session overview

“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.

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:

On joining the Absa Retail Bank, Dr Chinsamy realised that the training department was having very little meaningful impact on employees’ performance because it was stuck in a training paradigm in which compliance training was given more time and focus than business impact and performance improvement learning programmes. He immediately put in place a programme to adopt adult learning principles while identifying and addressing business priorities. By combining principle-based learning with the use of electronic Performance Support Tools (PSTs), performance coaching in Centres of Excellence and line manager support, he was able to show measurable impacts from learning subject to a proof of concept before rolling his programme out across the organisation. Join this session to find out just how he and his team accomplished this.