December 23rd, 2024 – By Rebecca Taylor, CCO and Co-founder of SkillCycle
Companies invest in learning and development to retain employees — and because it is a critical factor in building a thriving work culture.
However, securing the resources to implement talent development programs isn’t always easy. HR leaders often struggle to gain meaningful support. At the same time, building a culture that supports learning and closing skills gaps can be essential to driving company performance and employee retention.
As Gallup reports, organizations that have invested strategically in employee development enjoy 11% greater profitability and are twice as likely to retain their staff.
Beyond retention, effective talent development aligns with business goals. This helps organizations attract top talent, foster engagement, and drive progress toward lasting market advantage.
Let’s dig into how you can gain buy-in from the C-suite for your talent development plans by exploring:
Executives should include learning in the early stages of every company decision. As organizations create long-term strategies and set business goals, leaders should also know what type of talent development will be necessary to achieve those goals.
Research from McKinsey shows companies that put talent at the core of their business strategy realize higher total shareholder returns than their competitors. Not surprising, given the numbers also show that top performers in critical roles deliver 800% more productivity than average performers in the same roles.
When you consider learning from the beginning, the next question becomes: Which employees can already do the work that needs to be done, or who can learn to do that work? Then, consider how you can implement learning. You want to make it easy for people to learn how to do what you’ve outlined so you can reach the objectives you’ve set.
When everyone in the organization participates in the conversation and understands the connection between talent development and company performance, you’ll have linked learning to your desired company outcomes. Tying learning to outcomes better positions you to ensure you have the people and skills required to achieve company goals.
Creating a learning culture that ties employees’ professional development to business objectives can help HR teams gain the traction they need to implement meaningful learning experiences.
Many leadership teams say they want a learning culture, but organizations often lack the systems to implement it. Disparate systems may store critical employee development data, but may not provide clear integration or insights from that data. When this occurs, your HR data can stagnate, yielding no outcomes, progress, or return on investment (ROI).
Those at the executive level may forget that it takes a village to develop valuable employees, drive meaningful learning, and achieve business goals. It also requires resources: time, money, people, and tools. Learning needs to be a conduit to growth in a relevant and applicable way for the people who do the work each day.
Creating a meaningful learning culture requires feedback loops and clear areas of development for everyone. HR leaders, managers, and individuals must make space for learning, build relationships, and establish a safe place for feedback.
If the connection between development opportunities and business success is missing, employees may find the learning irrelevant to their jobs and long-term goals, which can kill engagement.
Employees who try to learn without any opportunity to apply their new skills are unlikely to retain those skills. The same outcome will happen when the learning isn’t relevant to their trajectory in the company or how they do their job each day.
In contrast, when leaders begin to see learning as a critical component of business strategy, it becomes easier to make the necessary resources available when needed.
Consider how HR functions in most organizations. Employees report directly to a manager, who is primarily responsible for their work and how they spend their time. Leadership has typically tasked managers with achieving goals for their teams or departments.
HR leaders may encounter resistance if managers have no say in how the organization prioritizes learning within their teams. Instead of working to build a learning culture alone, try these three tips for getting the buy-in you need:
Start by involving managers and leaders early in conversations about the skills your company will need to reach its goals. When you make learning part of the bigger picture, it’s easier for leadership to see how it fits into the organization’s success.
For example, if the company plans to expand into new markets or adopt new technologies, you can highlight how talent development will be key to achieving these goals. This isn’t just about presenting a plan. It’s about creating a partnership in which leadership feels part of shaping the solution from the start.
Executives are more likely to get on board with your ideas if they clearly see the connection to business outcomes. Instead of just pitching a program, show how it impacts key goals — improving productivity, reducing turnover, or preparing employees for critical projects.
Don’t forget to invite leadership into the process. They’re more likely to champion your ideas when they feel like collaborators instead of just approvers.
Learning works best when it’s woven into the daily routine, and managers play a huge role in making that happen. Your job is to help them succeed by giving them the tools and support they need to make talent development part of their team culture.
That might mean coaching managers on how to have career conversations during one-on-ones or how to link development goals to team projects.
When you position yourself as their go-to resource instead of the person responsible for doing it all, you empower managers to take ownership. That’s where real change happens.
Ideally, HR isn’t solely responsible for executing learning programs. Instead, HR can make powerful connections between the executive team’s desired outcomes and the professional development employees need to achieve those goals. The trick is to identify where you have the most influence, which may be through managers rather than directly with employees.
A better solution involves integrating learning and organizational goals into one fully connected ecosystem that combines performance data and outcomes to create clear progression and ROI.
What does this connection look like in the workplace? Let’s consider the example of a company setting an annual sales goal of $100 million.
Once you connect company and learning goals, the next step is immediately identifying the skills and competencies your team needs to generate $100 million in sales this year. For example, you might identify that your sales team needs negotiation, communication, and analytical skills.
With a fully integrated learning talent management system, you can now map out the development needed to achieve these core competencies and which employees are best positioned to develop these skills. You can implement the necessary professional development relevant to each employee’s career goals, which increases the company’s likelihood of success.
As you develop these competencies in people, you can track and analyze their progress in their personalized journeys to source more opportunities, sell more, and close more deals.
What is the most significant impact of a talent development system that connects all of this information for you? As you see the data showing increasing competency development, you can see clear ROI to the employee, the sales team, and the company.
Combining performance reviews, employee engagement, goal setting, and data analysis into one system connects employee development to business results.
We can support your journey in building buy-in for a learning culture in your organization. To learn more, book a demo with our team.
