What the Future Holds
By Tony Bingham

Now more than ever, senior executives must balance strategic initiatives, industry changes and market pressures with internal demands from the lines of business and top management. As a senior learning professional, you're asked to meet business needs by designing and delivering training that is closely aligned with performance plans, can demonstrate quantifiable results for the business and is engaging for learners.

No sweat, right?

And on top of that, you have to know exactly how emerging industry trends and competition will impact the company, and develop a learning strategy that can be executed at a moment's notice to "upskill" key segments of the workforce, right? Hmmm . . .

The business dynamics described above apply to just about any company, and for learning professionals and HR leaders with learning oversight, there are three crucial trends that I believe will have a significant impact on the future of the learning field: the skills gap, the way executives view learning and new roles training leaders will have within their respective enterprises.

Defining the Gap
The skills gap, essentially, is the difference between an organization's skills needs and the current capabilities of its workforce. Ultimately, it is the point at which an organization can no longer grow or remain competitive in its industry, because its employees do not have the right skills to drive business results and support the organization's strategies and goals.

There is no shortage of explanations for this gap, but the most prominent are:

• There is a mismatch between the skills the organization needs (current and future) and the capabilities of the workforce;
• The organization does not train employees during hard times and is struggling to catch up;
• The number of high-skilled, specialized jobs needed to take the organization forward is increasing; and
• Highly skilled baby boomers are, or will be, leaving the workforce soon.

In reality, there will always be skills gaps in organizations -- this is why the learning profession exists. As industries evolve, market conditions change and organizations innovate; employees must continually learn and develop to keep pace with these changes. As learning professionals, then, your first charge isn't to solve skills gaps, but to create a strategy to address significant gaps before they become serious or hinder your organization's ability to grow and succeed.

Helping organizations get in front of the skills-gap crisis is the primary reason ASTD collaborated with members of our Public Policy Council to produce a white paper that provides an action plan for learning professionals and business leaders, and recommendations to policy makers.

Whether you are beginning to assess workforce capabilities, have identified a skills gap or are in the middle of implementing a multi-year plan, I encourage you to read the paper and understand what is required to take charge of the skills gap in your organization.

The C-Level View
How many of you have asked your CEO what keeps him or her awake at night? If you've been paying attention to surveys or articles in business publications during the last few years, business growth and attracting and retaining the right talent typically rank at the top. While growth can take many forms (mergers and acquisitions, for example), organizations rely on employees' knowledge and skills to innovate and create products and services to meet customer needs and achieve a competitive edge.

Your CEO is relying on you to tie your work -- the learning and development function -- to the organization's strategies by assessing what is needed, setting goals, building learning solutions to meet goals and measuring and articulating learning's impact.

At ASTD, we have talked to numerous CEOs to understand how they leverage employee-learning development and what they expect of their learning leaders. Here's a snapshot of a few recent interviews.

To be competitive in the global environment, Deere & Co. had to shift its workforce skills for designing, building, selling and servicing products as the technology in them became more sophisticated. According to CEO Bob Lane, ". . .We really see ourselves as restructuring the company in such a way that everyone -- not just the leadership -- knows what to do. Good decisions are made at all levels of the company because of knowledge and insight about what's going on."

Lane also notes: "The only way we can sustain growth is with the high-octane fuel of employees who are linked to those [business] objectives, together with senior leaders who support them."

Danny Wegman, CEO of Wegman's Food Markets, puts a similar emphasis on knowledge when he looks at sales growth. "When our sales are growing, I know we are doing a good job at training. That's exactly how I look at it. We feel that with their knowledge, our people are able to serve our customers in a way that they won't be served anywhere else, and that grows our business . . . Our employees' knowledge is the key to our success," Wegman says.

Ross Born and Dave Shaffer, co-CEOs of Just Born Inc., the family-owned confectionary company famous for its "Peeps" among other candies, are also committed to learning, and see a clear link from the HR and learning functions to the company's strategies.

"Learning is like breathing for us," Born says. "We operate in a changing world. In our industry, we have globalization; we have low-cost competition; and we use a lot of technology. If you don't learn in this industry, you'll go out of business. Our competition is learning, so we're learning all the time."

While I could give you many more examples, in these three alone you can see how company leaders -- with workforces ranging from 400 to 47,000 employees -- view learning and its impact on the organization. When was the last time you had a conversation with your CEO about learning? Do you communicate your department's results in business terms that are meaningful to senior management? If not, find an opportunity to connect with your CEO to understand how he or she views the role and impact of learning in your organization. It will be one of the most eye-opening experiences you have.

Changing Roles
As business leaders focus their sights on future growth, effectively managing talent is a critical part of this growth. While HR and learning professionals may have their own definitions of the term "talent management," the functions along the continuum -- recruiting, retention, succession planning, compensation, performance management and learning -- are critical to its overall success.

While some organizations have been able to "get by" in the past by looking at each element as a separate function, that's not the case today. As senior executives in HR and learning, you know better than anyone that all of these functions must perform well together to realize maximum results.

Effective talent management means that the HR and learning functions are aligned, connected by common strategies and working toward the same goal. Your ultimate responsibility is to find the best talent for the organization, engage them in the mission and vision of the organization, and continually develop and adapt their skills and capabilities so they can contribute to the organization's growth and success.

There has never been a better time to be part of the learning field. What you do every day has a huge impact on individual growth and development. Take this opportunity to more closely align your work to the CEO's measures and strategies. Communicate the value of learning and demonstrate your relevance to the business.

I encourage you to make 2007 your most successful and productive year yet. Your time is here!

Tony Bingham is president and CEO of the American Society for Training & Development, the world's largest association dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals. With broad-based business, financial, operational and technical management expertise, Binham joined ASTD in 2001 as the COO/CIO. He became president and CEO in February 2004.

Reprinted from HREonline - LRP Publications