Teams dedicated to learning and development have been ignored for far too long. It’s nice to have, but not necessary. Instead of seeing L&D as a partner in growth, many businesses see it as a service provider for staff. However, times are altering. Organizations have a severe challenge as a result of this gap. It also presents an opportunity for forward-thinking executives. Instead of seeing L&D as a partner in growth, many businesses see it as a service provider for staff.
A Chief Learning Officer (CLO) is what?
A senior executive known as a Chief Learning Officer, or CLO for short, is responsible for managing all training and staff development initiatives inside a company. They design learning methods, supervise their implementation, and make sure that all educational initiatives coincide with overarching business objectives. Chief Knowledge Officers and Directors of Learning and Development are additional titles for CLOs. Typically, they either directly answers to the CEO or the head of HR.
The CLO is a relatively new job, having been made public for the first time in 1994. The role is changing as it becomes more and more popular in order to satisfy the demands of expanding businesses.
A strategic CLO: What is it?
It takes more than just managing learning operations to make L&D a crucial strategic partner; you also need to align them with the organization’s objectives. A Transformer CLO was proposed by Harvard Business Review at the beginning of 2020. The Transformer CLO aims to test workers’ talents and foster a growth mentality in addition to helping those master particular skills.
The Strategic CLO is similarly focused on more than simply skill advancement. They want learning and development to permeate every facet of the business. The Strategic CLO’s objective is to permanently link L&D operations to a more comprehensive corporate strategy.
According to studies, the majority of employee turnover is avoidable, and one of the main reasons workers leave is a lack of appropriate chances for professional development. The Strategic CLO is aware that L&D must be central to luring, nurturing, and keeping the top people required to advance the business. Strategic CLOs must address the potential and challenge of digital transformation in order to promote such development.
Scaling L&D and being a resource for employees even amid unforeseen occurrences, like the worldwide lockdowns of 2020, need digitizing training. Organizations’ approaches to learning are being revolutionized by new learning techniques and tools, such as the emergence of the Collaborative Learning Platform. When it comes to testing and implementing new technologies, the CLO is crucial.