Business Value of L&D (Pulse)

Learnovate and the Irish Institute of Training and Development co-hosted a workshop with members of Ireland’s Learning and Development (L&D) industry to identify the current challenges they face. The issue of most concern emerging from the workshop was “the need to show the business value of L&D to the senior leadership team”. Learnovate subsequently carried out a research project in the area, culminating in an analysis report and hypothesised model to resolve the issue.

The report took a multi-lens view to investigate the space, including:

• Case studies of organisations in Ireland currently showing business value.
• Current academic thoughts in the area.
• The L&D industry associations’ views.

Recent industry research uncovered the evident need for L&D to show business value, a Udemy for Business report found 77% of L&D leaders are seeing more demand to show business value.

Solution

From our research, an initial hypothesis was put forward for a model with the potential to support L&D in showing business value. A simple but significant shift was to think of business value as a parallel activity to learning evaluation, rather than the end of the same chain. Also the model sought to provide practical guidelines toward achieving the business value goal through a four-stage structure: Plan, Explore, Analyse, Share (PEAS). The PEAS model proposed is flexible to allow for the context-driven nature of L&D from organisation to organisation, scaffolded to assist L&D in implementing it, and efficient so not to demand too much additional time from L&D.

Hypothesised model to show business value – PEAS

Opportunity

The best innovations come from co-creation, Learnovate partnered with two organisations in phase 2, a multi-national law firm with a base in Ireland and an Irish financial organisation. The goal of this phase was to further develop PEAS, to refine, define and deploy a pilot prototype model, with real cases. The project ran for four months and involved five online meetings with both the law firm and the financial institution. Input from participants was very valuable and reasonably light touch. On completion our test projects had uncovered nearly €2 million and 36 tonnes of carbon emissions in value across the two companies, directly linked to L&D activity.

Subsequently, to support the adoption of the PEAS model Learnovate developed PULSE. PULSE is a demonstrator software technology designed to assist L&D in the deployment and management of PEAS projects, see video below.

Working Group Members

• Axiom Law
• Irish League of Credit Unions
• Irish Institute of Training and Development (IITD)