Learning & Development

Building Bridges: Must-Have Strategic Partnerships in L&D

According to one resource, 95% of learning and development (L&D) professionals rate business acumen as an important competency for successful training managers—and for a very good reason. L&D departments are quickly becoming the epicenters for all strategic partnerships for organizations across industries and will be the most innovative department within most organizations over the course of the next decade.partners
L&D departments have the capacity to inspire innovation and propel organizational goals forward, as well as increase an organization’s revenue and profit margins. However, they must first build strategic partnerships with many other departments and sectors internal and external to their organizations.
Keep reading to learn more about what strategic partnerships are critical to the success of L&D departments in 2018 and beyond.

Strategic Partnerships L&D Leaders Must Build and Nurture

C-suite. Without executive buy-in for your L&D programs and initiatives, they will not receive the proper amount of funding and support that they require, and they are a lot less likely to succeed.
Be sure to form strategic partnerships with members of the C-suite across your organization, not just the CEO. Read “How to Sell Your L&D Programs to the C-Suite,” Part 1 and Part 2, to learn more about how to do this and why it’s so critical.
Human Resources. As an L&D professional, you should work closely with HR to build a steady, high-quality, and reliable pipeline of participants for your various programs and courses, which can include onboarding courses, leadership courses, soft skills training courses, etc.
You should also work with HR to determine strategies for how you’ll automate and better personalize your L&D initiatives so that employees are consistently engaged in the right programs for them and their individual career paths and interests at the right times.
In addition, you should work with HR to build onboarding programs that will decrease your organization’s employee attrition rates while providing each employee with the necessary training he or she needs as a new hire with your organization.
IT and technology. As an L&D professional, you will need to build strong partnerships with your organization’s IT and technology departments. As you adopt and update your LMS and other online systems, implement your mobile learning initiatives and apps, collect and analyze employee and learner data, develop more e-learning content, etc., you will need their support and expertise to ensure your programs and tools are always first-rate and that they’re always available to learners.
Such partnerships will also ensure that your learning content, technology, systems, and apps are always safe, secure, and never compromised.
Watch out for tomorrow’s post, which will cover additional strategic partnerships you’ll want to form for your L&D department in 2018 and beyond.

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