EXCELLENCE IN LEARNING AWARDS 2024
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Judges’ Comments The entries shortlisted for this year’s Best Leadership Development award exemplified the very real challenges faced by our profession and the high standards of delivery that are synonymous with these awards. Learning & Development has always been at the heart of critical business issues but hasn’t always had the opportunity to engage with the business to meet the challenges it faced. This year’s entrants demonstrated that it is possible for learning professionals to place themselves at the centre of critical conversations in the business and to deliver outstanding solutions that support their organisations in delivering their strategy. While all shortlisted companies faced very different challenges that reflected their sector, scale and culture, several key themes emerged. The first theme is the criticality of people leadership to organisational transformation. This year’s entrants faced different challenges as they sought to change their culture, reduce attrition and build market share. All recognised how important the role of the people leader is in delivering the changes required and supporting people through the change. This year’s entrants also recognised that people leadership isn’t just confined to the most senior levels of the organisation, people leadership occurs at all levels in an organisation. For any company to deliver its strategy, its people leaders, at every level, are critical. The second theme was the need to change the face of people leadership across the organisation. Many of this year’s entrants were focused on developing new leaders that better reflected the teams that they led. This included several significant initiatives to raise the number of female leaders across organisations and to rectify
the imbalance that exists in many leadership cadres. In addition to this, some organisations were taking significant steps to identify, encourage and develop people leaders who may not have thought of a career as a people leader. This broadening of the talent base for people leaders is considered by this year’s entrants as critical to the achievement of their strategy. A third theme was the requirement to be intentional and integrated about people leadership. In many organisations, people leadership is an “accidental” process as people get promoted and find themselves leading teams. In addition, people leadership is often disassociated from wider HR processes and in some cases, the delivery of KPIs. In several of this year’s entrants, it was clear that people leadership was being positioned as an intentional with organisations taking great steps to communicate the importance of people development as well as the skill sets required to effectively lead. This focus on intentionality was matched by integrating the process of people leadership with the skill sets required to lead effectively. This integrated approach ensures that people leadership is not perceived as something that happens “at the end of the day” but rather an integrated approach to delivering a powerful employee experience. The companies shortlisted for this year’s award are a superb reflection of our profession.
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