The CLO (Chief Learning Officer) Function

Does your organization need a CLO? Before you can answer, you need to understand the role and responsibilities of a CLO. Based on this, you can then determine if not having a CLO, is limiting your ability to definitively identify and meet long term learning needs.

Do you know, there is a bottom line benefit and increase in productivity when formal learning takes place in an organization?

The IBM Research Report on the Strategic Value of Learning states:
• …learning is seen by senior executives to have a significant impact on a number of business outcomes, including revenue, productivity, turnover, and innovation. Learning can help enable overall business success.

Add to that the findings of a recent study by PDI (Personnel Decisions International):
• 90 CEOs were surveyed asking them what their biggest business challenges are, and they reported recruitment, retention, and talent management issues as their 2nd biggest challenge.

The data speaks loudly. There is value in providing for the learning, training, and knowledge needs of your staff.

The question then is, how do you create strategic initiatives that manage enterprise learning needs for all job functions and staff levels?

Let’s look at the role of a CLO. According to Bersin and Associates, most organizations (70% or more) don’t have a CLO. As a result, staff responsible for training often don’t have a defined leadership presence, there isn’t clarity around who they are and what they should be doing, and most importantly, they don’t have a voice at the “C” level table.

From a high-level, big picture lens, the role of a CLO is to:
1. Provide leadership and direction in planning how staff learning needs align to organizational goals
2. Identify and determine what learning, skills and knowledge needs are required by individual, and job type functio

3. Direct the development of learning programs to provide individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to improve their job competencies
4. Create an environment ready for both formal and informal learning
5. Establish processes to monitor the development, and delivery of learning, while maintaining a continuous learning environment to ensure employee performance success
6. Measure learning’s success in relation to organizational goals to determine the ROI of learning

An organization that recognizes learning plays a key role in individual performance success, understands that learning programs need to be global across the organization, and promoted from the top down. In the absence of a CLO, you can plan, organize, and structure your learning organization to include this functional role.

Be sure to work across the enterprise, to consult with all divisions and ask them what their needs are around meeting departmental goals and individual performance goals. If support for a CLO isn’t possible right now, try to identify ways that the providers of learning can take a leadership role and work toward managing a learning function that shows its value and benefit in productivity, turnover, and talent recruitment.