Anyone involved in continued professional education (CPE) knows the value of a well-curated learning plan. The results speak for themselves: firms that successfully implement effective learning plans see a significant increase in engagement and learning retention.
And yet, we hear the same thing from firms all the time: “We want to implement learning plans, but we don’t know where to start.” Starting this process from scratch is difficult for a number of reasons.
That’s why we teamed up with LCvista content partner Spiirall for our recent webinar, “How to curate the perfect learning plan.” During the webinar, our experts gathered to deliver the ultimate guide: what to consider, how to build one strategically, and how to assess (and find) the content you need to enable quality learning. Here are the main takeaways from the webinar.
The learning plan experts
During the webinar, we heard from a number of learning plan experts from Spiirall and LCvista:
Danielle McCormick
Founder and CEO of Spiirall
Anna Howard
Director of Learning Strategy at Spiirall
Toni Williams
Business Development Manager at LCvista
Maike Greve
Senior Product Manager at LCvista
Adrien Samonek
Product Manager, Content Marketplace at LCvista
Cindy Hessling
Community Ambassador at LCvista
Why firms struggle to curate learning plans
Before we talk about why a great learning plan can be such a game changer, let’s touch on why firms tend to find them challenging.
As Danielle McCormick, Spiirall’s founder and CEO explained early on in our webinar, firms often go through the same scenario repeatedly: they identify a need for learning, and then they find or build out a new class. This works as an isolated approach, but over time, the firm ends up amassing more and more content without knowing if the courses they’re using are actually working. This results in a fragmented and disjointed experience where investment dollars are either being underutilized or wasted.
In other words, learning plans are being thrown together on an ad-hoc basis, without the strategic insight that would allow them to properly meet the firm’s needs.
Ideally, firms should take a much more methodical approach to learning, which looks more like this:
- Identify the specific skills gaps and learning needs across different levels and departments within the firm
- Contribute significant time and resources, including content creation, trainer selection, and program management
- Craft plans that not only educate but also engage staff to ensure high completion rates and effective knowledge retention
- Get the right buy-in from stakeholders, especially when it comes to level training
Each of these steps requires significant resources and consideration. It’s a challenge, but it’s far from impossible.
The good news? A well-curated learning plan is an absolute game changer. Done well, a great learning plan will:
- Communicate the investment your firm is making in employee development
- Create clarity around a team member’s career path
- Allow you to develop talent faster
- Establish a critical connection between the learning team and department
- Provide accountability (when you track your learners’ progress)
It’s an effort that’s well worth it. And with the right tools and frameworks in place, it’s easier than it might seem.
Four factors to consider when building a learning plan within LCvista
LCvista’s Senior Product Manager, Maike Greve, offered an in-depth review of what to be aware of when building a learning plan within LCvista. As she explained, there are four major factors to keep in mind:
1.
User Experience
Before you do anything else, it’s important to consider what you want the user experience to look like within your learning plan.
As Maike explained, there are two paths to consider. First, you need to decide how you want to expose your professionals to your learning plan. Will they access it through your catalog or through assignment (meaning they must complete it by a certain due date)?
Next, you’ll need to think about registration types. In LCvista, three different registration workflows can be enabled. All three registration processes are designed to help walk professionals through what’s required and available for them to take, then give them the opportunity to enroll.
- Enforced: Professionals register up front for everything they plan to take towards completing a requirement. Auto-registration is also an option here, which simplifies the registration workflow by signing up each eligible professional without them having to take action.
- Non-enforced: In this registration flow, a professional can see what’s available to take but is not enforced to register up front.
- Disabled: Disabling registration means you provide your professionals with all the content available for the learning plan, and they can then access that content as needed.
2.
Milestone requirements
Once you’ve decided how your professionals will find and register for the content, it’s time to think about milestones. This process is a little like assembling IKEA furniture: if your learning plan is the instruction booklet, the milestone requirements are the specific steps your professionals will have to complete in order to build their bookshelf properly.
In LCvista, you have options for how to set up your milestone requirements. You can make them session based, credit based, or elective (meaning you can recommend a collection of content that would be helpful or useful as supplemental material).
3.
Linking Content
Content is the bread and butter of any learning plan, and the type of content you link will greatly influence the user experience.
As a best practice, you should be aware of the type of requirements for each milestone you defined in the previous step, especially If you’ve opted for auto-registration. For example, if your milestone is credit based, you’ll need to ensure you link programs and sessions within your learning plan that are valid to meet the requirement you’ve defined.
