Speaker 1: Key considerations in creating learning and development strategies and how to successfully implement a learning and development project in a campaign.

Speaker 2: For the answers to both your questions, I will begin by saying that everything starts from business and ends in business. So whether it is strategy or implementation, business is the key. So I'm saying that first we arrive at the business plan from the mission, vision and core values of the company. Mission is why do we exist? Vision is what we want to achieve in the future, normally it's about a five-year span. And now, of course, in the post-COVID it has become three years now, we want to plan for next three years what we'll be doing. And of course, the core values, how are the business, how do we want to conduct our business and achieve the vision that we want to achieve. From this, we do a current reality check of strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and then arrive at the business plan. Now, you can see that business plan looks like this, 2020-2025 and translated into a plan, it looks like this on an Excel sheet. The first time will be the top line that you want in the next five years, the bottom line, the investments, the inventory that you want to carry, working capital that is going to be, and of course, then comes the human capital, the numbers and capabilities. This is what the strategic HR head is supposed to answer finally on numbers and capabilities. So we go further now into this and see as to what are the steps to align ourselves with the business. So business results, we just got them, what we want to achieve year on year, and then there's a business plan, how are we going to invest, what are we going to do, what are the various steps for increasing our market share, all that comes in here. And the requirements from HR will come from there, flow from there, and then we have a human resources roadmap. Now, the next slide will show us how the roadmap looks like. It's a complete thing from manpower planning, which starts with business planning, and then goes to recruitment selection, onboarding and induction, and then comes L&D. We have talent management, performance management systems, compensation policies, employee engagement, communication, career planning, and succession planning. This is just to tell us the learning and development, what is the place in the overall hierarchy of HR practices and processes that are there. I now go next to training and learning and development particularly. Now here we are using learning and development and that's what was the question also. But traditionally we're using the word training and development. The only difference is that learning, the onus is on the individual, whereas training the onus is on the company. Today we are focusing on learning and development because we feel that the employees must actually ask for whatever they feel is appropriate for coming up in the competency metrics or whatever they want to learn, how they would like to upgrade their competencies. So that's learning and development. And the process itself has only got four steps, that is learning and identification, we also call it training and assessment, T&A it's called or T&I, planning and collation, getting all the things together from various processes, from various levels, collate the whole thing and then execute the training programs. The next step is very important is measuring effectiveness and then go back to T&A. Now I'll be touching upon this when we go to the various learning and development strategies. So here we are. When we create L&D strategies, what are the key considerations? This was your question. And I'm saying that the first thing is, what are the desired behaviors? First from the core values percolation and the competency metrics. It's very important for us to also percolate the core values of the company right from the top to the last person in the company. And this is being done in several ways today, because people realize that the how the business is in core values, competency metrics. From there, what are the gaps in the desired behaviors of people? So that becomes the first step, key consideration. The second consideration is broad based approach, considering 3E. This acronym 3E is for education, exposure and experience. It is not only the classroom training, but also what are the various things that we expose people to exposure and also learning experiences through projects and other things like job rotation and all that. So it's a broad based approach. Then we have aligning the PMS, aligning with the PMS ecosystem, which means that the PMS, which is very, very closely linked to training and development must be linked. And one example is mentioning this in the KRAs of people, whether the line people or whether any other employee must have a training element there. For seniors, it is, you know, how many training programs they have conducted and how many people they have impacted can also be there. So that to bring in a learning and development culture in the organization. And of course, the current trends are to be kept in mind when we do any L&V strategy. This has become more important in these times now. And I'm taking us through this trends from the employee perspective. I think that today people are looking for small size learning, wide size learning, we call it. Maximum attention would be 90 minutes to two hours, max to max. After that, there must be a break. And then people come back and sit down and some kind of a recap is always done. Earlier, when the face to face communication, of course, we used to have longer sessions and sometimes whole day up to eight hours and six hours of training. Today, we have to rethink on that. The other thing is hybrid learning. It's learning through the digital platforms that we do, plus also learning through case studies and teamwork as we used to do earlier. But now this is the virtual mode. However, we form the groups and still they will learn through case studies and learn from one another. It's called peer to peer learning. So hybrid learning is now the order of the day. Second thing is the eclectic approach. Third thing. That means drawing from various fields as much as possible, not restricting ourselves to one particular subject, which means that the current trend that are there, AI, associating AI, artificial intelligence with the