Map the organization’s strategy
Surveying the organization’s strategic agenda is the main pillar for aligning the value proposition of corporate education with the business. Despite this, even today, this approach is more the exception than the rule in companies. In many cases, this can be explained by the governance structure in companies, where corporate education leaders sometimes restrict themselves to reporting to HR leadership, with little interaction with the board.
The approach of the CE area must go beyond operational performance by only debating training costs, hours executed, number of classes, etc. It is urgent to direct efforts toward CE initiatives that contribute directly to business priorities: what are the organization’s strategic aspirations? What are its main challenges?
What emphasis should be placed on learning
in organizations? Where to start:
with the strategic direction of education
or how learning is delivered?
Frequently, CE actions, or even so-called Training and Development (T&D), start from the Training Needs Assessment (TNA), mapping the skills gaps they wish to develop in individuals. Interviews are conducted with the target audience and their leaders to map the main needs to be developed. Having a more immediate and individualized focus, whether in an area, position, or professional, efforts in this approach can face more challenges in contributing to organizational learning and, consequently, to business aspirations. It is important for organizations to pay attention to the scope and longevity intended by CE investments.
Position CE as a promoter of organizational strategy execution
By identifying the business’s value generation dynamics, we can answer the following question: How should education participate in it? To which business benchmarks should education align? Strategic objectives? BSC? Value Chain? Organizational Processes? Once the impact to be generated in the business is mapped, we will have a more assertive definition of the strategic drivers that should guide Corporate Education.
Starting from a discussion about the role of learning in the business and the organizational structure, companies will be able to define the best management model so that CE can contribute to business aspirations. It is important to emphasize that there is no single right CE model, but rather the most appropriate one for the context and aspirations of the organization in question.
Corporate Education Management Models
Based on this strategic positioning of CE, it will be possible to operationalize learning actions through a portfolio of practices, processes (e.g., budget definition, annual planning updates, execution of practices, etc.), roles, and responsibilities.
Design and activate learning offerings
Once the CE strategic planning is defined, it is necessary to design and activate learning offerings to enable the tactical execution of this direction. Another critical element for a (r)evolution of organizational learning models is the formats for offering and promoting education. Before proposing a new portfolio of practices, it is relevant to consider the learning dynamics that already work in the analyzed context. However, starting only from existing practices can be a challenge when they traditionally offer only formal learning moments (focus on the individual, occasional learning, guided and in formal teaching spaces).
It is known that great learning opportunities occur in everyday work by executing activities that generate meaningful experiences for the development of individuals. Mixing collaborative and on-the-job (hands-on!) practices with formal practices makes it possible to broaden the spectrum of organizational learning and promote continuous development (lifelong learning) for professionals. Treating learning as a single event can be very restrictive; designing it as a journey maximizes its contribution, tackling the constant emergence of challenges.
Finally, a warning is issued regarding the excessive focus on formal content, a traditionalist view brought by formal education that is still replicated today. The availability of isolated and generalist disciplines compromises the application of learning in individuals’ professional contexts. Example: content offered in an online Digital Marketing course may have unequal levels of utilization based on different contexts and organizational challenges. Applying Digital Marketing in an SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) may have very different challenges from a big tech company.
Implement business contribution indicators
One of the main desires of businesses is to identify how much their investments in the CE area impact results, often generating strong skepticism among leaders, who may prioritize other investments. Some indicator methodologies propose to measure the return on this type of investment, but end up having a low potential for adoption by organizations due to the high complexity of implementation.
Are learning and education efforts directly
contributing to the development
of people so they can deliver value to
the organization?
As a way to help organizations verify if their CE efforts are effectively contributing to organizational challenges and aspirations, the following question should be asked: Are learning and education efforts directly contributing to the development of people so they can make deliveries that generate value for the organization? If the answer is positive, the organization will be successfully executing a capability that serves as a powerful competitive differentiator.
Critical Success Factors
Finally, for learning to deliver value to organizations, the following critical success factors must be considered:
- Strategic Direction: As stated at the beginning of this article, it is fundamental to map strategic organizational drivers – key drivers (e.g., objectives and goals) for an effective direction of learning actions. Defining a specific strategic vision for the Corporate Education Model helps link the mission of this initiative to business objectives. As the organizational strategy evolves, CE guidelines must also be reviewed. Example: the CE strategy will be different if the business seeks geographic expansion or differentiation through innovation.
- Established Sponsorship: Essential for the credibility and relevance of CE, attesting to the value of learning actions for the business and contributing to team engagement. Example: Corporate Education will have less chance of contributing to business results if it is treated by leadership merely as a benefits policy, instead of them investing in learning, allocating resources, and leading by example, as a promoter of competitiveness.
- Supporting Governance: Creating governance instances with good representation from business areas contributes both to greater assertiveness in prioritizing efforts and to adapting initiatives to the organization’s different specificities. In addition, leadership that has CE as its main responsibility also contributes to supporting this business strategy, ensuring that CE is a priority for someone. Example: governance may be different in a verticalized or more horizontal company, with a more process-oriented or project-oriented work methodology.
- Organizational learning management: Having understood the value generated by education for competitiveness, CE will require management. Efforts often invested through “spasms” or disjointed from strategic drivers tend to cause CE to be treated skeptically and discontinued. For CE to be treated as an organizational capability, the definition of processes, indicators, roles, and responsibilities is necessary so this strategy has continuity, contributing directly to business objectives. Example: offering ad hoc programs such as training, leadership, mentoring, among others, according to area requests, may cater to an immediate and departmental view. Implementing Corporate Education as a lasting organizational model requires guiding the various initiatives based on the business’s strategic objectives. Aiming to support this model, CE processes and indicators must be defined to enable planning, offering, and monitoring within well-defined periodic cycles and with a distribution of roles that makes learning not just the responsibility of a specific area, but of the business as a whole.
Based on the challenges faced by businesses and the provocations presented here, organizations must think not only about improvements but about the (r)evolution of their corporate education model, structuring this system as a tool that promotes business strategy and contributes to organizational results.
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