It’s also important to understand the length and lifespan of your learning plan, and what content you’re linking. If a piece of content expires, you can go in and replace it by adding new content. You should never remove a program that has been linked to a learning plan, especially if there are professionals who have already completed it.
4.
Reporting functionality
Analyzing your learning plans is an important part of learning how to improve them over time. Three reports are available within LCvista to help you do just that.
- People by Learning Plan is a report that allows you to do a deep dive on the user to learning plan relationship. Looking at this report, you can see what a certain user completed, as well as the user’s status on all the sessions they’ve chosen to take towards that learning plan.
- Learning Plan Status Highlights gives a high level overview of status across a number of learning plans. For example, if you want to see if the professionals in your Seattle office have completed the learning plans they’ve been assigned, you would pull this report.
- Session Reports are user record and information reports that show you the sessions individuals are taking, or the sessions that are tied to a specific learning plan. For example, you could run one to see which content expires at the end of the month and whether it’s tied to a learning plan so you can properly update it for new users.
Building a learning plan
Before you can build the perfect learning plan in LCvista, you’ll need to establish a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Anna Howard, Spiirall’s Director of Learning Strategy, has distilled this process down to a science, which she shared with the audience during our webinar. As she explained, there are five crucial steps to building an effective learning plan.
Step 1
Brainstorm and crowdsource
This stage is all about gathering ideas from a wide range of sources: books, conferences, webcasts, clients, peers, and subject matter experts (SMEs). As Anna explained, the point of this step is to tap into existing frameworks and see what’s out there. It’s important to cast a wide net and leave no stone unturned—you’ll refine your findings later on, but the more diverse sources you can draw from, the better.
Step 2
Consolidate, unpack, and align
At this stage, you’ll organize and systematize everything you gathered in the brainstorming and crowdsourcing step. Take your time identifying and grouping all the ideas you gathered in the first step, both by common themes and core competencies.
This stage is also where you’ll take broad concepts like “understanding accounting” and break them down into specific, actionable topics like, “the difference between accrual and cash method” or “debits and credits”. It’s important to be relentless about consolidating and aligning ideas here. The more you can break down broad themes into their component parts, the better equipped you’ll be to find and build the right content later on.
Step 3
Filter
Next, you’ll streamline your framework by filtering out any irrelevant or duplicate ideas. At this stage, it’s helpful to continuously refer back to the skills you want to develop with your learning plan. Make sure these skills are clearly defined, and filter out any ideas that don’t directly contribute to them. By collaborating with leaders, you can make sure the framework you’re building aligns to the skills needed to succeed in various positions.
Step 4
Level and group
Once you’ve filtered your ideas, it’s time to level the competencies. Here, you’ll define what proficiency looks like at different career stages, since your employees are at different levels.
Once you’ve defined this proficiency at each level, you can group your topics into each level to make your plan more organized and easier to navigate.
Defining specific proficiencies at each level also allows you to show skill development opportunities to your professionals. When you can clearly define the expectations at each level, you give your professionals a clear path and a structured approach that aligns with the demands of the field.
Step 5
Validate
Finally, you’ll need to validate the framework you’ve spent so much time and care building. In this stage, you’ll go back to your stakeholders for feedback and approval. You can also run a pilot test at this stage to make sure your proposed learning plan is effective in the real world and helps achieve your objectives.
The ideal final outcome? A tailored learning plan for each level. Not only will you have a detailed, strategically aligned plan for every kind of professional in your organization, you’ll also have a structured path for continuous growth and development across the skills you want to develop.
Finding the right content
After validating your learning plan, it’s time to source available content and develop any missing materials. This is the final step before you can put your learning plan in action. By getting your hands on the right training materials and aligning them just right, you’ll set up your team for success, which helps everyone grow in their role and makes sure the whole organization stays sharp.
As Adrien Samonek, Product Manager at LCvista explained, it can be difficult to go out and find the right offerings as you identify gaps in your current content offerings. This is why Content Marketplace by LCvista exists. Within this platform, you can easily access thousands of courses across a number of subjects, purchase the ones that fit into your learning plan, and load them into your account instantly.
The perfect learning plan is within reach
It may still feel a little daunting to build a learning plan that’s tailored, relevant, and engaging. But if you take the time to think strategically, use the best tools, find the right content, and iterate appropriately, you’ll be rewarded with better outcomes both for your professionals and your business outcomes.
Read more about managing Learning and Development at your firm here.