L&D and then including other areas like sociology, anthropology, also into our working in HR so that we know the length and breadth of the subject. We have a bigger and brighter domain knowledge and that's useful in creativity, ultimately. Because when we learn more things and we are applying it, we get to the solutions that were here to eluding us. So eclectic approach from various angles we need to approach the subject. Reskilling in the case of job redesign, this is important because today there are changes of jobs that we are doing, job roles are now changing, structures are also undergoing a change after this COVID, during and post COVID is going to happen. So reskilling becomes very important for us, becomes the responsibility of the company as well as the employee to get reskilled in the new job that he or she has to do. When you go from the employer perspective, we have what is called as industry trends in technology, notably in the auto industry, for example, the movement towards electric vehicles. It will more or less be a major component compared to the IC engine technology that we had today. So those, as an example I'm saying, but technology is definitely moving at a fast pace. Machine learning is coming. Internet of things is coming. So from the employer perspective, we need to get ready, future ready for with these things. Also, we are racing towards a digital world, racing towards a digital world and that is something which we need to take care of as well from the employer perspective. We may have to train people in how to do this, how to learn digitally because many of us are still, you know, we are yearning for that thing to come where we are face to face with people. So that was more convenient, more comfortable. But this is the new normal and we need to get ourselves abreast in this. The next is changing employee profile, millennial, Gen Z, we call, Gen X, Gen Y. I'm saying that this is a great level of today what we have, the digital learning because we are talking to everyone and behind the screen there could be a Gen X person sitting next to a Gen Z person sitting next to a baby boomer as well. For all, it's the same and how much we learn, how much we grasp is all about how much attention we are paying in the session and also how much work we are doing beyond the session. As I said, hybrid learning. So through other forums like a group discussion, say four or five people coming with a presentation and presenting it in front of the whole class or all the participants. So this also has to be kept in mind. This was a major issue earlier. Now it has become a level platform for all of us. Next, let me look at some of the strategies for L&D implementation. That is question number two which you had, Bhagyaji. And here I'm saying that the key considerations are slightly different. One is that the sign off in strategy state with business and line heads is important. They must be kept in picture and there must be a sign off that, yes, this is the project and this is what we are going to do. These are the programs that we are going to run. These are the cross section of people that we are going to impact. All that is well known. And we are doing the healthy mix of three components, education, exposure and experience well thought out and in place. The calendar must contain all the components. It is no longer that, you know, this program, that program and only is classroom or only this one. It has to be a healthy mix of all the components. As we shall see from an example, which I'm going to give us in the next slide. Rigorous follow up through the Donald Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation. All of us are familiar with this level one, level two, level three and four. Level one and two is all about reaction and learning. Three and four is behavior and results. Behavior and results have to be tracked in order that the implementation is done properly. Level three and four we do after three months. Roughly two and a half to three months, we go and check up with the person concerned who has undergone the training. We also check with his colleagues there. We also check with his superior as to what are the changes in behavior, what are the results the person has brought. And in case he has not brought the desired results, then he may have to go through another program or maybe a different program was required for him. That needs to be investigated. But we must get the results on level three and level four for the training programs that we do. The next thing is that periodic updates to business and line heads. They have sanctioned it, they got the budgets, but they would like to know what's happening to the people. And then once a year, half a year is not enough. It must be at least once in three months where the business heads and line heads sit together and see the progress, the progress that is shown on the projects that have been taken at the beginning of the year. This is a very crucial component. Then we have constructive conversation with the employees during their appraisal, either mid-year or the early appraisal, on learning and development. How has been the learning development scenario for you? What have you picked up, the competencies which you said at the beginning of the year that you will do? Has the 3E approach been useful to you? Tell us what's happening right now with you, what you would like to do next year. Now these conversations are important. Sometimes they are dyadic with the boss and subordinates, sometimes triadic with the HR in place. So it's always useful to do a sampling of this. HR must get in and see how these conversations are going on at least once in a year, if not twice. I have said twice a year, but minimum once in a year we should be able to do this. Then the L&D strategies will definitely be successful. As we can see now in the next few slides, I'm going to take up a case study. This is a live example of an L&D case study from a leading company. It's all both on strategy and execution. It has taken almost 18 months, but I'm going to cover it in 1.8 minutes here. So let's see, the problem identified was not enough talent, we require a leadership pipeline. You know, we get people, but then we must have a leadership pipeline now. And we need to have internal talent, because external talent, when it comes in, there is always a disturbance in the compensation packages that