For an organization to succeed, it needs to invest in its talent. However, with staff shortages and budget constraints, talent development professionals may struggle to convince their organizations that investing in staff is the right decision. So, ATD Research collaborated with CTDO Next to create a series of case studies to help TD professionals understand how high-performing organizations are making the case for funding TD projects.

These case studies feature small, medium, and large organizations (based on the number of employees) from various industries, including nonprofit professional membership organizations, retail trade, information, financial and insurance, transportation and warehousing, and manufacturing.

As we began collecting the case studies, we noticed a theme starting to appear: TD professionals must dedicate time to many different activities to make the case for investing in talent development. Successful TD professionals:

• Are curious—they ask questions and listen when creating new learning projects.

• Have a good reputation—their co-workers see them as credible, trustworthy, and reliable.

• Take time to prepare—they understand the amount of pre-planning involved in making the case for why a project is essential.

• Collaborate—they see the importance of building relationships when trying to fund a new project.

• Learn the business strategy—they are able to link each learning project to a business objective, which helps leaders see its importance.