It’s no secret that creating alignment between learning and business strategies has been difficult for most organizations. While 85% of companies in Brandon Hall Group’s 2020 Learning Strategy Study said this alignment was either important or critical to achieving business goals, only 13% said they were ready to take action and build it. Without this alignment, companies are simply flying blind when it comes to learning and creating programs in response to training requests with no idea if they are designed to accomplish the right things. The good news is that about 80% of companies review their learning strategy at least annually to ensure it is aligned with the business strategy.
Alignment is not just a nebulous, big-picture abstraction. Yes, alignment starts at the top but it becomes rock-solid through everyday activities within the learning ecosystem. A big piece of this is how well the available learning content maps to the skills and competencies the business needs to succeed. Alignment between learning and business strategies won’t matter if learners aren’t gaining the specific knowledge and skills they need to make the business strategy a reality.
Learning technology has advanced to a place where companies can move away from throwing everything at their learners and hoping for the best to delivering targeted experiences tied directly to the skills they are trying to build. This has become even more critical as companies seek to quickly upskill and reskill their workforce in the wake of the pandemic.
Strong alignment requires a foundational framework that clearly maps learning programs and elements to learning objectives, which are then mapped directly to business objectives. Approaching it any other way is pointless. The greatest, most engaging learning content is meaningless if it is not aligned with specific objectives.
To find out more about curriculum mapping and its critical role in strategy alignment, join me as I host a webinar at 1 p.m. Thursday, November 11th, sponsored by Inno-versity. We will look at the challenges digital transformation presents to L&D and how curriculum mapping will help bring it all together.
–David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@davidmwentworth
