Feeling Stuck in L&D: Should I Stay or Move On from a Job with No Real Work?

I am in a very peculiar condition here. I have recently joined a new organization that has multiple branches and stores. My position is as a mid-level employee in L&D, and I am responsible for country-wide L&D intervention. My reporting is to someone who does not understand my function, and I have spent 4 months in the organization, meaning I am still not a confirmed employee yet.

Now, the problem is that I do not have work. My KPIs were handed over to me on the very first day and have nothing to do with my L&D profile; they are mostly based on operations performance. I have tried to speak with various people in the organization (including my boss) regarding the lack of work/opportunities to work. The list also includes people who are above me in my function but operate through a different region.

I have 8 years of L&D experience which is totally going to waste, and the reason I left my previous organization (1.2 yrs) was due to the same reason.

I am now in a situation where I am not able to decide if I should stick here (spoil all I have learned) or move on (spoil my resume).

Questions for Senior L&D Professionals

I want to ask all the seniors (who would agree with me that L&D is an important and integral function) something:

1. Is hiring an L&D person a trend/fashion that most organizations follow?

2. What should an L&D person focus on while appearing for an interview so that they do not end up in a situation like mine?

3. For the L&D function to give something back to the business, is it required that somebody in the management understands the function?

I am a passionate L&D professional, and now I am always wondering if I made the right move by switching into L&D.

Cheers and thank you for reading it all.

Regards

Understanding Your Industry and Training Approach

You have written a long post, but what is missing in your lengthy message is the nature of your industry. What product or service do you provide? What type of customers do you have? Are you from the retail industry? What kind of training programs have you handled? Did you personally handle the delivery, or did you always depend on external trainers?

If you are given a placement in operations, I would say take advantage of it. Let us not take a narrow view of the L&D profession. L&D does not solely mean classroom training, engaging participants in games and simulations, receiving praise after feedback, or outsourcing training to agencies that further outsource to freelance trainers. It involves understanding the costs in operations, conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis for training, curating business cases to reduce costs, addressing quality issues, measuring customer satisfaction, and incorporating experiences into case studies to enrich training.

Few training professionals in India venture to measure training effectiveness using the Kirkpatrick Model. If you get a chance to work in operations, design training to measure effectiveness on this model to stand out from the crowd.

Training is dynamic and requires research on how operations are conducted. Provide hardcore research data to those delivering training.

Regarding your dilemma of whether to stay or move on, try implementing your learning and knowledge from the past 8 years to overcome challenges and make a difference.

If you are from the retail industry, you may refer to my previous posts:

https://www.citehr.com/484179-retail-industry.html

https://www.citehr.com/483491-traini...employees.html

Training is often misunderstood in India, partly due to misleading training companies and lack of pressure to show ROI on training.

My candid reply may not be well-received, but as a member of the training fraternity, I feel compelled to be straightforward. Sometimes, one needs to be direct.

Thank you,

Regards,
Dinesh V Divekar
[Email Removed For Privacy Reasons]
who always strived to measure the effectiveness of training

Thank you for the reply! To begin with, I am from the retail segment, and there seems to be a little misunderstanding. When I wrote about my KPIs, which are related to operations excellence, what I meant is that whatever KPIs an ops manager should have, I have the same.

Now, I understand that training is not about collecting accolades or feedback forms, but I do believe that by imparting the right training, the skill sets of the employees can be enhanced. Isn't it the reason why the Kirkpatrick model is so highly regarded, as it enables you to understand the effectiveness of any program?

The point I want to make is that an L&D professional's core strength is understanding people, their learning abilities, and providing them with guidance or the right skill sets. However, you cannot do that until you have people, whether they are in the classroom or on the job.

I can do a lot of research, probably give advice only if I am given that opportunity. I cannot force myself into day-to-day tasks unless operations really want.

So, my point still stands where it started. Defining a role for a trainer is very important. A role that has to be analyzed carefully before hiring one. Otherwise, the person would only lay eggs (like I am) because operations feel you are interfering, and you are only left to observe and give feedback to the people working on the floor, which operations feel is useless. Let's be honest, no matter whatever you try to train, until there is no operational support, you can't achieve the desired results.

Thanks again for showing interest!

Regards,
J.CT

Dear J.CT, If your KRAs are the same as those of the Ops Manager, have you spoken with HR for a revision of KRAs? (Please note it is not KPIs but KRAs).

Time Allocation Between Operations and Training

Secondly, how much time do you spend on operational activities and how much time on training? What is the ratio?

Core Strength of L&D Professionals

Thirdly, you have written, "Now the point that I want to make is that an L&D professional's core strength is understanding people, their learning abilities, and providing them with guidance or the right skill sets." This is the fundamental notion that has led you to write this post. Training is not just about understanding people. Every business incurs various costs. Training is for sensitizing your people to these costs and guiding them on how to optimize these costs. Training professionals develop these skills to minimize these costs. However, if skills are built without raising awareness of the costs, the training will be vacuous. We should optimize costs because while minimizing one cost, we should not increase another cost elsewhere.

Understanding Your Business Context

You have not mentioned anything about your retail business, the type of business it is, or what kind of back-end operations or supply chain operations are handled. Approach your seniors to conduct a study on the cost of back-end operations, inventory carrying costs, space utilization, inventory management under space constraints, cost of lost sales, cost of obsolete inventory, capacity costs, etc.

After conducting this study, do not provide feedback directly to the staff or managers. Provide feedback on this study to the Head of Operations. If the Head of Operations does not value your study, only then can you say that you are in the wrong organization.

Standardizing and Measuring Costs

Once you standardize these costs, you can begin measuring these costs for every retail store or branch. The effectiveness of a retail manager depends on managing these costs. Volume of sales cannot be the sole measure of effectiveness. Unfortunately, there are very few in India who take this holistic view of operations.

I have provided you with two links in my previous post. Could you go through those links? If you wish, you may call me on my mobile.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Understanding Your Job Role and Responsibilities

When you applied for this job, there must have been a job description. You were hired to do a particular job, and surely the questions you were asked in the interview were designed to establish if you had the skills and experience to do this particular job. However, as I noted before on CiteHR, the ways of recruitment in India are strange and often at odds with established and well-tested methodology.

Taking Initiative in Your Role

Go back to your job description, establish what it is you should be doing, use some initiative, and just start doing it. Management will soon pull you up if it doesn't suit, then you can establish with them exactly what it is they want you to do. If that doesn't work, well then I would suggest you start doing a TNA on the staff, and then work out what training is needed, and put together the training and development plan for management to sign off on.

Regards