Learning and development strategy template: interactive L&D planning guide

Oct 07, 2022

Interested in implementing impactful learning projects for your organization? You have come to the right place. We've created a free learning and development strategy template that you can download and use to create a strategic L&D plan at your organization.

Why use a learning strategy template?

A learning strategy template helps you make your L&D efforts more meaningful, efficient and impactful. This is important because a great learning strategy can bolster careers, drive great employee engagement, and help your business achieve its goals.

Over more than ten years creating learning experiences, we've seen that at the world's most strategic organizations, learning isn't something that operates in isolation: instead, it's woven into major new initiatives, where it undergirds the foundation of mission-critical transformations while also elevating employee experience overall. But this only works when you use the right inputs to develop your learning strategy. That's where this learning strategy template comes in.

(Check out another recent post for more on creating an impactful learning strategy.)

Getting the right inputs for your L&D plan

Using the questions on the template, you'll be able to gather the crucial inputs that will make your learning strategy successful. As you talk to learners and other stakeholders, you'll discover key gaps in skills, capabilities, and the flow of information, helping you understand both what your learning should achieve and how you'll be able to most effectively communicate the purpose of this learning endeavor.

This L&D strategy template will help you:

• Identify your learning goals
• Choose your target audience
• Craft your learning communication strategy
• Develop your learning plan
• Gather learner and stakeholder feedback
• Use the right metrics
• Put it all together into an easy-to-use Learning Strategy Template

This is beyond the scope of the template itself, but as you go through this plan, you'll also want to consider learning delivery mode. What learning model will work best for the target learners? What are the budget constraints, and where are the learners located geographically? What effect might this have on the question of asynchronous vs. synchronous learning, keeping in mind issues like time zone differences?

For many of our clients, semi-synchronous learning is best for helping them achieve their goals. (Check out the link to see what this looked like in action at Citi!)

How does the Learning Strategy Template work?

Our template takes you through a series of questions that help you choose the right learning goals, identify key stakeholders and champions, and create a learning communication strategy that will ensure everyone across the business understands the "why" behind this L&D initiative.

Approaching your learning strategy this way helps build alignment: between learning strategy and business strategy, between learners' goals and wider organizational goals. It also helps you build communications that are targeted and strategic, speaking to the right audience at the right moment. This template will help you pair the right audience with the right message, because reach is important when it comes to learning communications, but so is relevance. Involving the right people in the right learning initiative will build learner engagement, reduce attrition, increase morale, and enhance performance, and great communication is at the core of all of this.

Finally, the template also encourages you to ask some important up-front questions about learning feedback and learning metrics. There is always room for improvement and iteration in learning strategy, and including a process for gathering and implementing feedback in your initial plan will set you up for success.

Likewise, ensuring you're using the right metrics to assess learning progress is intrumental to driving long-term support of your learning initiative across the organization. This template helps you ensure that these metrics demonstrate value for the business. Ultimately, one of the most important things you can do is show how learning contributes to the businesses's goals. For this reason, the template encourages you to reflect on the capabilities and skills at the core of your learning project and how they tie back to tangible business metrics.

Download your copy of our free Learning Strategy Template

Ready to get started with an easy-to-use template that will help you create a learning strategy that will elevate careers, improve employee experience, and drive record learning engagement? Download our free Learning Strategy Template now.

The template is based on more than a decade of experience helping organizations use learning to drive their most important transformations. For more information about what Nomadic does and how we can help bring learning to the center of business strategy at your organization, request a demo today.