are being done, the people, the levels that people are occupying, the fitment becomes very, very crucial. And it's also not guaranteed that the person who comes in from outside will be successful in this particular culture, because culture plays a very important role. So it's always better to have internal talent as we go. So this particular project, we said internal talent is sought for, for getting some state heads, you know, marketing state heads, we call it, you know, every state will have a head of marketing. Now, this was crafted with the end in mind. So we wanted some state heads, and a certain number of marketing area managers were identified for elevation to state head category. Now identified from where from the competency assessments that we have. So competency matrix is available. And from there, we have assessments. And so we know what are the developmental areas for each one. Yet those we thought would make the grade who are actually the potential, which is there the potential pool. And if we know from the nine box grid that we have, the top four are taken as a talent pool. So that is the pool of marketing area managers identified for elevation to state head. These people and the total timeline arrived at was 18 months. So 3E model was used in the strategy as we have explained earlier, education, classroom sessions and workshops for identified competency gaps very clearly. Next was the exposure to the entire territory, entire horizontal exposure to the full territory. So if somebody is in charge of Jaipur, and all the neighboring districts, he had to go through the entire state of Rajasthan, getting exposed to various areas, in fact, talk to the various dealerships. And he had to do this and make a presentation when he comes back. Other disciplines like marketing product knowledge, other products that the company is making and what's happening to that commercial knowledge, advanced commercial knowledge many times, also research and development, what's happening for the new products that are going to come up. All the exposure has been given to people. So that's the call of the domain exposure. So horizontal exposure and domain exposure, both are important here, then we go to the experience. The experience is all about live projects. So people who are paid to work on the project portfolio for the next five years, for the next three years, the contribution matrix, what would they recommend as the products to be manufactured and sold, and how will they manage the product contribution to the exchequer. Presentation, once in three months, as I said, to heads of business and other line managers to witness the progress of the L&D project. This is a very crucial link in the whole chain. If this is not done, then people will say that, you know, it's been a year, we don't know what's going on. The question is, in three months, they know exactly what's happening to the people and how much, how much ground they have covered. Then the end result, which was there after 18 months, we got a resounding success. It was almost 95% of the people, you know, 19 out of 20 cases were promoted to the state head. One person was given an additional two years to make up for the, you know, when the final assessment was done. So end result was a resounding success that we had, but we had to take care of certain things. And now there are some more points for ensuring success in L&D. The first one is not to pack too much in that duration, whatever we are planning. If we plan too much, then we expect people to come from their base camp and then come to this class here and go and visit there. So many numbers of people to visit. If we start putting too many restrictions, then people may tend to lose enthusiasm for this particular project that is there. So it was a, it was moving slowly, even though we took more time, but it was moving slowly and at a pace which was, people were able to absorb in those, in those 18 months. Communication and HR work closely in tandem with every step of the journey. Communication is vital. And I'm saying that over-communication is better than under-communication. Even if there is, you know, we communicate in the meeting that we have, it's better to have focus group discussions separately with the, with the line community, separately with the HR community and see what's happening, how are they seeing the same. Even we can make small micro-corrections, we call course corrections can be made. But provided we have the feedback, provided we have the information on time and therefore communication is vital in this entire journey. The ROI of course is to be kept in mind as a focal point during strategy and implementation. There's no question about it, ROI, it's not a return on investment. That's why we are planning all this. So what would be the return in all this experiment that we're doing, the project that we are doing is important. And that is what is also tracked as one of the metrics during every single review process that we have. Yeah, so with all this, strategy and execution from a leading company example is now getting over. And I would say that the rest of my knowledge and wisdom, best of my knowledge and limited wisdom, this particular question has been answered. I hope I have stood up to your expectations.

Speaker 1: I can say it was an excellent presentation that you have made. And making our viewers to understand each and every point precisely explained into a very simple manner. So this should definitely work with us. Thanks for your time today and it was great hearing you onto this platform. I would also wanted to know your overall experience with us so far now.

Speaker 2: Your overall experience about?

Speaker 1: Your overall experience of connecting with the HR Success Talk and how has it been so far?

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it has been very nice, I would say, because of the time you came on the phone, the first time it was a telephonic discussion, followed up by mails and all that. So you have been very clear in your objectives, I could see that. And you know, it was also inspiring for me to go ahead and then take the extra pains to do whatever I've done so far. Definitely, I'd like to associate with you and do whatever I can in my capacity to forward your objectives.

Speaker 1: Thanks a lot for your time today and with this we'll end up the session.

Speaker 2: Thank you.