The chief human resources officer’s (CHRO) role is broad. It has many different names depending on how the organization is structured, its priorities, and how it wants to “brand” the function. From “chief people officer” to “vice president of human capital,” the names can run the gamut. One thing that is not varied is the importance of the role in training and development. Ensuring employees are trained to do their respective jobs and prepared to assume more responsibilities (up to and including senior leadership roles) is a key part of the CHRO role and why the role of “chief trainer” is so important.
Leaders as trainers
Collaborating closely with an organization’s senior leadership is essential to ensure that development programs are tailored with the right content and delivery methods to drive capability growth and achieve the desired outcomes effectively. With various types of training, such as skills development, leadership, and compliance, having a clear and structured roadmap enables a seamless and continuous training agenda that supports long-term success across the company. It is the vision of growing talent where CHROs can be especially helpful. CHROs are uniquely suited to thinking about the future of the workforce for our companies, understanding how talent will shape strategic plans, and developing continuous growth opportunities for our workers. With this broad enterprise perspective, a CHRO can shape a development culture to meet the needs of varying employees within an organization.
Continuous learning
Creating an emphasis on continuous learning starts with Talent and Performance Management programs and practices that create opportunities (intentional and ad hoc) for coaching and development conversations. This comes to life through meaningful 1:1s, performance assessments, career discussions, and ‘in the moment’ coaching. Embedded in all of these ‘moments’ is an ongoing improvement, a growing mindset. Our job as leaders is to help our teams be successful in their current role AND as they prepare for future roles. For example, “agile learning” is a core competency that can be developed in all employees, regardless of role or level.
It’s important to remember that people learn in diverse ways. For some, online learning is terrific. For others, hands-on learning is most important. Some folks learn by doing; others by seeing. Having different modes of learning in a post-pandemic world is essential to reach employees where they are. By only providing remote learning, we are missing how we reach varying segments of our employee population.
A mentorship program is a great example of improving the focus on continuous learning. Partnering experienced employees with new ones will help build skills and competency. Offering different types of training is great, but having employees explain to one another why some of it is important is even better. This can help create a sustainable and effective culture of continuous learning.
Leveraging data
Using data to ensure all learning and development efforts have the intended impact and, in some instances, the most effective return on investment, is a key part of the CHRO training role. One way is to look at your growth planning and marrying that with your internal bench data to measure the “health” of your pipeline:
- Do we have enough future leaders to support our growth plan?
- Are we on track to meet our development goals?
- What does our turnover data look like?
- At what stage are the failures in training and development happening?
It’s not just always about adding more people to the pipeline. It’s about addressing failure points or increasing time in the role to improve success rates. Succession planning data is another big part of the training and development strategy for leadership development. This data can be leveraged to invest in additional development for high-growth talent. Lastly, using employee self-reflection to measure the behavioral outcomes of some of our leadership development efforts can provide more valuable insights.
One size doesn’t fit all
Regarding leadership development, it’s critical to have aligned leadership competencies, principles, and development efforts that come to life similarly across the entire company. Customization comes into play when discussing functional competencies and/or skills. For example, a guest service specialist training program can be particular about how to perform the job. However, the training will be very different for a manager-in-training program in operations.
Additionally, as businesses grow and evolve, training and development programs can be used to shift behaviors or introduce new skills required for a role. As mentioned earlier, people learn and grow in diverse ways, so different training and development modalities and communication methods must be used for different segments of your workforce.
Culture and training
Culture may be the single most crucial element in training and development. A culture that promotes continuous learning, creates safe spaces for employees to acknowledge gaps and pursue development, and rewards team members for expanding capabilities fuels great training and development programs. In these types of cultures, business leaders often ask for more development opportunities and training courses.
With a performance-driven, training-focused culture, employees can lead a project, manage a new business or function, or embrace complexity in the workplace as a developmental experience. These types of challenges create development opportunities. Allowing (even pushing) an employee to go outside their comfort zone, take a risk, or pursue a stretch assignment are hallmarks of a culture that will grow and develop its people.
Successful companies build talent through training and rigorous and unusual assignments. This kind of culture builds resilience and agility. Walt Disney famously said, “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” It’s with a culture of performance and curiosity that great things will emerge.
Collaboration starts at the top
The CHRO may be the champion of development and culture, but every executive is responsible for living the values and culture every day. The CHRO’s role as chief trainer involves building capability within the team today and keeping an eye on the organization’s future needs. Working with senior managers and executive leadership is vital to staying on track. CHROs need the partnership of their peers to foster a growth and development culture.
Allowing varied employees to work on different projects can be rigorous and incentivizing for large, company-wide initiatives. This is one way, without changing roles, that folks can be assigned short-term, project work on enterprise projects. However, doing so requires the collaboration of the entire executive team. Pulling someone temporarily out of a group and assigning them to a transformation project can create gaps for certain other groups. However, with the collaboration of the senior team, these gaps can be filled simultaneously so that folks get visibility for future development.
CHRO’s pivotal role
Establishing a robust training and development program in any organization cannot be overstated. The CHRO is at the center of this vital function and, for the growth and success of the organization, must succeed at all costs. Developing talent from the moment they are onboarded through their rise into senior management or even in the C-suite can profoundly affect the organization’s future. Balancing the technical use of data analysis to ensure programs are working with the implementation of sometimes intangible aspects of cultural changes is a dance many can struggle with. Regardless of the industry, leadership buy-in and active participation are crucial to success.
