Dancing. It takes skill, patience and whole lot of practice to ensure everyone stays in formation and knows what they’re expected to do.
It’s much like HR, in fact.
Where the most valuable asset of any company is its people, retention of staff is crucial. Equally, so is defining roles so that the entire team moves and operates like a perfectly choreographed line dance.
Achieving this means delivering training, learning and professional development for all employees, from new recruits to upper management.
These HR roles can be known as either Learning and Development or Training and Development, but the aim is the same.
The purpose is simple – to make sure everyone has not only the skills to carry out current roles but also to look ahead and offer training that will improve skills and prepare for promotion within the company.
This helps business, of course, with L&D or T&D creating courses and programmes to fill skills gaps.
The creation of courses and programmes is intrinsic to a department but the delivery can also be done by a third party – some companies will need expert input into some areas, but it’s the role of L&D to identify the best possible contributors.
This role is found in many organisations, from public bodies to private companies across many sectors.
The professional body attached to the role is the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and some companies will look for membership and perhaps even qualifications run by the CIPD.
However, the people skills for these roles cannot be over-stressed. There will be many cases where employees just want to be left alone in their roles and will be resistant to additional training.
This can also mean HR managers advising team leaders how to motivate employees who don’t see the point in further training and getting to the root of this resistance – it might not always be laziness but be based on a fear of going back into what is seen as a “classroom” setting.
And of course L&D needs to keep up with innovations in learning techniques.
Finally, practice makes perfect. Just ask Uncle Phil: one, two, three, kick! One, two, three, clap! One, two . .
