LAS is an award-winning provider of elearning consultancy, design, development and training services in the UK and internationally.
Established in 2005 as LearningAge Solutions, we work with some of the best known organisations in the world to boost their performance through the innovative use of learning technologies. Working in partnership with our customers, we draw on proven principles from human behaviour, how people learn and how the brain works to create impactful digital learning solutions with real return on investment.
Tess is a director of LAS. She has worked in a learning environment for over twenty years. First, as a senior manager in universities, moving into digital learning ten years ago.
By Tess Robinson
Posted 9 January 2023
Unless your organisation is a forward-thinking one, you’re probably finding yourself with less budget for learning this year and even more to do. These are tricky times. The ongoing socio-economic turmoil doesn’t look likely to end very soon, so it may be a while before budgets are on the up. However, by taking a step back, focussing on your L&D team’s skills and making sure that they are really well equipped to provide a modern learning offer, you can ensure that your learning is still excellent and effective, even on a tight budget.
In our work with internal L&D teams, we have found that when a team fully transforms their approach and practice, as well as leading to a more focussed and efficient use of budget, it also ripples out across the organisation as a catalyst for wider change. It evolves stakeholder and learner attitudes to learning, builds a learning culture and makes organisations more agile; better able to adapt for the future, whatever that holds.
But where to start? Here’s a few things you can do with your team:
1. Be human-centred
Developing a better understanding of the recipients of your learning will guarantee that the investment you make in it hits the spot. Your team need to be well versed in, at least, basic cognitive and behavioural science principles and basic psychology. Conduct user research so that your design decisions are based on what your audience want and need, not on guesswork, gut feel or personal preference. This will mean that the learning that your team designs will be all the more effective.
2. Foster creativity
We are all creative, even if we don’t think we are. Creativity is often viewed as a talent but, in fact, ANYONE can follow a process for generating creative ideas and come up with some great stuff. When you’re busy and time-pressed it’s easy to miss this stage out, but this is where the gold is. Make time for creativity within your workflow and you’ll reap the rewards.
3. Ask why
So much has been said over the past (many) years about L&D moving from order-taking to a more consultative approach. When budgets are tight it is even more important to make sure that your organisation is focussing a limited budget on the things that are really important. Respectfully challenging the need for learning, what outcomes the stakeholders want to obtain and how it fits into wider organisational strategy is simply good business practice.
4. Design for impact
Use a framework such as Next GenerationLearning or 5Di to help your team select the most appropriate treatments for your content. These frameworks also help you to prioritise your content and focus more time and investment on the elements that will make the most impact.
A reduced budget doesn’t mean that you can’t still do impactful, creative work. Upskill and empower your team so that they keep the human at the centre, double-down on good design and make sure that learning requests are purposeful. This will create positive outcomes and elevate the role of learning as essential in helping your organisation weather whatever 2023 throws at us.
If you’d like to know more about evolving your L&D team and how LAS can help, you can find more info here .
