Looking Ahead: Learning Leaders Share Trends and Challenges

On March 4, learning leaders from both the public and private sectors offered solutions to current organizational and human capital challenges at the forum, "Engage the Experts: What's Working in the Learning Industry."

Alan Malinchak, vice president and chief learning officer at ManTech International, moderated the session that included Jody Hudson, chief learning officer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); Fred Lang, director of training and knowledge management at the U.S. Department of Commerce; and Kimo Kippen, chief learning officer at Hilton Worldwide.

Engaging the workforce

Employee engagement arose as a persistent theme, and the panelists agreed that effectively engaging the workforce is an ongoing challenge. "Everyone has the responsibility to fully engage the workforce," Lang said. "That means finding out what's important to a particular employee and making sure his assignments tap into his full potential so that when he comes to work he's using all of his skill sets, not necessarily only the skill sets he was hired to use." Lang described how the Department of Commerce leverages mobile learning tools and the use of avatars and three-dimensional technology in training to better engage its employees.

Hudson shared NRC's challenge to protect employee engagement in the face of impending budget cuts. "We want to provide people with opportunities for learning and development - although this might occur differently than it did in the past," he added. "Whereas we have sent people to very premier learning events (such as the World Nuclear University at Oxford and Harvard University's School of Government) we are going to have to find other alternatives now to protect employee engagement."

Meeting the demand for innovation and growth

Although budget cuts and a leaner workforce continue to plague the public sector, Lang took a glass half-full approach, citing innovation and creativity as positive outcomes in the midst of these tough times. "We're all faced with lean budgets; we need to embrace that," he said. "The statistics tell us that in lean times, patents go up, and new inventions are created. More innovation and creativity happen with a lean workforce because we must find creative and new ways to do things. We can come out of this much more creative than we ever thought we could."

For Kippen and the hospitality industry, the horizon looks less bleak. Hilton is currently experiencing a renaissance, repositioning itself as the leader in hospitality, and adding 15,000 team members in the Near East and North Africa region and 25,000 in Asia Pacific. The biggest challenge for Hilton's learning department - and the recovering private sector's learning profession as a whole - is how to effectively meet business demand generated by this new growth.

"There is this sense of urgency that we have when it comes to guest satisfaction and driving guest loyalty," Kippen noted. He identified the need for collaboration and relevance as lessons emerging from the learning landscape at Hilton. "If you're not relevant, you're dead," he said emphatically. "If you're not adding value to the organization, if you're not in tune with or partnering with the business, and if you don't have executive sponsorship, you're not relevant. If the business doesn't need it or want it, there's no point in doing it."

Managing talent and change

A final theme that transpired from the forum was the need for skills training and talent development in anticipation of change. For example, the NRC's workforce is preparing for the release of new nuclear designs in the near future as a result of the United States' growing interest in nuclear energy, security, and independence.

"We must be able to respond to this changing demand and what's happening in the nuclear arena," Hudson said. "The challenge is getting skilled up in time so that when the industry is ready to roll out these new designs and apply for licenses, we will be ready to evaluate and inspect them."

For the Department of Commerce, a closer look at existing competencies and the development of new skills for tomorrow's workforce is a priority. "Those in the private sector need to be nimble enough to change direction on the dime, and they must have the competencies in place to compete in the workforce," Lang charged. "The idea of social networking and mobile learning might be a clue as to the new competencies needed for your organization to be on the cutting edge."

Additionally, leadership development tactics must adapt as a result of career development changes within the public sector. The average time between an entry-level and senior executive position in the federal government today is approximately 16 years, compared to the 23-year period of maturation from years ago.

"How do we allow individuals in that compressed timeframe to have the same experiences and develop the same depth of insight and wisdom as in the past?" Hudson mused. "We provide people a greater number of stretch assignments to give them those experiences, and we incorporate more realistic simulation exercises in training, but we're always scratching our head, looking for new ways to address this particular issue."

Hilton's change management and talent development strategy is to create mobility - to give employees the tools, resources, coaching, and experiences they need to develop new skills. This includes reverse learning and cross-organizational and global assignments.

"As leaders, how do we deal with change not as a sprint, but as a marathon?" Kippen posed. "Our response should be: How do we continue to keep things very simple? It is our job to create learning that is quick, accessible, and easy to use."

When asked how managers can engage employees in their own development and make training meaningful enough that it sticks, Kippen concluded, "Give people time to think, pause, and reflect before moving to the next thing: This is where learning happens."