts, and which includes vertical integration with universities.

Join this session to hear what is being done to:

Move away from the traditional ‘push’ training department
Integrate learning, knowledge and performance
Choose and leverage the right performance tools
Go beyond knowledge to performance enhancement
Transform training into learning and performance improvement even in a conservative environment
Break new ground in the creation of a totally virtual university