What is L&D and why does your business need it?

What is learning and development (L&D)?

Learning and Development (L&D) focusses on the management of employee training and development needs to fulfil their roles to the best of their abilities. It’s soared in popularity over recent years, making an essential addition to many workplace learning strategies today.

Instilling the value of learning into every employee within your organisation is crucial. Once they know how seriously you take their career development, they will take it more seriously too, and learning should then become a big part of their working routine.

However, learning is about much more than simply attending a classroom session – it’s about dedicating and investing in the right people, implementing a business-wide strategy and knowing the best ways to engage the entire team.

So where do you begin?

What is learning and development (L&D)?

At its very centre, learning and development (L&D) is all about building a culture of continuous learning and growth, through programmes or pathways that enable organisations to constantly evolve and develop their teams.

Typically, when businesses role out L&D, they do so by appointing either an individual or a group of experts who will be responsible for understanding the organisations’ entire strategy and its future needs, so that they’re able to confidently identify learning priorities for each employee.

In this sense, L&D has both a wider business objective as well as an individual one, as the ultimate goal of an L&D function will always be to create learning opportunities where employees can continuously develop to be their best.

Is L&D the same as HR?

HR functions have a strategic focus on policy, compensation, regulation, management and performance. They’re also typically reactive when it comes to employee management, i.e., when there’s a problem, HR steps in to mediate.

L&D however, centres more around employee skills, knowledge and competence, taking a much more proactive approach to increase employee satisfaction and retention.

As a result, L&D specialists help to create more flexible learning interventions to meet the diverse needs of the workforce, and this is commonly done by providing tools for employees to learn on the job and chart their career path.

Why does your business need an L&D strategy?

By adopting an L&D strategy, learners can receive training content which is based on their preferences, skills, personal traits, and most importantly, their data.

Tools such as learning management systems (LMSs) or learning experience platforms (LXPs), help make training accessible to all diverse learners, and enables L&D teams to offer training options for their employees at any time of the day (or night), track results, analyse data and measure learning effectiveness.

This is because those systems crunch all the data in the background, collating content engagement results and predicting which content types will work for different learners. This allows the LMS or LXP to confidently auto-allocate the most appropriate content that the learner will engage best with, meaning the L&D team are able to make accurate decisions based on what they know the learner will engage with, rather than what they think they will like.

L&D is here to stay

Whether your staff work remotely, in the office, or do a mix of both, their L&D journey should always be consistent and reliable.

Reiterating the importance of workplace learning, discussing career goals or personal development objectives with employees should help to keep them focussed and on track. And of course, implementing a platform like BuildEmpire which your team will want to come back to time and time again to use, will go a long way in keeping every single employee’s learning and development fresh and exciting.

Supporting and sustaining L&D throughout your business

With everything from customised learning management systems to bespoke virtual learning environments, we completely understand that each business is different when it comes to achieving their L&D goals.

That’s why here at BuildEmpire, we can design and build the perfect learning system to fit all your L&D needs, and will be there for ongoing hosting, maintenance and support to ensure you and your learners are always getting the most out of your learning platform, saving you time and money in the long run.

To find out more, get in touch.