The role Training & Development Manager
What are the typical requirements for the Training & Development Manager or this family of roles?
Here, education is not a leading factor. Perhaps this is a role with a variety of representatives - psychologists, engineers, marketers, philologists, designers and many more. The experience of such people arises in medium to large organisations where there is a distinct activity of purposefully shaping, maintaining and developing the skills of employees to the levels required to make the organisation competitive. This person or team has the difficult task of ensuring the accumulation and retention of knowledge in the organization. At the same time, it is impossible to be a sufficiently profiled specialist in every structure of a company and it is challenging to keep track of professional developments for all colleagues. Personal qualities such as openness and curiosity for innovations, for easy and quick discovery, synthesizing information and presenting it as interesting verbal and visual content come to the fore in the requirements. Experience in organizing and leading trainings, managing group dynamics, processes and projects, content generation are a must.
Organizational skills, improvisation and focus on achieving goals are required. Personal qualities related to attracting and retaining attention, clearly articulating and verbalizing concepts and ideas greatly help the job. Proficient and manageable personal communication and the ability to involve and engage others are key, as are the skills to moderate learner activity, give feedback and support in efforts to learn and apply new skills.
Like any other HR activity involving organizing and working with all employees, the Learning&Development professional needs to be aware of the cycles of needs analysis, feedback from previous activities, annual planning and activity budgeting.
Technical skills are a must and there is hardly any organization anymore that has not at least partially implemented and implemented a distance learning model, its design and implementation.
Specific to a Training & Development expert are 3 key skills: adaptability, innovation and creative thinking.
Adaptability - on the one hand, there are theoretical frameworks and rules in our profession, but on the other hand, it allows an expert to expand their thinking so that they can adapt to the needs of the business in which they operate and especially to the needs of the people in the company. Very often, the solutions we offer are radically different and adapted to the relevant target group that will participate in a specific training or programme.
Innovation - another specific skill that makes professionals in this field successful. Nowadays, everything is changing extremely fast and we are obliged to keep up with the latest trends in training and team development. It's unthinkable to offer the same training and programs we offered 3, even 2 years ago. We live in a dynamic and fast-paced world - a world where microlearning or bite-sized learning have an increasing place among the solutions offered by a Learning and Development expert.
Creativity - in my opinion a professional in this field should not think outside the box, they should think as if the box does not exist at all. To offer unconventional, different and creative training tools so as to maintain the constant interest of the teams in a company.
What kind of companies typically have such positions?
The job title is quite traditional, years ago employees were called training or qualification specialists. In the past, even more than 20 years ago, when organizations did not have today's staffing problems, very often the activity was also combined by recruiters. In both Bulgarian and foreign companies the understanding of this role is quite similar. In order to recruit and maintain such a position or team, organisations have at least 50 - 80 or more employees. The activity is more developed in companies that generate and modify a large number of products, are oriented to a large number of users, those in the stage of active organizational change, as well as operating in a highly competitive market, existing for at least 5 - 10 years. Interestingly, in start-ups or small businesses, the L&D function seems to come at a later stage, at least a few years after founding. Apart from the skills that are important for the external interaction of organizations with customers, suppliers or consumers, a large part of the implemented trainings are in the direction of internal interaction between managers and employees, teamwork, different types of intercultural and interpersonal relationships, motivational trainings, personal effectiveness. A large part of the training activities is focused on pure technological knowledge, updating technology, introducing automation, new processes, etc. This category is not always owned and managed by HR or L&D, but very often included as leads from the quality, support, IT and other departments. For companies that are in highly regulated businesses (banks, telecoms, utilities), there is even a definite requirement for regulatory training on a certain subject matter or refresher mandatory courses, often with testing and knowledge verification at certain times as well.
The most active training and learning organizations are banks, insurers, telecom, utilities, retail chains, automotive dealers, BPO and ITO companies, shared service centers, large IT companies with many employees, national courier companies, large retailers, distributors, etc. In an organization, the L&D or T&D team is often in the HR structure, but there are also cases when it is in the Delivery & Operations, Client Service, Customer Quality structure, or it is on a separate reporting line, on the same level as HR and other directly reporting structures. In addition, the Learning & Development function is one of the heavy users of external resources - specialist training companies, academies, coaching, as well as bringing in an internal project team of highly specialised trainers - experts in their field to transfer, share and build on employee knowledge and skills, to conduct induction or on the job training. Often, these teams of internal trainers can reach up to 4 - 5% of the total number of staff in an organization, while it is not their permanent job.
Options and designations of expertise training and development.
Knowledge Management
Training & Development
Learning & Development
Continuous Improvement
Capability Development
What does the Learning & Development Manager do?
What L&D does in a particular organisation depends on the objectives the organisation has set and how these are delivered by management. The main work is planning, reporting, organizational activities, data analysis, feedback. Equally important is keeping track of training budget expenditures and making the most efficient use of them. A strategic task is to create or further develop a concept of knowledge in the organization, to implement the set goals by planning and conducting various activities - soft skills training, personal effectiveness, management training, leadership academies, coaching. A significant part of the resource is allocated to onboarding programmes for newly recruited, returning or reassigned employees or internship programmes.
For L&D professionals, a number of challenges have emerged in recent years - most notably in implementing, developing or maintaining a distance or online training system, generating their own content, updating existing training, running extraordinary or planned training campaigns, engaging employees to participate, technical support, managing the resource of equipment, access, licenses, etc.
