A professional services firm has a three-year strategy which includes significant growth across the organization. The learning team is determining how they can support this growth. They have created a learning strategy to ensure:
- They include learning for employees’ current roles and development for future roles.
- Their efforts have a measurable impact on the organization.
- They have a plan that documents the tasks to complete, identifies the costs, and provides a priority for what they focus on each year.
They’re wondering how to communicate their vision for learning and development with employees and stakeholders in the organization so others can rally behind the initiative and be excited about the changes.
What is a learning value proposition?
When I work with learning and development and human resource leaders to create a learning strategy, one of the first things we create is a learning value proposition. I’ve borrowed the concept from marketing, where organizations create value propositions for their customers.
Value Proposition
Learning Value Proposition
A learning value proposition is similar but has a narrower focus and a different audience.
How to create a learning value proposition?
Creating a learning value proposition involves two working sessions where leaders and stakeholders build on their organization’s vision, mission, values and culture to define what great learning and development looks and sounds like. For example, an organization might have innovation as a strategic imperative. This could look like an employee trying something new, failing and learning from it. It might sound like that employee sharing their failure with their team and discussing how they could all learn from that failure. In imagining examples, leaders define behaviours and identify the value they want to provide through their learning and development efforts.
In the working sessions, leaders and stakeholders answer these questions:
- What does learning and development provide?
- Who do we serve?
- What is the difference we want to make?
A learning value proposition is like a lighthouse that is visible to others, shines the way forward and keeps you heading in the right direction.
What’s the value of a learning value proposition?
Here are a few questions to help you consider how you might use a learning value proposition.
- How could a learning value proposition help you and your organization attract and recruit talented employees?
- What would be the impact of having your learning value proposition as a cornerstone of your employee brand?
- How could a learning value proposition help you keep the learning and development efforts aligned with the strategic direction of your organization?
In case you missed it
I’ve shared some additional posts online. Here they are in case you missed them.
- Learner personas to define your audience – (video link)
- Prioritize with possibilities and priorities – (video link)
- My approach to working and branding – (video link)
- Starting a learning strategy: assess organization goals – (video link)
- Describing future state for learning function – (video link)
Training that Clicks book – I’m writing a book this year about virtual training. I’ve been posting about the process every Friday on LinkedIn.
Follow this hashtag #bookbyhannah to learn about my journey. Follow this hashtag #trainingthatclicks to learn about this book specifically.
