Logistics: The Elephant In Your Training Room
While training would ideally be led just by your learning needs, the reality is that logistics and resources often shape your training provision more than is ideal.
Jackafal considers some of the ways that logistics might shape your training, and how 'non-negotiables’ can be reframed to enhance your L&D offering.
As learning and development professionals, the dream is to be able to design and deliver learning content that aligns exactly with what learners need, when they need it, and delivered in the way that is best for them (and for their learning journeys). But the reality is that learning and development departments are often constrained by a number of factors beyond our control, that shape how and when we shape the content, and how and where it’s accessed by learners. Pragmatism is important in any professional endeavour - but we believe there are also benefits to be reaped from taking a step back and considering what opportunities these constraints can inadvertently bring.
Time
The world of work may be getting more efficient, but the reality is we’re still collectively time-poor. The average employee is overloaded with meetings and to do lists, and often training interventions (especially the optional ones) are fighting for time and attention in someone’s already over-saturated calendar. But on the flip side, this can give learning and development specialists the chance to ask a very important question in their designing: what value does this training actually provide, and is it proportionate to the time I’ve allocated it in my learners’ busy schedules?
In some cases, that might be a resounding yes - having space to learn and collectively discuss at leisure can be invaluable to educational breakthroughs, particularly with more complex or challenging topics where it’s important to have time to sit with the content. But there are also times where, as wonderful as it would be to ideally have the time to work more freely, the essentials can be confined to a smaller space, and learners who are keen to know more can follow up with eLearning at a flexible time that suits them. Sometimes, it’s better to have half an hour of someone’s undivided attention than a half day course during which they’re distracted by a pinging inbox. And often your learners will thank you for valuing their time so highly.
Shared (Physical) Space
Rewind just a few years, and we were full in the swing of the ‘online only’ mode of learning delivery courtesy of the global pandemic. Fast forward to today, and it appears that style of delivery was for many organisations just a ‘stop gap’ for having in-person sessions back. But in a world where getting everyone in the same room can be costly, time-consuming, and sometimes just logistically tricky (very few of us have large in-house spaces we can use for training at will), capitalising on online session delivery can be a great way to give groups of people space to learn together who wouldn’t otherwise be able to share session time.
Granted, being in-person has wonderful benefits: you can physically get up, move around the space, and engage with people in breakout sessions in a way that’s hard to do on a screen. But there are also many advantages to online live sessions, including the easy ability to record sessions to watch back, increased control for learners over how they do or do not interact with the session (particularly useful for learners with disabilities or who are juggling childcare needs), and the potential to use a range of interactive tech and AI tools. Having limitations on shared space can be a great chance to rethink the format of your sessions, and consider if you’re discounting something which could actually be a great option with its own benefits.
Money In
Most of the time when people think of money in relation to training, they consider the costs of creating and delivering it (which we will cover more below). But it’s also important to consider how your training affects the money coming in, whether that’s through funding, bids for tender, sales, sponsorship etc. Sometimes there will be revenue streams available to your organisation depending on what training, upskilling or development programmes you have in place - and this will have a direct effect on what you do or don’t include in your learning and development programmes.
That said, it can be a great excuse to fully re-align what you’re training for in your organisation and why (which is often the key missing piece). Whatever the revenue stream, there is normally a practical, real-world reason why that training is important to funders, clients or customers. Learning for learning’s sake is great, but you can make your training even more impactful if both you and your delegates truly understand the value of what you’re doing in the real world - and considering return on investment for your training is a great way to start that conversation around practical real-world alignment, even if it can initially feel a bit constricting.
Money Out
The more obvious one way in which money shapes our training development is what we need to spend to make our L&D ideals a reality. Often the cost of design and delivery time can balloon, particularly if you are using multiple providers for each stage of the process. One advantage to this is it can give you a change to re-evaluate what free resources you have easily available to you, such as in-house expertise, peer-learning and free resources (such as this wonderful blog and some of our eLearning courses). And for those parts that you decide it’s necessary to spend money on? You can research the most efficient way to allocate funds to those sections, perhaps by getting a one-stop-shop to cover the design and delivery in a neat bundle (enjoy the shameless plug there).
Technology and Systems
Let’s face it, who hasn’t been limited by clunky technology they hate at some point in their career? Whether it’s the old systems that really need upgrading (but it’s not in the budget), or the piece of software that’s mandated across the company that doesn’t align with your department’s needs, we all have limitations regarding the technology and systems that we use in our roles as L&D practitioners.
The good news is that can be a brilliant way to force us not to over-engineer our training. Sometimes it can be tempting to approach learning and development problems by adding tool after tool to the pile to ‘keep things interesting’. But the reality is that often the most valuable resource in your learning content is the human input, in the design or the delivery. Instead of struggling against the restrictions of your organisation’s tech, use it as an excuse to pare back to the basics and only turn to the technological solutions that enhance your learning offering, rather than unnecessarily over-complicating it.
Feeling restricted by logistics in your L&D and need some advice? Reach out to Jackafal for some more ideas.
