How L&D Drives Organizational Change

Make Your Training Moments Count

We've all been there, clicking through endless slides and watching outdated videos to fulfill a checklist requirement that does nothing to create meaningful behavior change.

Mandated training represents a significant investment of time and attention from you and your workforce. These are the moments that should count. But all too often, they don’t.

Every time an employee sits down to go through training, you have an amazing opportunity. It might seem small, just a couple hours here and a couple hours there, but those moments add up. Collectively, they represent thousands of hours of employee attention. And within those hours lies significant potential. The potential to reduce risky behaviors, increase engagement, challenge biases, and strengthen your leadership pipeline.

What if the mandatory training that employees dread could actually become the most powerful catalyst for transformation in your organization?

Taking a behavioral approach to mandated training means going beyond simply telling the learner what to do. In behavior-based training, powerful storytelling vignettes and realistic situational scenarios engage learners and provide a lens through which they consider their work environment and answer scientifically based questions designed to assess their future intent to act. What do you think about this? What might prevent you from doing this?

In-context questions elicit more authentic answers than random engagement or pulse surveys, providing organizations with valuable insights into their culture and creating a foundation for lasting change.

Uniquely Positioned to See Multiple Departments and Levels

Learning and Development sits in a uniquely strategic front-row seat—one that grants access and visibility to the strengths and needs of all levels and departments of the organization. Armed with behavioral insights uncovered during mandated training, L&D is positioned to drive change, support leadership, and help the organization achieve its desired business outcomes.

• Organization-wide compliance training on topics like harassment prevention and respectful workplace can reveal key attitudes and beliefs and identify issues requiring attention—if the training includes behavioral intent questions asked in the context of the topic.   
• Using insights gleaned from behavioral training, L&D professionals are among the first to understand where their company excels and where it struggles. They can see the needs for additional training, how cultural strengths are—or are not—being expressed, organizational misalignments, and even brewing problems. 
• By embracing the latest tools and technologies, L&D becomes a strategic command center with the power to influence both up and down the organization, and an engine for smarter, faster, and more precise decision-making. Evidence-based analytics and behavioral insight platforms enable L&D professionals to: 
• Forecast future risks and impacts to KPIs
• Identify which teams or departments need targeted support and additional training
• Deliver actionable recommendations to leadership 

A Client Story: Unidentified Issues Create Calamities 

Atana’s experience with a large financial services client organization showcases how the data gathered through behavior-based training can lead to important breakthroughs. The firm was struggling with retention issues, despite having what they considered a strong culture. Traditional engagement surveys (which usually garner a 40% response rate) showed generally positive results, but the company was still losing key talent at an alarming rate. When they implemented Atana’s behavioral science-based learning approach—with its 100% response rate and almost real-time feedback—their detailed insights with specificity around departments and roles revealed a surprising discovery. While their overall culture was indeed positive, there were noteworthy pockets within the organization where employees didn't feel safe speaking up or sharing concerns. 

With this insight, the company was able to address the specific issue within that division rather than implementing a broad organization-wide initiative that wouldn't have solved the real problem anyway.

In one particular division, employees consistently indicated that they did not feel comfortable speaking up when they saw problems because they feared retribution from their manager. This was happening despite the company's strong overall culture, expectations, and explicit policies encouraging open communication. With this insight, the company was able to address the specific issue within that division rather than implementing a broad organization-wide initiative that wouldn't have solved the real problem anyway. The result was that retention in that division improved by 23 % within six months.

It's Time for Transformation 

When armed with data and the meaningful insights Atana provides, L&D professionals are in a powerful position to drive organizational change. The Atana Insights platform—which identifies issues, opportunities, and behavioral intent at the organizational level or within specific areas such as geographic location or department—equips L&D with the science-backed support to advance needed change in the organization and help it attain its desired business outcomes.