Management Competencies for Successful Learning: The Integrated Role of Learning and HR

Eric Lesser - 9/26/06

In order to maintain a solid presence at the helm of businesses, HR must take its relationship with learning organizations to a new level. This requires keeping its focus on strategic issues and adapting new management competencies.

It’s not often senior HR executives find the time to meet in one place, much less share insights, discuss best practices and take stock of their profession. When they do, inevitably there is a dialogue about the origin of their discipline. The focus of such gatherings, however, is increasingly and inevitably where the HR function might be headed — HR is poised at a critical point where, with the right set of management competencies, professionals have the opportunity to create a more strategic role for HR within the enterprise.

No matter from where they hail, or what industry they represent, they agree on this key point: If HR wants to retain its seat at the senior management table, the HR and learning organizations must take their relationship to a new level. Increasingly, both learning and HR organizations are going to be judged not on their ability to simply support the basic needs of the business but to deliver strategic insights that proactively address changes and enable organizations to more effectively source, evaluate and motivate employees in an increasingly turbulent business environment.

Across industries, changing business conditions, demographics and globalization have raised the need to understand and manage the dynamics of talent, from sourcing to resource management and training to recognition systems. To allow HR to focus on these more strategic issues, the next-generation HR organization must promote the use of shared services and employee self-service to move away from its traditional role of answering questions and resolving disputes. Further, the HR organization needs to work more effectively with other vendors in its extended enterprise, providing the tighter coordination that is needed to deliver administrative services. Finally, HR needs to look inward at its own talent, training and learning models to ensure its employees have not only the raw talent but the capabilities, skills, confidence, and access to the training and education needed to ensure a strategic and demand-driven flow of properly enabled talent.

In close partnership with the learning organization, HR has the opportunity to create a nexus for learning within the organization. This new link will serve as the catalyst for the learning function, moving beyond the traditional roles of both HR and learning, to become not only the source for coaching, teaching and mentoring within the organization but a key player in the process of deciding where to deploy core organizational resources — namely, talent — to the greatest business advantage.