Kate Harker

March 2011 - TD Magazine

Leadership Development: What’s Evaluation Got to Do With It?

Most organizations track learner satisfaction and completion rates, but does that really move the business forward? Our joint research with ATD shows that only 43 percent of organizations report strong alignment between learning and business goals. That means more than half risk investing in training that fails to translate into performance gains and measurable outcomes.What Alignment Really Means and Why It MattersAlignment isn’t a buzzword; it’s the operating system for strategic L&D. True alignment exists when L&D leaders, HR, and the C‑suite share a common definition of success and design learning experiences to advance it. In practice, this means mapping every learning objective to one or more business KPIs, whether that’s revenue growth, customer retention, safety incidents, cycle time, or quality metrics. Hence, the connection between training and value is explicit, visible, and testable.This clarity does three things: Focuses limited resources on the highest‑impact skillsIncreases executive confidence in L&D investmentEquips teams to iterate quickly because outcomes are tracked with the same rigor as any other initiativeDiagnosing MisalignmentMisalignment rarely announces itself; it shows up as familiar symptoms. There’s overreliance on activity metrics (enrollments, completions, smile sheets) without behavioral or business indicators. L&D gets kept out of strategic conversations about growth plans or capability gaps. Demonstrating ROI becomes a struggle, which slows funding decisions. Programs stagnate as content falls out of step with shifting priorities. Each symptom erodes trust and makes it harder for learning to influence performance at scale.The Four‑Step Alignment FrameworkUse this simple, repeatable framework to tighten the connection between learning and results:Discover. Start with the business problem, not the course idea. Clarify the desired outcome (for instance, increase win rate from 28 percent to 34 percent in H2) and the behaviors that would move that needle. Interview leaders and exemplary performers; mine performance dashboards to identify capability gaps.Design. Translate outcomes into skills and practice. Build learning objectives that mirror the KPI and embed practice activities that simulate real work (role‑plays, system sandboxes, decision games). Co‑create content with stakeholders to maintain relevance and ownership.Deliver. Meet learners in the flow of work. Blend short, applied learning assets with manager‑led coaching. Managers influence a large share of engagement, so equip them with conversation guides, observation checklists, and micro‑challenges to reinforce transfer on the job.Measure. Track leading and lagging indicators. Pair learning analytics (progress, proficiency, practice quality) with behavioral and business signals (pipeline hygiene, NPS shifts, first‑call resolution, defect rates, time‑to‑productivity). Review results monthly with stakeholders and adjust.What High‑Performing Organizations Do DifferentlyIn our findings, high performers consistently co‑create training with senior leaders, focus on a small set of KPIs that matter to both HR and the business, and use performance data to continuously refine programs. The key difference is philosophical: They don’t just measure activity, they measure contribution to business success. This orientation turns L&D from a service provider into a strategic partner.Manager Enablement Is NonnegotiableEven the best course fails without manager reinforcement. Provide managers with “day‑one” toolkits like talk tracks, observation rubrics, and simple dashboards so they can coach to the targeted behaviors. Recognize and reward managers who model desired behaviors and create time for practice. When managers champion the effort, adoption accelerates and results stick. Managers account for more than 70 percent of team engagement, so their role is critical.Technology as an Enabler (Not the Strategy)Modern platforms can make alignment easier to execute. AI‑powered solutions such as Learn365, embedded in Microsoft Teams, bring learning into daily workflows and surface real‑time insights through Power BI dashboards. That matters when only a minority of organizations feel confident evaluating impact; technology helps consolidate data, automate evidence collection, and free L&D to focus on coaching and design. The tools don’t create strategy; they make good strategy scalable.Start Small, Prove Value, Then ScalePick one business outcome and run a 90‑day pilot. Example: reduce customer churn by two points. Map the chain of impact: skills (active listening, needs discovery) → behaviors (probing, summarizing) → metrics (repeat contact rate, NPS, renewal). Instrument your pilot with a pre/post skills check, manager observations, and a simple dashboard that pairs learner progress with operational KPIs. Share results with leaders monthly and capture quick wins and lessons learned.This approach builds a repeatable playbook: define outcomes, design for practice, enable managers, and measure what matters. Do it once, then standardize templates, data definitions, and governance so future programs start aligned rather than retrofitting alignment after launch.Where to Go NextAlignment doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen by design. Begin with a single program and ask, “Which business outcome does this serve, and how will we know?”For deeper benchmarks and practical checklists, explore the full research report and see how peers are operationalizing alignment in the flow of work.

Driving Business Impact: Aligning Training With Strategic Goals

Just a couple years ago, companies were conducting hiring sprees, scooping up a seemingly unlimited supply of talent. Today, however, more talent professionals are asked to do more with less, while facing intense competition for individuals with the most business-critical skills. But this reset has given rise to a new way of thinking about talent—the skills-based transformation, in which candidates are hired, and internal talent developed, based on their unique skills and strengths.To make the skills-based transition successful, companies must ensure their talent acquisition (TA) and learning and development (L&D) teams work more closely together. This will be especially important since talent with key skills is harder to find than ever. According to Randstad Enterprise’s latest in-demand skills research, global hiring complexity for AI and automation skills is two times higher than average, while data analytics skills are 2.3 times higher.In this landscape, rather than always turning to recruiting external talent, consider how individuals with key skills—or at least the potential to learn them—may already be in the organization. But without insights and development plans from L&D, those high-potential employees, and their skill sets, may remain hidden. Along the same lines, when new talent is brought in, L&D should be involved as well, helping to ensure they continually learn and grow to develop the skills needed for the future.But for TA and L&D to collaborate most effectively, they must leverage the right data to help guide their decisions. With access to up-to-date talent intelligence—about the supply of skills both within your organization and outside it—TA and L&D teams gain the insights to better work together and ultimately ensure the company acquires the right skills.Identify the skills you need.Due to the growing use of AI, the skills companies need are changing constantly. With access to the right talent intelligence, companies can better predict the skills that will be most critical for their organizations today and into the future. And if talent with those skills is too difficult to find internally or externally, the data can help identify talent with the adjacent or transferable skills most indicative of success in attaining those needed skills. Once those skills are identified, TA and L&D can work together to determine the best way to acquire those skills, whether hiring externally or developing internal—or even external—talent.Build a skilled and diverse workforce.As part of the skills-based transformation, many organizations leverage talent intelligence to conduct skills mapping or create skills ontologies to better understand the skills already in the organization. Such insights can also reveal the individuals who show strong potential to learn the new skills that TA may be struggling to find externally. This approach is also helpful for enhancing workforce diversity and creating equity. With female talent largely under-represented in some of the most in-demand skills, like AI and automation, providing promising female employees with the right training and development can improve diversity while ensuring the company gains those needed skills.Understand the external talent market.Strong talent intelligence can help you find the best sources for the skills your organization needs. It can also uncover essential data about what those individuals are looking for in their next role, like salary expectations and desire to work remotely, so TA can be better positioned to attract and engage them. If talent with the exact skills can’t be found, TA can still hire based on the potential and inherent skills of the top candidates, working with L&D to create the development paths to fill those crucial gaps.Make smarter decisions with talent intelligence.While finding talent with the most in-demand skills may be challenging, companies that drive collaboration between their TA and L&D teams will be better positioned to identify the right people, or nurture promising talent to help them learn those skills. When guided by robust talent intelligence, the result is a streamlined approach to acquiring the skills needed immediately, while providing the training that keeps up with the skills needed for the future.Download Randstad’s latest in-demand skills research. See the supply and demand of the skills you need with the in-demand skills dashboard.

Kate Harker

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