L&D in Today’s Corporate World: A Conversation with Gwen Klapperich

CommLab Podcast with Gwen Klapperich

Shalini Merugu 0:03
Hi everyone. Welcome to the e-learning Champions pod. I'm Shalini your host for today, and it's a pleasure to introduce today's speaker, someone who's truly passionate about helping adult professionals grow and succeed. Whether in the classroom or in the workplace, her mission is to empower others to reach their career goals. With experience spanning hospitality, retail, public health, government, continuing education, and non-profits, she brings a rich and diverse perspective to. workforce development. Beyond her work, she's deeply engaged in her community, giving her time to causes that she cares about. She's also one of the first professionals in Hawaii and the Philippines to earn the prestigious CPTD certification from the Association for Talent Development. We are very happy to have her with us today. So please join me in giving a warm welcome to Gwen Klapperich.

Klapperich, Gwen N. 1:24
Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

Shalini Merugu 1:28
So let me dive right into our question for today. Based on your experience across industries like hospitality, retail, public health, and government, what are some practical ways L&D professionals can shift from being seen as training providers to strategic business partners? Are there any real world examples where you've successfully made this transition?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 2:00
So your question is, basically from training providers to strategic business partners? It's been a while since I've been in an organization. I've been on my own for quite some time, but one of the things that they can do is they can learn how to speak C-Suite, so basically really get into the business acumen of things, understand what the business bottom line is about, and finding out what the business really cares about and what their main drivers are, whether it's productivity or retention, really trying to make sure that learning and development solves the business's problems. It's not just an order taker. It's not just finding out what next class people can take, it's really how do you use learning and development to drive business factors?

Shalini Merugu 2:50
I think that is key to success in this role. So, Gwen, how do you define the role of a performance consultant in the context of learning and development?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 3:05
That's a really great question. Thank you for asking. So a performance consultant will really not go in and say I can train your learners on this. A learning performance consultant really goes in and finds out what an organizational problem is all about, determines the root cause of the problem, and then creates and implements a solution that really addresses that problem. For example, I had a contract in the Philippines where the general manager, the chief operating officer, they asked me to come in and help them fix their guest service problem. It wasn't that the wait staff didn't know how to serve a guest. There was some systemic internal issues that were happening on the back end that were solved by implementing like for example, a CRM. They did need a little bit of job training, but not to the extent that was originally thought. There were some other systemic issues that were causing some of the guest service issues they were experiencing. One of them being that they didn't really have a robust customer relationship management system. And so was one of the recommendations that I made was to really implement that and what they saw was that their guest scores actually did increase a little bit just by doing that. So training is not always the answer. When you’re a performance consultant, that is not the first answer that you go to. What you really want to do is create a solution that addresses the root cause of the problem, rather than just applying training to it, which is just a band-aid.

Shalini Merugu 4:37
That's very well put, Gwen. So you know this is a slightly difficult area sometimes for us to handle when we are trying to prove the strategic importance of training and sometimes when we get an opportunity, I think L&D professionals just dive in and go ahead with laying out the training solution without really, as you said, addressing the rules root cause. So do you have any recommendations for L&D professionals to take that step back? Because it doesn't come easy for many of us who actually struggle to get to that place where we are being heard by the C-Suite. And then to tell them that OK, You know what, training is not really the problem. It is sometimes difficult to articulate. How do you recommend L&D professionals go about this?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 5:38
One of the things that I do when I'm with a client is I actually ask them what is the problem that you're trying to solve. So if you want me to do this training, what exactly is the problem that you're trying to solve? Whether it's customer service or presentation skills, or whether it's something that is going on in terms of productivity? What exactly is the problem? And what do you think is causing the problem? Because it's only until you find out what's causing the problem we can figure out. In order for me to be successful, I need to figure out what the problem is that we're trying to solve. And once I know that problem, I can implement a solution that is tailored to that problem. That really helps them in terms of moving the needle forward in whatever direction they want to go, whether it's decreasing customer complaints or whether it's increasing team productivity. It really depends upon what the problem is and I can't come up with a particular solution until I know what the problem is. Otherwise, I will just be kind of spinning my wheels trying to come up with a solution that may or may not solve the problem. So that needs analysis that needs discovery call or that needs discovery. Discovery conversation is really the key to coming up with a solution that will solve your problem, so when my clients call me, I will rarely ever say, OK, I'll do this training for you. Unless it's really something that’s it's a one off. They're doing a workshop on, for example, disability inclusion, that I can understand. It's just a particular workshop where it's an offsite or whatever. But if they're actually trying to solve a performance problem, really need to figure out what the causes of that problem before you move forward.

