Podcast | How To Get Buy-In For L&D

Seat at the table. Strategic partner. Getting employees to give a 💩.

L&D buy-in goes by many names, but how do we get it?

4 L&D experts give you their advice in this episode of the L&D Drop-In.

The L&D Drop-In is brought to you by HowNow, your one home for learning and skills.
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Timestamps

0:00 Intro
1:15 Hannah Shelton, Global Engagement & Knowledge Lead at Denstu
10:52 Hannah Clark, Marketing Director at MAAS Marketing
25:29 Sam Streak, Co-Founder at The People Experience Group
39:56 ​Sam Goodman: L&D Manager at ITPenergised, part of SLR.

How to connect

Connect with Hannah Shelton on LinkedIn.
Connect with Hannah Clark on LinkedIn.
Learn more about MAAS Marketing.
Connect with Sam Streak on LinkedIn.
Learn more about The People Experience Group.
Connect with Sam Goodman on LinkedIn

8 lessons On getting buy-in for your L&D strategy

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1. Learn to spot the difference between positions and interests - Hannah Shelton

“Positions are things that people tell you they want, and interests are the true drivers behind that. 

“And I think what we have to do is listen really carefully because signals are subtle, ask the right questions, and make sure we’re going to the right people.” - Hannah Shelton.

Hannah’s advice was to use conversations as much as you can, but to build a decent sample size - to ensure you’re not acting on a single piece of anecdotal feedback or recency bias.

And those conversations should help you spot whether the timing is right too:

“I've been in a conversation with somebody that’s perhaps not related to what I'm building out at all, but they've mentioned how busy things are or how many different learning initiatives are coming at them right now.

“And how stressed and overworked they are, and all this kind of stuff. So I've gone, there's no point in me trying to launch this next month. No point. I'm shifting my timelines, and it’s just little things like that.” - Hannah Shelton.
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2. Viewing people as learners is holding L&D buy-in back - Hannah Clark

“I passionately hate the term learner… it comes with almost power behind it, saying that they're already learning. That they want to learn, that learning is their priority, that they're even thinking about it.”

But how often do we struggle with the feeling that people don’t care about learning? Pretty often, and that’s because learning isn’t the first item on their to-do list!

“When we change the narrative and we start thinking of them as our audience, consumers, or customers - it changes how we talk to them and initiate that conversation.

“Everyone has a different why and we start answering that why because we're not assuming that they're just going to pick up what we're doing because we told them to. 

“It really just changes your thought process about how you engage with people. And then that trickles on into actually creating better communications and marketing, but secondly, actually better learning content.” - Hannah Clark.
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3. What can teaching tell us about getting buy-in? Sam Goodman

“It's got to come from the top down and I liken it to my time in school where they tried to change behaviour policies. And if the head teacher wasn't buying into it, why the hell would anyone else?  

“So it's the same in L&D. If you've not got the top person or service leads or line managers role modeling what you're trying to encourage and promote, why is anyone going to do it?” - Sam Goodman.

Part of that is being comfortable having difficult conversations and being assertive when communicating why learning or skill development is crucial.

Build accountability for those line managers or whoever needs to set that example, and find out what’s holding them back. Because there might be some level of enablement needed there. 
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4. Be problem-led, and explain the commercial impact of solving that problem - Sam Streak

“For me, it’s making sure we know what problems the business is facing. What is the business strategy? What are they trying to achieve? And what's stopping them getting there?

“And then how can L&D have an impact on that? Working out what the solution is to that problem and then linking that to what the commercial impact would be.” - Sam Streak.

Sam gave a real example of a business with high employee turnover, which was ultimately a symptom of a poor onboarding process when someone joined the company.

So, by delivering better onboarding, explaining the costs, and then demonstrating how much that would reduce the financial impact of high turnover, we’re set to have conversations that get buy-in.
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5. Good marketing won’t fix bad experiences and get you buy-in - Hannah Clark.

“I can create you the world's best marketing campaign. But if your learning is rubbish, your people aren't going to come back.

“And now you've got to do 10 times the work to try to re-engage them to come back to your learning.” - Hannah Clark.

So yes, while marketing is an important skill for L&D, it doesn’t mean those other fundamental skills aren’t.

And if you want to build marketing for learning as a skill, MAAS Marketing have some great guides to get you started.
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6. Building practical application into content gets buy-in - Hannah Shelton

We’re in the business of behaviour change, which only really happens if people can put what they learn into practice.

If they are, and it builds better outcomes for them AND the business, everyone wins and we’ve got buy-in.

“For the individual, if you can say to them, by engaging in this learning program, you will improve X, Y, Z. And in your end-of-year review, say, I have very clearly improved on these three points as a result of engaging in this learning program…

“You have supported them in advancing their career and they can immediately see that value and link it to that. I think that is super powerful.” - Hannah Shelton.
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7. Taking control is a great way to build trust and expectations - Sam Goodman

“I literally sent an email out to everybody who is a key stakeholder and said, with every bit of training, from the moment that you go, ‘I want to deliver something, you have to get in touch with me.’

“And that's not me taking it out of their control. It's an internal consultancy of what is it you want? We're going to build this out together. 

“Not only does it empower them, it keeps them involved. It also upskills them in good delivery and what they've been doing wrong in the past.” - Sam Goodman.
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8. Understand if your tech stack has baggage that influences buy-in - Sam Streak

“If I go into a business and they’re like, we’ve got an LMS, we’ve our HR system, but the experience that people have with them is really poor. There's not much uplift or people learning digitally on the system.

“That then creates real difficulty in gaining buy-in to adopting new systems or even making the most out of the systems that people have.” - Sam Streak.

Sam’s advice? Go back to the problem! What is it? And how can we fix it?

And identify the root causes of why people aren’t using that piece of technology.

It might be a lack of integration with other tools. It might be that it’s too difficult to navigate. 

Ultimately, we should work out why, and then build an experience that removes all that friction.

Get your free podcast guide: 37 Lessons For A Winning L&D Strategy

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