The Building Blocks Of Business Maturity And It's Connection To Learning And Development

The Building Blocks Of Business Maturity And It's Connection To Learning And Development
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Summary: Every organization has a culture, and included in that culture is a set of assumptions and practices around learning — the organization’s learning culture. This guide highlights the 4 maturity level archetypes and how to transition to the next stage.

Why Organizational Maturity And Learning Culture Go Hand-In-Hand

Training, upskilling, reskilling, adapting, and equipping employees to excel are common ways we as organizations build and express our learning culture. There are, however, wide variations in the people, process, and technology resources applied to these objectives. Learning maturity describes the organization’s progressive path from elementary to visionary learning culture.

Learning culture and learning maturity vary across organizations. Kineo developed a learning maturity model as a reflection of our market insight work, a discussion of what is driving organizations to accelerate their movement toward a greater level of learning maturity, and examples that illustrate how organizations can transition from one maturity stage to the next.

eBook Release: The Concept of Organizational Maturity: How To Achieve An Agile Innovation Culture Through A Learning Maturity Model
eBook Release
The Concept of Organizational Maturity: How To Achieve An Agile Innovation Culture Through A Learning Maturity Model
Discover how to grow your L&D strategy by leaps and bounds and move to the next stage of corporate learning maturity.

A model for how organizations mature

At Kineo we regard learning maturity as a continuum. Along this continuum, we’ve found that organizations typically cluster in four stages, which we’ve named:

  • Chalk & Talk
  • Brilliant Basics
  • Investors in People
  • Future Gazers

In this series, we’ll explore how organizations cluster along this learning maturity continuum, and how you can travel from one end to the other. You can also download the eBook for more insights to take your organizational culture to the next level.

What’s the Maturity Level of Your Business? How To Find your Archetype

Chalk & Talk

An organization at the Chalk & Talk stage has a young learning culture

with little emphasis on upskilling workers. These organizations may deploy training on workplace processes and procedures or on their own products and services with the goal of equipping workers to perform effectively and efficiently in their job roles.

Training technology is minimal; if there is an LMS, it may be a basic one or used primarily for compliance content, reference or how-to guides or videos, or as a tool to track and record learners’ completion of required courses or certifications. Integration with talent management or development tools such as an HRIS is minimal.

The majority of training at this stage occurs in-house, using instructor-led classes or manuals, paper documentation, or internally produced training tools. Organizations at the Chalk & Talk stage are unlikely to have a dedicated learning and development (L&D) team.

Brilliant Basics

When Chalk & Talk organizations commit to developing a learning culture and enabling employees to participate in self- and professional-development activities, they move into what we call the Brilliant Basics stage.

These organizations may begin to push learning opportunities, encouraging learners to spend time on improving their skills or knowledge. Training opportunities include mandatory and compliance training — but extend beyond that to embrace personal and professional development. Brilliant Basics organizations may launch leadership development programs, for example, by teaching or reinforcing soft skills development; they might encourage learners to try to master new skills for their current or aspirational job roles. Training goals could be specific, such as improving performance or developing a particular skill; or they could be developmental, such as nurturing creativity or improving soft skills like mentoring workers or providing feedback.

Organizations at this stage are likely to use an LMS to host and track online training including conventional eLearning courses and tutorials, featuring libraries of content that include interactive eBooks, documents, courses, and videos.

Brilliant Basics organizations may seek to deepen their learning culture by developing their L&D team and expanding the variety of training opportunities available to some or all of their employees. They may seek greater integration between the LMS and other elements of their talent management ecosystem or between online and face-to-face learning opportunities. They might be seeking to develop more customized, in-house training in addition to extensive use of professionally created third-party content libraries.

Investors in People

Organizations that have moved into the Investors in People stage have committed to performance management and talent development. These organizations have a maturing learning culture that sees a strong correlation between professional development and improved business performance.

Investors in People seek a strong return on their training investment (ROI) and see clear value in building their L&D team. Training opportunities extend far beyond what’s needed to ensure efficient day-to-day performance and look to the future. Training goals include developing future leaders and empowering employees with new skills that enable them to move into new roles and take on “stretch” assignments and challenges.

Investors in People fully exploit the capabilities of their LMS and may overlay a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) for greater learner engagement and personalization. They encourage self-directed learning and perhaps host a knowledge base, extensive curated content, and performance development tools in addition to more conventional synchronous and asynchronous learning tools like eLearning courses, microlearning, documents, and videos. They may host webinars, virtual classroom-based courses, and collaborative learning platforms and opportunities.

Future Gazers

Organizations characterized as Future Gazers have a mature learning culture and actively encourage learners to engage with self- and professional development as part of their workday routine. These organizations likely have (or are planning to implement) an integrated talent development ecosystem that includes a robust, full-featured LMS, an LXP, a performance management platform and other tools that track, manage, and expand learning opportunities.

They may be early adopters of AI technologies and immersive training platforms, for example, that take learning in new and innovative directions. Digital learning is deeply ingrained in their learning culture alongside — or supplanting — much face-to-face learning as their organizations grow and become more globally focused.

They encourage “pull” learning — initiated and directed by learners themselves – and understand learning opportunities as a way to engage employees and provide an outstanding employee experience, with the knowledge that this is one way to hold onto valuable high-performers.

Learn More About Business Maturity And Its L&D Ties

Download the eBook The Concept of Organizational Maturity: How To Achieve An Agile Innovation Culture Through A Learning Maturity Model to accelerate your online training program and move to the next stage. Also, join the webinar to learn what drives L&D impact and find your breakthrough moment.

eBook Release: Kineo
Kineo
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