Learning Culture Building Blocks

Learning is the framework for development within an organization.  The challenge in learning is raising it to the level of a culture rather than a required exercise.  What does it look like?  How does one define it?  Marcia Porchia, the Vice President of Accountability, and Corrin Duarte, the Director of Performance Improvement, for Global Custom Commerce (A Home Depot Company) explain the Learning Culture Building Blocks

The first deals with leaders.

Porchia said the company hired a Chief People Officer, a key move.

“The person in that role spends their time trying to connect the company strategy, or core values and talent management with a dedicated focus,” Porchia said.  “The other thing we did was have two leaders, one focused on the academic side of learning and the other of the administrative side of learning.  There’s more to learning than just the academic side of things, but there’s a lot on the administrative side when it come to launching programs, for instance.”

Next: the people strategy block.

Porchia said they created a corporate university called the Institute of Leaders of Innovation, Advancement, and Development… or ILIAD for short.  Then, they created a team of staff members dedicated to Learning and Development.

The final piece of the people strategy block is soliciting ambassadors and champions of Learning and Development.  Simply, Porchia said they can shout from the rooftops the great things they offer, but they’ve found it is more impactful when an ambassador carries that message for them.

The next building block is resources.

Here, Duarte said they deployed several development tools such as the one-to-one planner and also a development blueprint.  They also launched several learning platforms… some of which are still being piloted.

The final piece focuses on the behaviors block, and this hold one of the more critical components of their culture shifting development ownership to the associate and leader.

“Quite simply, it is not the responsibility of L&D to have ownership over every L&D initiative,” Duarte said.  “And when you think about it, it’s not even feasible.”

“We know learning and development happens on the job; it happens in the moment.  And the person who knows what they need, more than anyone else, is the associate themselves so they have to take ownership of that.  And their leader has to partner with them and own development of their team in order for their team to be successful,” Duarte continued.