Shalini Merugu 7:28
Yeah. Thank you for that, Gwen. And as you said, it actually leads up to my next question on our training needs. But before that, a very quick question. Do you think every L&D professional is primarily also a performance consultant or should be?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 7:49
I think so. I think it's really a key to understanding that C-Suite speak because if you're just an order taker, then you are a cost factor in the business and you may be dispensable, especially when costs are getting cut. But if you position yourself as a strategic partner who helps solve problems, then chances are that you will be seen in a different light. And that actually is part of the ADDIE process, analysis, design, develop, implement, evaluate. Performance consulting is actually built into the very fabric of a lot of instructional design projects, a lot of training implementation projects. So I think it's just interwoven naturally. I think just concentrating on that rather than just taking orders can actually go a long way.

Shalini Merugu 8:41
Thank you for that. So you've already touched upon the training needs analysis part of it, but just wanted to hear a little bit more from you about it. You worked with a wide range of industries. So how do you adapt your approach to training needs analysis to fit different organizational cultures and business objectives? What challenges have you encountered? And how did you overcome them?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 9:11
As you said, my career has taken me through many, many different places. And one of the things that I really had to learn quickly is how the industry actually operates. So each industry has different learning challenges, cultural issues in each organization are different as well. So I really try to take a step back a little bit and learn what are the problems that I have been hired to solve and what does the culture have to do with it? It could be a different country, it could be a different organization, it could be a different industry. Every single organization you come into, it's going to have nuances and differences of what their needs are. That actually has served me very well in terms of being able to transition from, in my early career I was a retail trainer and then I transitioned to training healthcare professionals for public health for a state government department. So I really took the time to learn the business per se. I didn't just come in and say, OK, well, we're going to do this training program. I really did come in and try to learn the business, so that's why I tried to become as much of a not as a subject matter expert per se, but as knowledgeable in the subject as possible to help me gain credibility. So for example, when you're talking about retail, you really want to know the products, you really want to know the customer service aspect of it. Then when I transitioned to healthcare, in particular, I worked with immunization. So now I know way more about vaccines than I thought I would ever know. But I really took the time to learn what it is that they were trying to accomplish in the department, in their agency, in their field. And that really helped me establish credibility with them in terms of that. It is a challenge because sometimes you want to jump in right away and start solving problems. But until you really understand the nuances of each client and each organization that you belong to. I usually try to give myself a month, so I have the habit of asking hey, can you give me a couple of weeks at least to research and to really learn what this business is all about? I mean, obviously you do your research before the interview, all that other stuff before you come to the first call. But really taking the time to learn what that client, their mission, their vision, their values, what they're trying to accomplish, the product, the services that they provide, really does go a long way in helping to implement problems, solving problems that they have.

Shalini Merugu 11:53
So as part of your research, who are the various audiences you reach out to?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 12:06
It depends on the organization. Sometimes it will be holding customer focus groups. Employees are a really big factor. I really am a big believer that the frontline is the core of every organization’s workforce.

And so I really do take a lot of time to talk to workforce employees, the frontline workers, the frontline supervisors. I try to find out what their views are of the problem at hand.. Usually sometimes they have the solutions. They're just not being heard and so really taking the time to talk to them because they are the ones that have their ear on what the customer is saying. They're the ones who really know the day in, the day out, the nitty gritty, the details of what may or may not be working in the organization. So that is one key focus group that I usually will talk to. I'll also talk to managers, the C-Suite themselves to find out what the problem is, those types of things.

Shalini Merugu 13:17
So talking to the actual end users of your training is really key. But a lot of times we end up doing a survey and getting our insights from just the first line managers and the C-suite. Now this is a huge group, the actual employees who are going to take your training. So do you have any recommendations on how you would go about setting up these focus groups and some best practices based on your experience?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 15:06
Well, I've worked for large corporations before, but as a frontline supervisor. In terms of learning and development and working with my clients, my sweet spot is usually small to mid-market. So in terms of large corporations, I would not be the best person to answer that question. But in terms of the small to mid-market organizations, it's really asking for volunteers who would like to be involved in this particular endeavor, and also asking managers for their input on who would be a good person to talk to. So that's usually how I go about selecting people. But usually people are eager to talk, so I really don't ever have a shortage of volunteers asking to talk to me.

