Driving Performance Through Learning: Develop Employees through Effective Workplace Learning

by Andy Lancaster

Learning and Development (L&D) professionals are uniquely placed in an organization to improve both individual employee performance as well as the overall performance of the business. However, this is only possible if learning activity is aligned with the goals of the business. Driving Performance through Learning shows L&D professionals how to identify business needs and ensure that staff effectively develop the skills that will enable a company to achieve its objectives.

Covering everything from how to use insights from neuroscience to improve employee attention, engagement and knowledge retention and how to assess which learning technologies will add the greatest value through to how to curate and deliver learning content on the platform best-suited to the learner, Driving Performance through Learning is an essential handbook for all L&D professionals. Including guidance on how to build a culture of collaborative learning and how to move from a traditional course-based approach to employee training to a resource-driven one, this book ensures that learning becomes integrated into an employee's workflow so that performance improvement is continuous. There is also expert guidance on how to identify which skills are best to develop in-house, which it is more effective to outsource and how to improve knowledge management so that essential information is retained inside the organization instead of being lost when employees leave the business.

Genres: Professional Development

368 pages, Paperback

Published November 26, 2019

Reviews

[Khurram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book. Learning has come a long way, the chalk and blackboard approach to PowerPoint, to videos, to bite sized, blogs, blogs and many more. However in the working world on the job is still saying face to face is the optimum learning tool. It sounds simple working and learning should be one. Unfortunate this is not the case much of the time. The book covers a number of learning modles and strategies to revolutionise workflow learning.

I saw Andy Lancaster speak once at conference, even on a day of great speakers he was among the ones that really stood out. His passion for learning is completely infectious. Here was someone who started their learning and teaching journey before the computer age, but did not shy away from it but embraced it and though how best to use this. I pre-ordered his book instantly.

The book contains both old (still used) learning modles, enhancements on these, and new models and strategies. The way technology has changed the world learning has seemed to be playing catch up, where as it needs to be at the forefront.

The books approach is where we are, where we are headed, and where we need to be. How change in organisations needs to come from all directions in the organisation. To paraphrase a point in the book workforce learningbis evolving but it need a revolution. Job roles that are available now would have been thought science fiction only a generation ago, or madness/nonsense/or a waste of time a generation previous to that. The technology talked about in the book is everything from Social Media tools to chatbots, and the AI learning.

This is a great book to read and re-read in parts or as a whole. It is well referenced so any study, model, strategy or innovation can be looked up online or in print. The best thing about the book is it is current, and it is an eye opener to where we are now learning and technology wise, but with an eye to the future of where we are going.

[Karen ⊰✿ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book pre-pandemic (and finished it during) and I do wonder how the author would have changed things for our current Zoom world.

Regardless, it is a timely book as many organisations have been investing more in L&D this year and this is a good resource for professionals in this space.
I would recommend for any HR/L&D leads looking for a reference on the value of workplace learning and ideas for implementation.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I work in L&D and this is an excellent book that helped to learn new thing and gave me new ideas.
A must read for anyone working in L&D.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Working in IT projects, they never come without change and learning impacts. Given the focus on digital transformation is deeply rooted in enabling business transformation, I see the same parallel and urgency for change in "Driving Performance through Learning." Andy Lancaster starts with driving the clear case for action.

As a non-Learning & Development (L&D) professional, I found the book to have a tremendous amount of concepts and frameworks. Many of the methods and questions highly align with user-centered design and design thinking processes - ensuring you tie back to the root cause of what you're trying to change, and relate it in the most concise and meaningful way to the person you are training.

With so much content, at times it seems like overload. Perhaps more detail and less examples of tools would help to keep readers learning and focused. I did appreciate the concise case studies, and if those were built out more, it could also help to drive concept absorption.

This is a great book to get you started if you are thinking about how to guide people through a change. "Driving Performance through Learning" can be a key resource to help you figure out how to approach a change.

I was provided an advance copy of this book through netgalley. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher, Kogan Page, for providing the copy. Thoughts and opinions in this review are my own.
#netgalley #DrivingPerformancethroughLearning

[Jamie Bowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learning and Development has never been more needed now in the 21st century, but the way people want to learn is changing and L&D needs to adapt to respond to those changes. This book takes you through the relevant issues and explores the future. It’s a bit of a slow starter and it’s not an easy to read book, it borders a bit on an academic book with lots of references to the research, but a book that can help shape the future of L&D.