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| Learning Curve |
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People, Talent, and Learning |
Nick Van Dam, Global Director for Learning, Talent Development
Officer, Deloitte, shares with Deepak Chandra, Associate Dean, CEE, some new trends in learning and development, and about what
goes into the making of a high performance learning organisation.
Van Dam is an internationally recognised consultant and thought
leader in Learning and Human Resources Development, and holds
several advisory board positions. He has also authored the book
'25 Best Practices in Learning and Talent Development'.
We present here an extract from the talk.
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It’s all about People
Working in the Information Technology area with clients who are
customers, is all about people at the end of the day. I believe
that people make the difference and people development and
learning development is extremely important.
 If you look at the global workforce, over the last twenty years,
there is a big shift actually in
how people look at organisations. Even large corporations like Philips, Siemens,
Deloitte, etc cannot anymore guarantee something like a
‘lifetime employment’. Also, a lot of people now look at
organisations very differently and make a choice to join an
organisation where he can take his skills to the next level.
People are now very cautious that learning and development and
career development, is extremely important because they are, at
the end of the day, in-charge of their own career, their own
destiny. People are now graduating to different expectations
from organisations, and also at the same time, organisations
have acknowledged that basically they need to take care of their
people and support them from a learning and development
perspective, because if they don’t, people will leave.
Although this is a pretty challenging times in the global
economy and a lot of people are losing their jobs, I think that
if we look beyond this, and I am optimistic, in two years from
now, we will feel the uptake of the economy globally again.
If we look at workforce demographics, a lot of people in
developing countries are aging. If we look at the group of
people who are younger and are below them, we know how many are
born, we know how many are in universities and will graduate. So
when the baby boom will retire, that is already happening now,
some of them might push their retirement a little bit, maybe by
one or two years, but eventually people will retire and there
will be a shortage of talent in a number of countries. So, that
makes it extremely challenging to identify and attract talent in
organisations. The talent agenda has not changed. I think it is
a little bit softer now and a little more challenging for people
to find a job, but I think if we look beyond this, in no time we
will be back where we were two years ago.
How to be a High Performance Learning Organisation
First we need to make sure that Learning and Development is
close and well-aligned with the business. Secondly, the
initiatives that are executed through learning and development
department need to be much more driven by the business. Third,
high performing organisations now attract people with a
professional background in learning and development, specialists
actually, and at the same time they understand the business andthe
 need to understand the business. So a combination of
classroom learning programmes and on-the-job knowledge
management e-learning solutions is vital. Large organisations
have a dispersed workforce and people need to learn at the speed
of light and have access to knowledge at speed of light, it is
important that you have capabilities in place like a centralised
learning platform where people have access to all this new Web
2.0 learning capabilities including web-based training,
video-based learning, online performance support portals etc.
Another capability in high-performance learning development
organisation is to drive learning and development from a
consistent competency framework. So, you need to have a
competency framework in place that would help people with tools
to build the capabilities that an organisation needs -that is
critical and would help to actually drive learning and
development initiatives.
Trends in Talent Management
Ten to fifteen years ago, learning departments were the same
as training departments. Over the last fifteen years there has
been a shift in a number of organisations in thinking and doing.
As an example, lot of organisations today have put in place
Chief Learning Officers or senior Learning and Development
professionals. I definitely see a significant change in a lot of
organisations about the impact of people and the importance of
human resources. Now it is all about talent.
A lot of organisations are now changing the name of Human
Resources to People and Talent Management. And it is not just
about the talent of a few people at the top to take over the
succession, but to look at a much broader definition of talent
and people. There is also an increased level of centralisation.
In the past, in many organisations, everything was de-centralised.
In large corporations you had a hundred and fifty training
departments all around the world. Today a number of capabilities
are centralised and are not anymore in different smaller units
across different countries. For example, the Strategic
Leadership Development is now done in most Fortune companies at
the central level. If you look at Learning Management Systems,
they are basically systems that will help people to develop
online learning plans for themselves where you have links to
competency management, where you have access to on-the-job
e-learning, etc. All these capabilities are now centralised.
Finally, it is all about what we learn to support the business
and what kind of capabilities we need to develop in our
organisations. If we look at workforce planning, we need to
learn to identify what are the gaps that we will experience over
on the next five years. What I see happening in more and more
organisations is that when there is a learning need or a need to
acquire skills, organisations need to look at the learning
goals, and at the best delivery method to provide people with
the access to knowledge and developing the skills.
Different Design in Leadership Development
Leadership programmes are not just programmes anymore.
They are more designed as one-time events which basically is
part of a complete development effort. It might take a year
actually to acquire the knowledge, develop the skills, and apply
the skills in measuring it. As an example, you start with a
Leadership Programme first in a virtual classroom where you have
an instructor or a professor who will connect with people, take
them through the programme content, collaborate with them etc.
That is the first step. Secondly, people are asked to take a
number of self-pacing e-learning programmes. If you look at
Harvard Business School, they expect students to take self-paced
learning in Accounting and a number of other areas to make sure
that everybody is at the same level before they come to class.
It is the same with Leadership Development. People take a couple
of self-paced learning programmes. Then there are events, where
basically people get together in a classroom, at a location
where they discuss and collaborate and do some problem-solving
on things they have already learned through the internet and
through the virtual classroom or through self-paced learning.
Then during the programme they define some of the things they
want to do differently for themselves, in their performance.
After the programme, the group of students come together online
with the facilitator or instructor and basically discuss about
how to apply the learning. Questions are asked like - What are
some of the challenges? Do you need additional coaching or
mentoring? Is there still a lack in your knowledge and do you
need to take some additional learning? Did you really apply what
you have learnt and does it have an impact on your career, your
performance in the firm or the company?
This goes back to a different design of leadership programmes, a
more extended. This is what I see as a big trend, as a big
change and a lot of organisations are figuring out how to do
this.
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