How learning and development can boost your business

Learning and development (L&D) can be a crucial part to a successful organisation as it not only empowers and encourages employee growth but can push a business to perform better.

Speaking with The HR Leader, Nyrissa Filetti, the head of people and culture at MLC School noted that L&D can not only help create your own future, but help others to learn and better theirs as well.

“This theory of reciprocity and sense of purpose is massive and only just growing and, in some form, only just beginning to be understood now,” said Ms Filetti.

“I took a mandate quite young, and it was during high school, that I knew that I didn’t know what role I wanted to go into. I had my suspicions that roles and careers wouldn’t look like what they did then for me when I was ready to start a career.”

“Some of the areas that are just being explored now … you look at building a capability and toolkit rather than an endpoint,” she said.

L&D can be a great addition for any business looking to get the best out of their employees. Execution is crucial to success.

“Collaboratively defining what the outcomes might be or the objectives is great. And then, human-centered design is another really good approach. So that's actually a methodology where you don't look at what the business might want or what you might think might be the solution, but you work together to come up with an outcome,” said Ms Filetti.

“So, I definitely think that co-creation is a good word in that methodology; ‘creating’ with others to adopt what the change might be to help them to get the outcome.”

Being open to change is another important component of successful L&D. As is putting ego aside and doing what is best for the majority to achieve the end result.

“One of the worst things you can do to yourself is have a vision of what best practice is because it's not about the solution, it's actually about building a coalition of people who buy into the solution,” explained Ms Filetti.

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full conversation with Nyrissa Filetti is below.

Jack Campbell

Jack is the editor at HR Leader.