Much of the time is spent in monitoring trends in the field, researching the market supply of T&D services, communicating, negotiating with external vendors, training the selected service providers and calibrating with the organization's requirements, monitoring performance, gathering feedback from the trainees. Serious efforts go into organizing corporate events of an entertainment nature, seminars, Christmas parties, motivational initiatives, competitions, joint programs with universities, schools and other external institutions. And last but not least in importance is team leadership, motivation, development and retention of the people who carry the weight of L&D within the company.
As important as it is to have well-trained and capable employees, training takes a serious commitment of time, which they also have to work through. Often, overly intensive and irrelevant training initiatives backfire, stressing employees and preventing them from doing their core job. It's very delicate to motivate employees to embrace their professional and personal development as their own initiative that is not just in the workplace. Often organizations try to give more to their staff by giving them the opportunity to choose some of their own learning activities, to be able to upgrade in areas beyond the direct scope of competencies of the job. Thus, activities towards a balance of personal and leisure time, university qualification support programmes, various certifications, etc. are emerging. L&D policy is an integral part of any employer's benefits.
What is the career path for such a professional and what kind of people are in such roles, what happens as a follow-on to such a role?
Most often, T&D managers become people who have an intrinsic need and attitude to care and be of service to their colleagues. Their educational background is rarely related to human resources, perhaps there is a certain regularity that some of these professionals have a humanities major. In recent years, more and more professionals in the L&D field are from technical, engineering and IT backgrounds. A significant number of these people develop such careers as a parallel to another core activity or start in consulting businesses (training, recruitment, software implementation) and then move into corporate careers. The opposite scenario is also increasingly common, where from a corporate T&D profile the more entrepreneurial and aspiring to independence set up their own training business. The internal career rotation in HR is also interesting. Career diversity initiative is often taken by recruiters and development professionals who escape the routine and emotional burnout of talent acquisition and venture into training to change the audience from outside to inside the organization. At a horizontal level from other teams in an organization, it is common to have colleagues from customer service, sales, or others with strong exposure to many people join in the training. In corporate training, it is also possible to get in without any experience through internship programs, and it is normal that in the first months such people are assigned more elementary tasks or those related to specific technical skills - design, software specialists, administration, etc.
Another possible avenue is the direct recruitment of a key learning and development expert from the same position in another company. Typically, such a professional stays in one position for about 2 to 3 years. Together with performing other functions, the total tenure of such a professional can often reach up to 5 - 6 years in one organization. It is relatively rare for a Learning and Development Manager to be directly promoted to HR Manager or Director due to prioritization of other competencies in compensation, benefits, employment law knowledge, etc. However, L&D people often become confidants of their HR directors because of the high popularity they enjoy among the company's staff, their informal contacts and acquaintances among employees, their ability to get a good sense of the mood in the organization, and to identify informal leaders and employees with potential in the company. In multinational companies, career continuation in another group company, corporate transfer to another country, involvement in major organizational change projects, or implementation of new organizational models are common. In modern HR concepts, the role of L&D has evolved into a driver of career development in organizations, identifying employees with high potential and achievements or so-called talent. Those who do not necessarily aim for a managerial role develop their skills and potential horizontally and improve their coaching and facilitation skills, or more technically, the development and operation of a learning management system (LMS).
How do you find and secure people like this?
When looking for such a person for the team, the first recommendation is to look for a colleague from the HR department who has been in a recruitment and attraction role for a long time and is at risk of burning out and leaving. An announcement through internal channels or an invitation to someone from the business - customer service, contact centre, sales or otherwise - is not to be underestimated. This will show your team that an internal career is possible, and motivate your colleague to share the experience they've gained so far. If it's possible to take on an external candidate with little or no relevant experience, you can safely post an ad on job sites or social platforms. Depending on the strength of your employer brand, you'll attract attention and interest and will certainly get more candidates than a recruiter or talent acquisition ad, and at the same time you'll have the opportunity to check your watch against the practices of other companies in the market.
However, if you're looking for a professional with a wealth of experience to manage a team, have a strong strategic focus, and one is not available in your organization, you may want to enlist the services of a headhunter. Apart from costing you between 20 and 30% of your annual gross salary, you will also face the challenge of learning that incumbent L&D managers in other organizations are already earning well above your budget. So don't miss the chance to retain your talented employees and update their salary before they leave you.
How do they maintain their qualifications?
For such professionals, theoretical training at universities is not enough, although you will easily come across working learning and development managers studying for a second or third master's or even a PhD. As long as it does not contradict the rules of the corporation, it is quite possible that, in addition to training in various forms, they themselves conduct various formal training programs, actively participate in conferences, seminars and other forms. Often T&D people turn to CIPD, HR Certification Institute (HRCI) or Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) qualifications. If you want a highly skilled professional to plan their career development in your company for the long term, you can offer part or full funding of a relevant costly qualification (coaching, assessment or other) in return for a corresponding commitment to continued employment in the HR department.
How can a person who works elsewhere become one?
If we have dedicated ourselves to many years of improvement in a particular field, if we work in a large company and are highly valued by our colleagues, if managers and partners seek our professional opinion, if we are able to engage and motivate our colleagues, we stand a good chance if we wish to continue our career development in the HR department as a T&D expert or manager. It is possible that in the HR department we may not get rewarded as a highly profiled expert, but in a life and professional situation when looking for something new, interesting and different could be a step aside long term or only for a certain project. The skills gained in training and development are highly transferable across a variety of companies and once we have built up projects and a reputation we can be sought after and desired as professionals. The improvisation, flexibility, and resourcefulness that is learned while working in training and development is a good starting point when starting a business, working on projects, and with temporary teams.