Skip to main content

§ Learning & Development Strategy

Learning & Development Strategy at enterprise level.

L&D strategy is not a training calendar, a course catalogue or a Workplace Skills Plan submission. It is the reasoning that connects business strategy to the capabilities an organisation must build, and to the decisions and investment required to build them.

§ Line of sight

  1. Business Strategy
  2. People & Workforce Strategy
  3. Capability Requirements
  4. L&D Strategy
  5. Learning Architecture
  6. Interventions
  7. Capability & Performance Outcomes

§ Alignment

Business–L&D alignment

Every learning priority should be traceable to something the organisation is trying to achieve. Where that line cannot be drawn, the intervention is a candidate for rationalisation rather than investment.

  • Business strategy alignment
  • Organisational and transformation priorities
  • Workforce requirements
  • Future capability requirements
  • Performance priorities
  • Learning priorities

§ Diagnosis

Capability diagnosis

Not every performance problem is a learning problem. Diagnosis distinguishes capability gaps from problems of structure, process, systems, resourcing, leadership or motivation — and recommends accordingly.

  • Current-state and future-state capability
  • Capability, performance and skills gap analysis
  • Leadership and management capability
  • Functional and technical capability
  • Behavioural capability
  • Critical and emerging capability

Business Need → Performance Need → Capability Need → Learning Need → Intervention

§ Strategy

Enterprise learning strategy

  • Strategic learning priorities and learning philosophy
  • Workforce segments and capability priorities
  • Delivery strategy and learning governance
  • Learning technology and learning culture
  • Leadership development and workplace learning
  • Digital, professional and compliance learning
  • Measurement approach
  • Implementation roadmaps

§ Planning

Strategic skills and capability planning

  • Workforce capability and skills planning
  • Upskilling and reskilling
  • Future skills and emerging capability
  • Leadership and management pipelines
  • Talent pipelines and succession-related development
  • Career and professional development
  • Digital capability
  • AI-related workforce capability considerations

§ Operating model

L&D operating model

  • L&D structures: centralised, decentralised, federated
  • Business partnering and centres of excellence
  • Learning operations and governance
  • Instructional design and facilitation capability
  • Assessment and quality assurance capability
  • Learning technology
  • Provider and vendor management
  • Roles and decision rights

§ Portfolio

L&D portfolio strategy

  • Learning portfolio analysis
  • Programme prioritisation and rationalisation
  • Strategic versus mandatory learning
  • Build-versus-buy decisions
  • Resource allocation and scalability
  • Provider strategy
  • Learning budgets and investment prioritisation
  • Business value

§ Impact

Measurement and impact

Measurement follows the chain from activity to outcome, and stops where the evidence stops. Training is not automatically credited with every business result it happens to precede.

  • Learning KPIs and effectiveness
  • Transfer and workplace application
  • Capability improvement
  • Behavioural and performance outcomes
  • Learning analytics
  • Stakeholder measures and return on expectations
  • ROI where appropriate
  • Continuous improvement

Learning Activity → Learning → Application → Capability → Performance → Organisational Outcome