Now more than ever, the survival of modern organizations depends on their ability to create and foster a culture of learning. As the pressure continues to rise for companies to upskill and reskill their teams, so too does the demand for more innovative, adaptive, and effective learning experiences. But creating these learning experiences isn’t easy.

Increased workloads, hybrid work environments, and a tightening labor market have all put new stressors on learning, says Professor Lynda Gratton of London Business School. And no matter how vast or experienced your internal L&D department is, these ever-evolving demands pose a great challenge: How do you create meaningful behavioral change amidst the chaos, while also seizing every opportunity to help learners thrive? Often, the best way to address that challenge is to work with a learning partner.

Why hiring a learning partner is better than doing it in-house

Picture this: It’s Monday. You’ve just been assigned the task of helping your organization achieve a specific learning objective, complete with a timeline, a budget, and a list of deliverables. The success of this learning initiative is mission-critical to your company achieving its goals. The pressure is on. You return to your office, remove the cap from your dry-erase marker, and approach your whiteboard.

At this point, a few things might happen. Maybe you start brainstorming (with or without a team, depending on the size of your department). You probably have a million great ideas, but chances are, you know you can only carry out a handful—if that—because of your limited internal resources. Or maybe you find yourself a bit stumped, unsure how best to tackle the task at hand. Whatever the case may be, it’s time to call a learning partner. From generating fresh ideas to providing a new world of capabilities, your perfect learning partner is prepared to help you succeed.

Let’s explore a few reasons why hiring a learning partner is typically more effective—and efficient—than attempting to build the best learning experience in-house.

Breadth and depth of knowledge

It’s unrealistic to expect internal L&D departments to know everything there is to know about learning theory and be able to expertly orchestrate every element of a learning experience. And it’s even more unrealistic to expect an organization without a fully stacked L&D team to suddenly become experts on how best to strategize, design, and carry out specific plans to achieve learning objectives. Your L&D managers, while skilled in their profession, probably don’t have a ton of experience conceptualizing, scripting, and producing high-quality, effective video. But for a learning innovation company like Maestro, such a challenge is music to our ears.

When you work with the right learning partner, you gain access to seasoned talent in multiple disciplines with expert capabilities, quality tools, and a dedicated team on a mission to support you and your goals. The best learning partners live and breathe learning, and they’ve spent years collecting valuable information, weaving together research and first-hand experiences to hone their craft.

But it’s not all about the latest trends and research. While learning theory and knowledge is the foundation of our company, we’re also experts in other key areas, like technology, media, and design. And it’s this combination of expertise that elevates our ability to make bold, innovative, and meaningful learning experiences.

An outside (but not too far out) perspective

It’s easy to get lost in the trees and forget about the forest when you’re outlining a learning experience. When that happens, what you need is a healthy fresh perspective.

It’s true; you know more about your industry than we do—as you should! But for learning partners like Maestro, learning is our industry, and our team of experts is extremely well-versed in, well, learning. At the start of a project, our main objective is to understand your learners, and by extension, your industry. Because we believe learning should meet people where they are, we spend the necessary time in the discovery phase, using the Double Diamond framework to gather relevant information about your learners’ needs, motivations, and existing knowledge before we start developing a strategy. Through this process, we sometimes discover that what we thought was the primary issue at the heart of the challenge isn’t actually the primary issue, much like we did when working with Johnny’s Markets. As you’d expect, uncovering this vital information saved Johnny’s Markets a ton of time and money down the road.

Cost and time effective

If you’re operating on a tight deadline or a strict budget, hiring a learning partner might not sound like the smartest move, but it’s often the smartest move you can make. We all know how important creating a learning culture is to the success of your organization. It’s been found that by investing in employee development, your company can improve profitability by 11% and double employee retention. So why not do it right?

You might not have the time or funds to invest in things like new softwares, piloting, or high-quality design to uplevel your learning experience. But we, as your learning partner, do! And we’re not just capable of creating meaningful learning experiences; we’re experts at it. We’ve spent years cultivating our approach, allowing us to carry out our objectives efficiently without compromising on the outcome, i.e. lasting behavioral change.

There’s a common misconception that working with a learning partner will break the bank, but at Maestro, we commit ourselves to making your dollars go as far as possible. From your very first conversation with us, you can be sure that we’re strategizing how best to apply your budget so that you get the most value possible. For example, when a large charter school system came to us with a modest budget and the request to redesign a handful of their eLearning courses for them, we knew we could help them make a bigger impact with their budget. So, instead of redesigning just a few of their courses for them, we used the funds to train their internal team on how to do it themselves. And now they have new skills they can apply time and time again, saving them serious money in the long run.

What to look for in a learning partner

Once you’ve decided to hire a partner, how do you know which learning partner to choose? The best learning partners aren’t just capable and qualified; they should meet these specific critical criteria and be able to answer these questions with confidence. Here are a few requirements you should consider non-negotiable when vetting potential learning partners.

They operate with a proven approach

The best learning partners have a proven approach for addressing learning challenges, cultivated from years of research and experience solving a variety of learning problems. That’s not to say they approach each challenge the same way. In fact, the opposite should be true. Every learning challenge is different and therefore every challenge requires a custom learning experience in response. But the most effective learning experiences, however unique, must contain a few key ingredients. These include things like learner research and discovery, piloting and validation, and measurement and optimization.

They’re dedicated to creating lasting behavioral change

If you take anything from this article, let it be this: do not choose a learning partner simply because they agree to check a box. Choose a learning partner who is dedicated to creating the most impactful experience for you and your organization.

There are many agencies that can design a beautiful eLearning course, and even build custom software. But those skills don’t mean much if they aren’t applied intentionally, with a learner-focused mindset and your business goals in mind. Work with a partner whose mission is to create lasting behavioral change, because that—not a bunch of checkmarks—is what’s going to help your organization evolve. After all, learning exists to create change.

They are expert learners themselves

Author and educator James McKenna claims that “Expert learners have the will and skill to learn, can identify ways to leverage that learning into impact, and are always looking for new challenges and ways to improve their skills. They are the learners best able to adapt to the rapidly changing modern workplace.” The best learning partners (those who are expert learners) don’t just stay up-to-date on the challenges of modern learning; they continue to develop new and innovative ways to overcome those challenges.

The goal of any learning partner worth their salt should be to help their audience transform into expert learners. But they should also identify as expert learners themselves. How else could they offer the most relevant and innovative services, backed by the most up-to-date research, and honed by years of experience? If your learning partner isn’t willing to learn—about you, your team, your learners, your industry—or if they’re not interested in hearing, considering, or challenging your ideas, they’re not a true learning partner.

Why Maestro?

Ultimately, we want you to find the learning partner that best fits your needs. And if what we’ve said resonates with you, that partner could be us. At Maestro, we pride ourselves on our collaboration and innovation. We understand that every challenge is unique, and therefore every learning experience should be too. Our four core teams of experts in the fields of strategy, design, media, and engineering don’t just know how to solve problems; they have the tools, the drive, and the experience to solve those problems in the best possible way. Together, our mission is to create a world where learning is the driving force behind every organization. Join us?