Learning and Development News

Key role for L&D professionals

By Elizabeth Eyre (29-06-2007)
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Learning and Development News - Key role for L&D professionals

Learning and development professionals have a key role in the radical changes that are facing British business over the next decade.

According to Professor Mike Campbell, they are vital to “sustaining Britain’s future prosperity” by encouraging organisations to sign up to the government’s new Skills Pledge, gaining senior managers’ commitment to skills and ensuring that the skills acquired by organisations are strategically relevant.

They must also ensure that HR activities – including learning and development (L&D) – are properly aligned with business objectives.

The advisor to the Leitch Review of skills, Campbell told more than 150 L&D practitioners at this year’s TJ conference that improving Britain’s workplace skills was paramount if the country was to remain competitive in a rapidly-changing economic world.

“It leaves L&D professionals centre-stage in this national drive,” he said. “It leaves you centre-stage in developing strategies and making strategic decisions. Learning, development, training, skills – they all need to become part of the common sense of our age.

“Many countries are really up for this challenge. Are you? It’s up to everyone in this room to make a difference, to be an ambassador in your organisations and throughout your supply chain. We must – we can – do better at this in the future.”

Campbell was the closing speaker at the conference, held at the Commonwealth Club in London earlier this week. He outlined the findings and recommendations of the Leitch Review and made the business case for L&D in achieving the targets set out by Lord Leitch for achieving world-class skills by 2020. He told the conference that attaining world-class skills within Leitch’s time frame presented “a lot of challenges and the offer of great opportunities” and added that L&D professionals were very important to the skills agenda and to “sustaining Britain’s future prosperity”.

Britain’s future prosperity depended, he said, on how many people were in work and how productive they were. The UK currently had high levels of employment but low productivity; it needed to maintain the employment rate and boost productivity, which would create £80bn of extra revenue over 30 years.

“That’s enough to halve income tax or pay for the entire NHS,” he said. “It’s very, very substantial. L&D is critical to achieving this agenda – something like a quarter of this productivity gap [between the UK and its EU competitors] is down to the comparative skills of our workforces. The UK is comparatively skills poor – we’re not a highly skilled nation.”

Workplace L&D was crucial to tackling the productivity gap and meeting Leitch’s targets for 2020 because, said Campbell, the majority of the people who would be making up the workforce in 13 years’ time were already in employment now. “We need to fix the skills problem; you don’t fix it in the schools or the universities or the full-time colleges – you fix it in the workplace. It’s critical to raise the aspirations and commitment of people in work – managers and employers – to raising skills. That’s why you have such a key role here – L&D is critical to business skills.

“We need to put training and development and building the talents of the workforce at the heart of business decision-making. We need to change millions of people’s attitudes and behaviour towards workplace L&D. We have to have a more able workforce through education, training and skills development activities.

“What’s most important is that you get your board’s deep commitment to skills and to seeing that as a key strategic driver. You also have to change the attitude of the workforce. Acquired skills have to be deployed effectively within the world of work. People have to be motivated and managed effectively.

“HR activities also have to be aligned much better with business processes, objectives and strategies. We have to have people in the right jobs; we have to recruit them and train them, and have the right equal opportunities policies, appraisal processes etc in place.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand how radical these changes need to be.”

Tuesday’s event was the second annual TJ conference. It was opened by TJ editor Debbie Carter, who said the conference aimed to “reflect the editorial ethos of TJ” by offering a mix of sessions: some provided insights into how organisations were using L&D to improve their bottom line while others provided knowledge and skills for personal development.

She added: “The findings of the Leitch Review have firmly established the importance of your role in the success of UK plc and, through events such as these, we aim to support you in developing your skills and the skills of the workforces for which you are responsible.”

The opening keynote address was made by Dr Bill Lucas, chairman of the Talent Foundation, who used puzzles to demonstrate how the brain works when it is learning.

The conference then split into three strands. In the morning, delegates could attend sessions looking at the leadership challenge at Cancer Research UK, using music to aid learning, personality and psychological types, the power of sub-conscious influencing, m-learning and successful marketing.

After lunch, there were workshops on time management, action learning in the NHS and coaching skills for managers. A panel comprising Larry Reynolds (of 21st Century Leader), Kimberley Hare (of Kaizen Training), Liz Smith (head of the TUC’s Unionlearn) and David Wilson (of eLearnity), and chaired by Debbie Carter, answered a number of questions put by delegates and then the event was closed by Mike Campbell.

A drinks and networking session led into the TJ awards ceremony, which was hosted by TJ cartoonist Simon Pearsall. There were 11 categories covering public and private sector initiatives, customer service, e-learning, coaching and change management.   

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