Transforming L&D operations adds value to your HR function

It’s a given that organizations are only as good as the people they employ. Employees are the key intangible asset to any organization and innovation has always been about people. Team members at all levels need to have the right skills, and they also need to be motivated to embrace continuous learning.

It’s a constant challenge, and it’s not helped by the times in which we live. For one thing, technology is moving fast, which means skillsets need to keep pace. For another, everyone is now accustomed to multi-channel access to information. Say we’re at home, and we’re learning a new hobby. Where once we may have gone to an evening class or consulted a manual, learning new skills is now both easy and available via ready curated online courses, videos, interactive tutorials, and by several other means.

Continuous learning is about the ceaseless expansion of upskilling and increased knowledge to stay relevant and ahead. We bring these expectations with us to the workplace and expect our employers to be able to fulfil them. If they are unable to transform the learning and development (L&D) process, this will likely have an effect not just on our productivity, but on our engagement, and possibly even our sense of loyalty to the business.

Individual needs vs. business needs

It’s clear, then, that learning needs to be focused on the wishes and expectations of the individual – but at the same time, it needs to be shaped by the requirements of the organization. What’s needed is a comprehensive, qualitative insight into what, where, and how the business needs to re-skill. It’s an act of reconfiguration extending beyond employees to an entire people ecosystem that includes suppliers, vendors, contractors, and contingent workers. At Capgemini, this joined-up thinking is part of what we call the Frictionless Enterprise .

The Frictionless Enterprise seamlessly connects processes and people, intelligently, as and when needed. It dynamically adapts to an organization’s circumstances to address each and every point of friction they may encounter in their business operations.

The value of transforming L&D processes

The L&D offered by this intelligent, frictionless ecosystem needs to be smart, personal, and consumer-like in the way it’s delivered. It also needs to be learning from which the organization derives value, whether directly – such as function-related skills training that increases productivity. Or indirectly, such as soft skills training that boosts self-esteem, or readiness on future-fit skill sets that set the organization in a forward and advance mode.

The areas addressed include:

• Learning advisory and transformation – making use of learning experience design to solidify the enterprise talent pipeline, and integrating L&D into HR and business processes with a people experience focus
• Digital learning and knowledge services – designing and implementing smart, intuitive digital learning and knowledge platform, taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deliver agile content that empowers user experience
• Learning technology enablement – deploying high-tech L&D technology to enrich employee performance and experience. This involves augmenting the L&D landscape with a range of solutions to maximize reach, overlaid with innovation and intelligent automation
• Managed learning operations – enabling best-in-class training processes that reduce costs, realize measurable outcomes, and provide a flexible and scalable suite of learning services.

Measurable improvements – and increased personal satisfaction

With a frictionless, enterprise-wide approach encompassing areas such as these, organizations can begin to transform the L&D process into experiences that are tailored, curated, accessible, and available on-demand.

What’s more, because it’s digital, learning can be delivered continuously and at scale, keeping pace with the changing needs and desired outcomes both of the organization and of individual employees and creating a culture of “learning in the flow of work.” In addition, because it’s the product of an ecosystem that spans the organization, insights from learning behaviors and other performance metrics can be comprehensive, and so can be used to create continuous improvement cycles.

In a world in which repetitive volume tasks are increasingly handled by intelligent automation, it makes sense for organizations to ensure that their people are sufficiently well trained and motivated to add value in new ways that may not have been an option when they were bogged down in all those low-level activities.

Everybody can win. At Capgemini, we’ve seen employees benefit from improvements of up to 40% in their learner experience and in delivery performance – and we’ve seen organizations achieve improvements of up to 50% in learning operations efficiencies, and of up to 60% in training cost optimization.

To learn how Capgemini’s Intelligent Learning Operations can drive a personalized, frictionless, and continuous learning journey across your talent management cycle, contact: sarita.fernandes@capgemini.com