Today's High-Impact Learning Organization

Reduced spending, increasing globalization and a talent management focus are changing the learning organization. Today’s industry leaders excel in business alignment, organizational strategy, content development and learning delivery strategy.

Bersin & Associates recently updated one of its largest and most interesting research studies, “The High Impact Learning Organization.” This research study is designed to analyze the key trends and drivers of high-performing training organizations.

When we first embarked on this research in 2003, corporate training organizations were focusing on the adoption of learning technologies and LMSs, implementation of e-learning and creating shared service teams to manage the proliferation of technology.

Back then, the biggest drivers of impact were the adoption of performance consulting and development of what we called the federated organization model that establishes a clear distinction between the roles of a centralized training organization and business-unit training organizations.

In this recent update, we reached out to more than 800 corporate training leaders and again asked them to tell us about their major priorities, strengths, weaknesses and business drivers.

The world has changed.

While learning and development organizations continue to struggle with technology and organization, priorities have shifted. Here are the top issues on the minds of learning leaders this year:

1. Improving business alignment.
2. Reducing costs.
3. Improving program effectiveness.
4. Developing a business plan.
5. Integration with talent management strategies.
6. Improving efficiency.
7. Measurement of the learning function.
8. Globalization.
9. Improving the technology infrastructure.

As this data shows, today’s corporate training organization is trying to redefine itself in the world of reduced spending, increased globalization and a tremendous focus on integrated talent management. While technology continues to be a top issue, it is no longer the highest priority.

Business Alignment and Talent Management
The word alignment comes up frequently in our conversations with learning and development executives. It continues to be challenging to organize and deploy training resources in a world of constant business changes and tight budgets. In fact, among the high-impact organizations — those top 9 percent who are generating the greatest returns — there is a 400 percent higher adoption of business planning, steering committees and other processes that directly link the training department to different areas of the business.