A proactive learning strategy to address the productivity challenge 

Authored by: Karena Starkie-Gomez (Director, Leadership and Workforce)

Productivity. It’s the Key focus right now, across all the healthcare organisations I talk to. The fact it’s so high on the corporate agenda is an inevitable by-product of the pressure everyone’s under to reduce costs while improving quality and outcomes. I know I’ve said to clients before that if you improve quality you reduce costs – ONLY if you have time to really think through processes and transform. Now, there isn’t the time to do that, and costs are cut, inevitably not always in the best way.

Sadly, whenever healthcare organisations start talking about saving money, learning and development (L&D) budgets are almost always cut.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone’s productivity challenges could immediately be overcome by reversing this and investing more in L&D – although that would be nice! However, I do think that many of the productivity gains that organisations are looking for could be delivered by aligning L&D strategy more closely to overall business strategy. By making the most of the 70% of learning that people do on the job and in their daily work.

Currently, because of the cuts people are being asked to make, there’s a risk of L&D activity losing its strategic coherence and being undertaken in a reactive, piecemeal fashion. No-one’s becoming more productive that way.

Take the example of a major transformational project; the likes of which many healthcare organisations have recently set out on. Whether that’s transitioning to a new software system or merging with another organisation, it brings about sizable changes that can significantly affect how people are expected do their jobs. It’s likely to require new skills and behaviours.

In an ideal world, a suitable L&D plan for developing those skills and behaviours would be in place from the start. Individual activities would be clearly mapped to crucial parts of the overarching transformation plan and procured in the most cost-effective and timely manner possible.

When that doesn’t happen, either because of budget cuts or because of leaders retrenching to old beliefs and behaviours (where the value of L&D is diminished), learning becomes a reactive, ad hoc undertaking, delivering less impact and value for money. Unfortunately, it appears to me that this is the direction we could be heading in, where we dont support staff to learn and apply that learning for the benefit of all.

It’s hard to imagine any business strategy delivering its desired outcomes without people having to do things differently, or simply better, particularly in these times of near-constant change. The importance of coherent L&D planning has therefore never been greater. An example is where organisations have procured learning from multiple providers without an overarching strategy, and so each provider has different design criteria, terminology and approaches. This can mean that parts of the organisation work harder to understand each other – leading to reinforcing silos.

There’s an old saying (Benjamin Franklin & my gran, I believe) about how, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.” I don’t think it’s over-dramatic to apply it here. Quite simply, the lack of appropriately planned learning presents a sizable risk to any corporate undertaking, making productivity gains hard to come by.

There is another factor in play here – and that’s the presence of a genuine learning culture within an organisation. Without that, even the most coherent learning strategy may struggle to fully capitalise on its investments.

Within our Learning Services business, we talk a lot about the 70/20/10 model, where 70% of learning is done on the job, with the remainder delivered through social learning sessions (20%) and formal learning interventions (10%).

To be completely successful, that 70% needs an environment where time is made for learning; where learners are encouraged to embed what they’ve learned and to share this with others around them. These behaviours underpin a workplace learning culture. Without them, the investments in the 20% and the 10% risk falling on stony ground.

All of this is why, right now, I’m always challenging healthcare organisations about whether their learning strategy is delivering their desired business outcomes. Are they clear on what their most important learning priorities are and what this requires of their L&D function? How, if at all, does their approach to learning need to change because of budgetary pressures? And what improvements can they make to create the learning culture within which new skills can flourish and change can really take hold?

Across the healthcare sector, I see plenty of really good L&D functions, stocked with really talented people. Yet I also see organisations trying to deliver strategic, change-related outcomes while failing to take their L&D functions on the journey with them.

If productivity is to improve, along with care quality levels, staff experiences and citizen outcomes, that will need to change.