Connecting the Dots: Linking Enterprise Learning to High Performance

While many executives believe that all the elements for effective enterprise learning are in place, connecting those different elements to maximize the business benefits of learning remains the toughest challenge.

Accenture summarizes research and collective experience to show how to link learning investments to high performance.

Almost every organization today is still in the midst of a journey to transform its learning department from a cost center to a value-generating center. The old “entitlement” presumptions at the heart of employee training are rapidly disappearing. In their place are expectations that budget allocations will be made based on classic return-on-investment justifications, and that training programs will be judged not just on X number of students taking Y number of courses, but on the business value and impact of those programs.

In Accenture’s research study on high-performance learning organizations—based on a survey of 285 senior learning executives around the world—the most critical challenges all centered on linking learning investments to business results:

• Changing formal reporting structures to reflect the new expectations for enterprise learning, giving executives in charge of learning direct visibility to those setting strategic direction for the organization.
• Establishing better personal relationships with C-level executives. Learning executives must see themselves as ambassadors for the business relevance of workforce investments.
• Being bolder when it comes to declaring intentions about achieving business impact from learning.
• Sourcing and developing learning executives in different ways. Line executives can be moved into learning positions, or learning professionals can seek development opportunities in the general business skills that can make them more business-relevant.

Organizations should seek to focus learning investments on several specific ways of linking learning to business outcomes:

• Learning and profitable growth. Learning is an important enabler of the human and organizational dimensions of organic and inorganic growth.
  
  
• Learning and operational excellence. Senior management increasingly measures the performance of learning executives in terms of how well they manage the business and operations dimensions of learning.
  
  
• Learning and organizational agility. Innovative technologies and applications can enable faster learning development, giving organizations the opportunity to become more agile.
  
  
• Learning and employee retention. Engaging learning experiences can increase overall employee engagement and retention.
  
  
• Learning and knowledge management. Organizations must bring the power of both these fields together for the common purpose of providing real-time support for the workforce.
  
  
• Learning and innovation. There is no other function better equipped than enterprise learning to locate and harvest the fruits of experience as innovations.

Ellen Balaguer is global managing director of Accenture Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services.

John G. Higgins is Senior Director, Innovation and Offering Management, Accenture Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services.

Craig Mindrum is a visiting research fellow at Accenture.