Shalini Merugu 15:53
Thank you. Now coming to the next question, in sectors like hospitality and retail, where our training impact is often measured in terms of customer experience, what metrics and data points have you found to be most effective in demonstrating ROI to stakeholders?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 16:46
Well, definitely revenue could be one. Because the happier a customer is, the more they shop, right? The more they come back, the more they do it. Guest service scores are also another good indicator. When you do your guest service surveys, are they positive? Do they come back? So really pushing the needle up and down on that one. Those are two of the metrics that I look at the most. Other metrics that you could look at are employee satisfaction because when employees are happy, customers are happy.

So those are the big three that I can think of at this time.

Shalini Merugu 17:21
Right, right. I think employee satisfaction is something that is not measured as frequently as we would like to measure. Because sometimes we just gather all these other metrics and leave out this very core group. How do you go about measuring employee satisfaction? Do you partner very closely with HR? Is it a co-owned area, so to speak?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 18:02
I think it depends on the organization. Because sometimes L&D itself in an organization will fall under HR and sometimes, it will fall under operations. So it really depends upon who is the champion of the project? Who is the one who is asking you to solve the problem? Is it the Chief Operating Officer? Is it the Chief Human Resources Officer? Because you want to approach it differently depending upon who's asking you to solve the problem. And in terms of employee satisfaction, there are a couple ways. The usual 360 employee feedback but really holding employee focus groups, you can look at it in terms of turnover, in terms of retention, in terms of just even observing the employees when they come to work. Do they come to work happy, or do they come to work kind of a little bit grumpy? That could really determine whether or not somebody is feeling their job or not.

Shalini Merugu 19:09
So Gwen, do you believe that L&D truly has a very key role to play in employee retention?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 19:19
I do. L&D is very broad, right? Some of it could be part of HR, some of it could be part of operations. But at the very core of it, learning and development is about helping that person reach their full potential in whatever job that you hired them for. So really onboarding is really key to starting that, even before they show up on their first day. How are you welcoming that person? How are you preparing that person for success? And there's always going to be some bit of learning that they have to do on the job, whether that's on the job training, whether that's in the classroom, whether that's through e-learning, virtual instructor-led learning, there's always some learning that they have to do in whatever form it is, even if it's a job aid, that just shows them how to do their job. They are going to come with a certain amount of experience that you have to respect, and you have to draw on because that's the reason why you hired them for the job.

But really it's a key role because it helps determine how that person is going to be treated and how that person's potential is going to be treated. I mean for the last 5 to 10 years, I guess one of the top benefits that employees look for is how far can I go in this company? What's my growth potential? So really, you can't have growth potential if you don't have a learning and development function that helps them reach that potential.

Shalini Merugu 20:43
Thank you for that insightful response. Now coming to our technology’s role in learning, so many of the industries that you've worked in rely on frontline employees who may not have constant access to traditional eLearning platforms. So what strategies or technologies do you recommend to ensure effective learning for deskless workers?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 21:13
For deskless workers, it depends again on what they're trying to train them, because there are some things that cannot be done outside of a classroom. So for example, a physical skill like CPR or first aid, you're going to need to have some kind of classroom component to that.

But mobile technology has really opened up the doorway and the gateway. A lot of employees actually now have their own mobile phones or their given mobile phones by their employer. So mobile learning is actually, I think one of the best things that has come out in the last 15 to 20 years in terms of helping open that gateway up to deskless workers. And I've seen some really fancy technology things. That's why at restaurants now the servers can input things directly into a handheld device rather than going to a POS system. Just things like that, the potential is there. I'm not an AI expert by any means, but I think the admin of artificial intelligence is really going to be a game changer in the way that learning and development is done in the next 5 to 10 years. So I think that's something that employers should keep an eye out on because it'll affect everything from productivity to operations to learning and development to pretty much it'll touch every function within an organization.

