L&D Strategy: Report to HR or Operations?

Last week I came across this post: An operational attitude towards learning on Karyn's erratic learning journey blog.  In it, Karyn Romeis expresses the point of view that Learning & Development departments should be moved out of HR and report up through operations.  This got my attention because at my company we are currently doing the opposite.  Our Learning & Development functions are being consolidated and moved from the business units into a Shared Services model that will report up through HR.  While I agree with Karyn's point that,  "L&D's job is all about performance, and performance is an operational thing."   I don't think it is necessary to report up through operations to be an effective business partner to them.  Throughout my career I have moved back and forth from reporting to HR to reporting directly to the Line of Business leaders that I support.  Having these varied experiences has made me a better all around learning professional.  I understand my business leaders' concerns and priorities and I am able to leverage the development resources available through HR.

In characterizing HR, Karyn makes a point that I don't agree with when she states, "HR is responsible for looking after people: their payroll, their working conditions, their treatment under employment law, etc. and has no direct accountability in terms of the organisation's business objectives."   In my company, the most most important aspects of the HR function are Organization Design, Talent Development, and Workforce Planning.   These are critical to achieving our company's business success.

I do believe that learning should be embedded in the workstream.  I don't see any reason why my department can't accomplish this while we are plugged into HR rather than our business unit leaders.   We are becoming an HR shared service, but we will still be part of our business leaders' extended teams.   Our business is rapidly transforming.  With the amount of change we have going on right now, we are in need of some major talent upgrades, new ways of managing, and there are many new work tasks to be performed.  I think L&D will be better resourced and well-positioned to help address these needs on a global scale operating from within Human Resources where we can easily partner with our Strategic Talent Management and Organizational Development counterparts.  Plus, since all of the learning professionals are coming into this department from the business, we will retain the operational perspective and networks.   Also of note, there are no geographical changes planned.  We will be consolidating into one department under a federated model, but the field based team members will still be embedded in their current locations. 

Social Media Strategy for Learning

In last week's Many Ways to Learn blog post, I wrote about how I was rededicating myself to building learning communities inside my company using yammer.   This week I took the first steps toward that goal by outlining a strategy and placing a few posts to generate some activity.



Here is the approach I am taking:

1. Use hashtags (#) to create threads around specific topics - Since my primary role is management development, the hashtags I have started with are:  #leadership #managing #change #engagement
2. Join groups - The department that runs our annual employee engagement survey has already set-up an engagement group, so I have joined that.  There is also a group dedicated to promoting social media usage inside the company.  I have joined that as well, along with a few others.
3. Create "Topic Managers" to lead specific threads - I am going to have each of my staff members specialize in a topic that is important to management and create groups and/or discussion threads for those topics using hashtags.
4. Promote usage  - Since yammer is a relatively new tool in my company, my team and I will take every opportunity to introduce it and promote it during face-to-face or virtual training sessions and at company events.

It takes time to build a following, so I recognize the need to be patient.  So far, I am encouraged with the trickle of activity created by my posts during the week.   Here are few examples of what I have been doing:

Example 1 - Providing quick tips and identifying resources that could be helpful to managers

The post below includes some brief thoughts about building trust from the book, The Carrot Principle.  Notice that four people indicated that they "like this."  It may not seem like much, but I am just starting out.  I started the week with only 17 followers.

Example 2 - Promoting learning and performance support tools available to managers

One of my staff members recently interviewed five managers who had very high scores on our last employee engagement survey.   He created a podcast series to help managers develop action plans for increasing employee engagement from those interviews.  The day I posted this, I received a reply from a manager saying she had listened to all five, she thought they were great, and that she was passing them on to her friends.  Hooray for small victories!  (Note: I removed the link from this example for confidentiality purposes.)

Example 3 - Sharing quotes (and again promoting available resources)

The quote below is from In Praise of the Incomplete Leader, a Harvard Business Review Article which is available to our employees through Harvard ManageMentor (an excellent learning and performance support tool by the way) which they can access through our Learning Management System (branded internally as My Portfolio).

This is outlines my strategy.  I have added a trickle of followers this week so I know it is getting some attention.   But as I said, it will take time to build a community.  I will post a follow-up on this blog at some point to let you know how things are progressing.  In the meantime, I welcome any feedback, comments or suggestions you might have to help me accelerate the process.