Over the last decade or so, HR has seen a significant shift in its positioning. With the emergence of the knowledge economy, the importance of people as a key element in organizational success has gone up. Not just due to knowledge components, but more so due to  VUCA, SMAC and other such complex interplays of the environment in which organizations today exist and have to create ongoing success. Such complex and fast changing environments offer less predictability, making it necessary for organizations to depend more on adaptable human beings for survival than on non-human components of a business.

The rise of people as the prime factor is not a surprise, but an evolutionary process that started with industrialization, and led to technical processes and product standardization. In today’s complex environment, those standard products of industrialization are no longer sufficient. Every human being wants an experience, whether it is a product or a service. The core differentiator is the experience that one goes through in his/her association with the product or service. While this experience is dependent on quality as one measure, pure mechanical delivery of experience doesn’t lead to a “wow” factor for the individual. So, apart from creating technologies, systems and processes that help in delivering quality products and services, it is also bringing the human element into experience that makes all the difference.

Since it is people who make all of this happen, it is no surprise that HR is seen as a function to enable businesses not just survive, but also thrive.

“Our assets walk out of the door each evening,” said Narayan Murthy, Infosys. “We have to make sure that they come back the next morning.”

Beyond HR, the learning team plays a huge role in ensuring that these assets not just come back, but also remain relevant every day.  It is only through ongoing learning and development, which leads to competence enhancement, that an individual can remain relevant.

The question is, “As learning and development professionals, how well are you playing this role of enabling the workforce of today and tomorrow to be and remain relevant?” This cannot be answered through smile sheets that are usually captured at the end of a formal training event.

Think and deliver around the following questions:

• How good is the alignment of learning and business? What competencies are required by business today and tomorrow? Analytics, digital, social media, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, thinking experience before design, placing purpose before profits?
• What are the best strategies for building these competencies? Learners prefer on the job, coaching by manager/ peers, in-house development. Apart from these three, projected to see increased preference and usage are e-learning, blended learning and internal knowledge sharing events.
• How is formal and informal learning tied together in order for transfer of learning to happen?
• Who will create the content that is aligned to the requisite level of competence (as per Bloom’s levels)? Training team, internal SMEs, external agencies?
• How does learning evaluate its efforts?
• What is the quality of data around learning?
• Are you setting and evaluating clear metrics around formal training?
• How do senior leaders set an example for others for learning and also hold next line of leaders responsible for learning in the organization? As Dr. Robert Brinkerhoff says, “People assume that a training event is supposed to create change automatically. Just as one would expect a lavish wedding function to enable a couple to live happily ever after. The biggest differentiator for transfer of learning is the manager’s involvement.”
• How well does learning align with the talent agenda?
• How good is the alignment of the learning agenda to the key people processes?

There is a fundamental shift in how a learning professional thinks and delivers his role. While the number of hours, compliance, satisfaction ratings are one side of the picture, the other part (and what these efficiency factors are only meant to ensure) is about what is being delivered. It is time to move beyond smileys on the sheets to see smileys on the business scorecards! It is also about keeping learning relevant today and tomorrow.