As we usher in the new year of 2015, several significant economic, technological, and demographic trends continue to shape the world of workplace learning and performance improvement. Evaluation professionals can help organizational leaders capitalize on trends that are transforming the landscape of learning, performance, and talent management by keeping a keen eye on the following areas of practice.

Monitor and measure your knowledge management processes. The looming retirement of the boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964), has led to an alarming rise of intelligence attrition in U.S. business communities. A 2007 McKinsey survey referred to this group as “the best-educated, most highly skilled aging workforce in U.S. history.” The loss of business intelligence and corporate knowledge, especially in R&D-focused organizations, could amount to billions of dollars in lost intellectual capital. In the face of these challenges, a number of questions present themselves. How can we help leaders create and sustain meaningful knowledge library systems for extracting and archiving key information? How can we help ensure that knowledge sharing—with even informal practices—is a continual, perpetual process and not a one-time activity? How can we best assess the appropriateness of tools like relationship software for tracking knowledge or documenting where key knowledge or competencies reside?

Monitor and measure your data management systems. As the volume and detail of data in our world explodes, the ability to handle and analyze increasingly large data sets is becoming a competitive necessity for organizational growth and innovation. In fact, some analysts say that so-called “big data” has now become as important to ultimate business success as labor and capital. How then can we help our organizations get or effectively utilize available data? How can we deliver relevant workforce data to support strategic decision making? What new skills, tools, and processes will allow stakeholders to affordably and strategically exploit data from all areas of the enterprise so that more accurate, integrated, and detailed performance information is available on everything from products and services to talent and workflows?

Monitor and measure your engagement processes. To retain the best and brightest, organizations today must lead with a shared vision, clear direction, and a compelling strategy that provides a ‘‘line of sight’’ to an individuals’ role and values. How then can we help our organizations ensure that goals and directions are communicated in ways that improve engagement and productivity? How can we help managers create onboarding processes that build loyalty and engagement? How can we assess the best use of social media and online tools for fostering engagement, promoting connections, and inviting collaboration?

Monitor and measure your talent management processes. Workforce talent is a defining resource for successful and sustainable organizations in the 21st century economy. Emerging and future talent pools will have more minorities, women, and cultural diversity than those in the past. What out-of-the-box innovations are needed to develop leaders and reengineer performance management processes to meet these rapidly changing demographics? How can we best use training technologies, online learning, coaching, career development, succession planning, action learning, mentoring, and even reverse mentoring—where younger employees work with older employees to help them keep up with technology—to identify and develop talent within the ranks of a multigenerational and diverse talent pool?

Monitor and measure your work structures and processes. One of the biggest barriers to employee engagement and business performance is the use of internal systems that are too complicated, technical, or isolated, or that lack transparency. How then can we best challenge organizations to replace inadequate command and control hierarchies with enabling, just-in-time work structures and processes that facilitate high performance, collaboration, and productivity? How can we leverage technology to make learning and performance support easier and more convenient to access for larger numbers of individuals at a lower cost?

Monitor and measure your change processes. Today’s business landscape is driven by fast, complex, and disruptive changes that redefine risk and opportunity for organizations worldwide. Successful organizations are becoming more adaptive, resilient, quick to change direction, and customer-centered. Being a flexible, adaptable change manager and a savvy change leader are vital competencies for the 21st century leader. How then can we help leaders navigate change and prioritize change projects in the midst of conflicting priorities and moving targets? How can we help our organizations develop the resiliency needed to survive and thrive in the face of explosive change patterns?

Monitor and measure your learning investments.  Research shows that organizations will continue to invest heavily in learning and that CEOs and business leaders will continue to care about metrics that show how learning investments are connected to important work measures like productivity, cost, quality, and time. When it comes to developing and analyzing metrics, it is often helpful to view them from both the macro and micro perspective. Generally speaking, macro-level metrics are the overall organization or cross-functional metrics used to drive strategy and are typically reflected in the set of measures found in a company scorecard or executive dashboard. Micro-level metrics are those measures that track the success of a particular project, program or initiative. Despite increased pressures to produce these kinds of measures, many professionals continue to struggle with defining the payback and business value of learning expenses. To that end, how can we develop credible measurement processes and practices that link learning and development efforts to results that matter to our organizations? How can we leverage learning and performance results as a lever for continued investments in a learning culture as a means to grow talent and promote engagement?

Of course, these are but a few of the major issues shaping the business landscape today. Whatever unique challenges may be facing you and your organization, the world of workplace learning is essentially about the process of empowerment. As the New Year unfolds, consider which trends stand out for you. Which practice area would most influence your effectiveness as a strategic business partner and talent leader in the year ahead? Finally, how can you as a learning and performance professional empower yourself to take bigger leaps into the future and empower your leaders to capitalize on the windows of opportunity provided by emerging trends and dynamic change?

© 2015 ATD, Alexandria, VA. All rights reserved.