Strategic training and development is the process of designing specific employee training programs that directly align with business needs. Training with a strategic focus develops the capabilities and tools that employees need to successfully carry out their jobs. For more content like this, check out Acorn Labs: http://acornlabs.education/

1. Strategic
Training &
Development
Why it’s essential for long-
term business success

2. What is it?
Strategic training and development is the process of designing
specific employee training programs that directly align with
business needs.
Training with a strategic focus develops the capabilities and
tools that employees need to successfully carry out their jobs.

3. What’s the difference?
The difference between regular employee development and
training with strategic goals comes down to a few
characteristics:

4. • All development activities are based on strategic
organisation objectives.
• Learning frameworks are broad enough for all functions
to use but deep enough to address personal needs.
• Continual reporting, analysis and iteration.
• Management are key champions.
• Training activities are tailored to personal needs to
ensure learning sticks.

5. Business outcomes
The process of strategic training and development is always
rooted in business-level outcomes. While you’re looking for
performance outcomes at the individual level, these outcomes
need to have business impacts.
It’s also a cyclical process where each step informs the next.

6. The 4 Step
Process

8. Define Strategic Initiatives
If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you can’t
effectively identify or track results. Look at your business
drivers. This is usually where organisations pull from
strategic planning tools like a capability framework,
because these are what make a business effective.

9. Skills Gap Analysis
Whatever the initiative, you want KPIs. These are what
make strategic training an iterative, cyclical and strategic
process as they give you a measure of change.
Prioritise capabilities based on the impact they will have on
desired business goals and the availability of said
capability.

10. Personalise Training
Any program should be practical to an employee’s day-to-
day, while the mode of training should complement it. As
much as we’re thinking long-term, training needs to be
accessible, timely and relevant in the interim for employees
to engage with it.

11. Analyse & Repeat
This is the step that makes the process cyclical. It’s also
where you show the ROI of training, ensuring that
organisational value is easy to convey. The focus is always
on tangible outcomes that occurred – and only occurred —
because of training. Whatever insights you gain here you
funnel back into the process.

12. Strategic
Training
Examples

13. What strategic training ‘isn’t’
Compliance, onboarding and product training will likely not be
strategic, even if they’re important to your business.
The key difference between these types of training and
training with strategic impact is that they are niche topics for
a certain moment in time.
Strategic training looks long-term, often encompassing short-
term initiatives.

14. Leadership Development
Many great leaders will say experience is what sets them
apart from junior roles, because experience provides
context. Mentoring benefits both mentee and mentor since
it builds new knowledge in one and develops and
reinforces skills in the other.

15. Social Learning
Even at their most introverted, workforces are generally
social. Think of the mission-critical knowledge that is shared
in non-trackable ways: Between peers throughout the day,
within meetings, on the coffee run. Lunch and learns are an
informal but impactful way to deliver social learning.

16. Capability Building
Capabilities – technical or soft, core or complementary –
need to be continuously developed in your existing
workforce as they determine your long-term success.
Stretch assignments are often labelled soft promotions as
they add dimension and responsibility to an employee’s job,
while helping solve a business problem.

17. You can learn more about this
topic by checking out the full
article:
https://acornlms.com/enterprise-learning-
management/strategic-training-and-
development