Functions of the CLO
Does indeed your organization require a CLO? Before you answer that, you should understand the role and duties of a CLO. Based on this, then you're able to determine if not having a CLO, is limiting your capacity to definitively identify and meet long term training requirements.
Do you realize, there is a bottom line benefit and increase in productivity when formal training takes place within an enterprise?
The IBM Research Report on the Strategic Value of Learning states:
learning is seen by senior management to have a significant impact on a number of business results, including revenue, productivity, turnover, and innovation. Training can help make it possible for all round organization success.
Add to that the conclusions of a latest study by PDI (Personnel Decisions International):
90 CEOs had been surveyed asking them what their most significant enterprise difficulties are, and these firms reported hiring, retention, and talent management issues as the 2nd biggest obstacle.
The statistics echoes loudly. There is value in offering for the understanding, training, and expertise requirements of your staff. The issue then is, how do you create tactical initiatives that manage enterprise training needs for just about all business functions and office staff levels?
Let's consider the role of the Chief Learning Officer. According to Bersin and Associates, most businesses (70% or more) don't have a CLO. As an outcome, workers accountable for training usually don't have a outlined management position, there really isn't clarity around who they are and exactly what they should be carrying out, and most significantly, they don't have a voice around the "C" level table.
From a high-level, overall picture lens, the position of a CLO is to:
1. Provide leadership and guidance in planning how personnel training needs align to company objectives.
2. Identify and determine what training, expertise and education requirements are needed by individuals, and job type function.
3. Direct the creation of learning courses to offer people with the expertise and skills they need to improve their job abilities.
4. Create a setting ready for both conventional and informal learning.
5. Establish strategies to monitor the growth, and execution of training, while keeping a constant learning setting to ensure staff member performance and success.
6. Measure learning's success in relation to organizational objectives to determine the ROI of training.
An organization that recognizes learning plays a key function in personal performance success, realizes that learning plans must be global across the organization, and endorsed via the top down. In the absence of a CLO chief learning officer, you are able to plan, coordinate, and structure your learning organization to incorporate this practical role.
Be sure to work across the enterprise, to consult all divisions and check with them what their needs are about meeting departmental objectives and specific performance targets. If support for a CLO isn't possible right now, make an effort to determine techniques that the providers of learning can take a leadership role and work toward managing a learning function that shows its value and benefit in productivity, revenues, and talent recruitment.
