How goal-based learning tackles your organisation’s problems

Discover how goal-based learning could help your team to face key challenges and achieve its business objectives.

For too many organisations, business goals and training requirements are seen as two entirely separate entities. 

Sometimes this is because strategies for these two things are siloed within different departments. It might be because learning and development is undervalued or viewed as a box-ticking exercise within the wider business.

Alternatively, it could be because the L&D team is stuck on a process and content-led treadmill of learning delivery.

In any of these scenarios — and several others — many of an organisation’s problems can be tackled by bringing the two functions together. That means goal-based learning.

What is goal-based learning?

Sometimes called goal-oriented learning, goal-focused learning or action learning, goal-based learning is when an organisation tailors its training and other L&D activities to help the business achieve its wider goals.

These could be broad, high-level goals such as those that help the organisation to fulfil its vision or they could be very-focused, niche goals that impact upon a problem the organisation is facing in a particular business area.

The benefits of goal-based learning

There are several key advantages of goal-based learning, and they each help to solve any problems an organisation is facing. They include:

Increased L&D engagement

Starting with a focus on L&D, goal-based learning is a very engaging form of corporate learning. It takes some of the stereotypical complaints about L&D — “waste of time”, “takes me away from proper work”, “doesn’t reflect what I actually do in my role” — and turns them on their head.

Learning becomes an integral part of the proper work. It helps people to solve problems they’re facing day-to-day. It stops being hypothetical. As a result, it becomes very engaging and helps L&D teams to encourage buy-in to what they’re working towards.

Increased agency

By making people a key part of solving problems that might otherwise have been dealt with by management or leadership teams, you’re encouraging them to feel a greater sense of responsibility and belonging within the organisation.

This plays into the increase in L&D engagement we’ve already discussed, but it also supports better employee morale, staff retention and career pathways. That can have a range of knock-on benefits, such as reduced recruitment costs.

Knowledge-sharing

Goal-based learning is a form of social learning. By bringing together groups of employees to solve a real-world problem, you’re inevitably going to encourage conversation, collaboration and critical thinking that spreads experience and knowledge among the group.

This is an excellent way to break down knowledge silos that have been built up in your organisation and get vital information out of the heads of individual team members for others to use.

Team-building

You can build closer bonds within existing teams and establish relationships between colleagues who might not ordinarily have regular contact with each other by assigning goal-based learning tasks for them to work on together.

Solving problems

Perhaps the key benefit of goal-based learning is that it can be deployed to address any challenges your organisation is facing. When the outcome of a completed learning task is not solely a certificate for the learner or a compliance box ticked for the organisation but a solution to a real problem, this adds enormous value for the individual and the business as a whole. 

How to introduce goal-based learning

Stay nimble

Business goals can change quickly and new challenges will emerge. Your L&D programme will need to be agile and reactive to respond to these changes and put in place courses and resources to help your learners rise to the challenge.

Set relevant learning activities

Whatever the goal your organisation is working towards, your role is to create learning activities that help to focus efforts by providing easy access to the right content to the right people at the right time.

Cater to experts and novices

For any goal you’re trying to achieve, your organisation will have experts in that field and others who are new to it. Put in place the learning activities that allow everyone to contribute while developing their own skills and experience levels. 

Encourage collaboration

Put in place the infrastructure that empowers your team to work together to achieve their goals. Tools like the Totara Engage learning experience platform, with its collaborative workspaces functionality, can be key in this area. It also includes a playlists feature so that subject-area experts can curate resources that will be useful to others.

Focus on performance

If solving problems and achieving goals becomes a clear measure of success for your L&D programme, it makes sense to supplement your learning management system with a performance management system like Totara Perform. This allows you to create hierarchical goals for individuals, teams and the wider organisation using a range of goal-setting frameworks. 

It will also deliver the infrastructure for providing feedback and rewarding learners for their achievements.

Talk to us about goal-based learning

Contact us to discuss putting in place the learning technologies to encourage successful goal-based learning within your organisation.

Tags