Shalini Merugu 22:37
So what are some of your thoughts on AI’s potential in L&D, especially in industries with high turnover rates like retail and hospitality? How can we really leverage AI to design and deliver learning experiences?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 22:59
I'm still learning that myself. I'm not an AI expert. I can point you in the direction of people who are. There's several learning and development experts out there who are also at the forefront of artificial intelligence and incorporating that into organizations. So I'm not the best person to answer that question, but my thoughts just from my own personal work is that it's changing, it's making certain things faster. But at the same time, you can't really remove that human element altogether. You can put into AI, give me a 2 hour course on such and such and it will spit it out. But is it quality? Maybe, maybe not. Will it fit the problem that they're trying to solve? Maybe, maybe not. I think that's where having the human side of it, the human investigation part of it, that really determines what the problem is. AI is not going to fix that because AI doesn't know what the source of the problem is. It could actually make recommendations, but it's not going to know the true source of the problem, at least from what I've seen. Because a human is always going to drive. AI doesn't make decisions on its own. A human is always going to drive that. So I'm on the later end of approaching and using AI in my own business. Again, I'm not the best person to answer that, but what I've seen is we've seen a lot more organizations adopting it and trying to adopt it. It's very fast moving. There's definitely some ethical things involved in that. Again, I could point you in the direction of people who do know more about this subject than I do, but from my own business and my own perspective, it definitely has helped me with productivity. It's helped me with instructional design in terms of just prompting ideas. For example, if I'm at a loss at how to develop a two hour training on rocket science, for example, I could ask it, and it’ll give me the key points of rocket science and it will give me all of those things. It will even give me an outline.
Do I have to use that outline? No.

But can I use it to prompt ideas on what to create? Yes.

Shalini Merugu 25:15
Right, right. I think a lot of us have used AI as a brainstorming partner. So yeah, that totally makes sense. Coming to one final question, Gwen. This is to do around staying current and building a sustainable L&D career. You've earned the prestigious CPTD certification, and you continue to pursue higher education. So for L&D professionals looking to grow their expertise and stay relevant, what strategies or learning pathways do you recommend?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 25:59
I think it depends on the individual and what they want to accomplish. Do they want to become the Chief Learning Officer? Or do they want to become an instructional designer? There's a lot of teachers, especially here in the states right now that are actually transitioning into corporate L&D. They're leaving the education field behind and they're transitioning.

How do they use their previous experience as teachers to leverage their new careers? So it really depends on the individual. Now I have earned the CPT from the Association for Talent Development. They're actually an organization that's really near and dear to my heart. They've really helped me learn what I need to learn, and they've been really instrumental in my career. So one of the things that they have that I usually recommend to somebody who's trying to figure out their career pathway is they actually have a self-assessment that is in line with their current capability model. And it will actually pull up a career pathway for you. It will have some recommendations for you depending upon what your goals are. So, those are some of the things. And then also keeping in touch with the current publications that are out there, like training magazines, Training Industry is a really great resource, the learning Guild, really great resources. So just trying to keep up, read your industry magazines, go to classes, further your education, go to conferences if you can afford to. So whatever you can do to learn what you need to learn to keep your career moving forward is a great strategy for everybody. But in terms of specifics, it really depends upon what your individual goals are.

Shalini Merugu 27:31
Thank you for sharing that about the resources we can go to and the self-assessment test. That sounds really interesting. Does it come with an ATD subscription?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 27:48
I think you can take the self-assessment without being a member. I will have to double check on that. Do not quote me on that, but I believe the self-assessment was open to pretty much everybody. I do not believe that you have to be a member in order to take it. They do recommend that you do take it every once in a while. I haven't taken it in a while, but it is really robust. It's a self-assessment, it really does gauge your knowledge on certain capabilities like business acumen, cultural awareness, intelligence, everything that has to do with the three capabilities that they have, which is one's personal, one's professional, one's organizational.

Shalini Merugu 28:31
So Gwen, I just want to ask one final question. You talked about acumen and those kind of skills. Now, can you recommend, not the hard skills of instruction design and consulting and all of that. But can you recommend some soft skills that you feel L&D professionals should invest in to grow their career? It could be financial business acumen, for instance. What are your favorite top three skills that you feel every L&D professional should have?

Klapperich, Gwen N. 29:09
I definitely think emotional intelligence. Presentation skill or communication skills. Really not too much presentation skills, but emotional intelligence, communication skills, and the business acumen, I think are three key ones.

Shalini Merugu 29:27
Thank you so much for sharing all those insights based on your experience. I'm sure our listeners have benefited from this podcast, and you've given us all a lot of food for thought. So, thank you once again.

Klapperich, Gwen N. 29:43
Thank you very much for having me.

Shalini Merugu 29:45
And listeners do stay tuned for our upcoming podcasts. Thank you once again, Gwen, it was a pleasure to talk to you.