Solution

Leadership and management development (LMD) initiatives are activities that help leaders and managers to broaden their knowledge, abilities and skills (Quilliam, 2022). Effective leadership and management is widely recognised as a crucial aspect of organisation’s success. Therefore, developing leaders, managers and individuals is a significant part of United LEC learning strategy. In this case, people professionals can support LMD initiatives in different ways:

Conducting learning need analysis

People professionals conduct learning need analysis within the organisation to identify skill and knowledge gaps existing between individuals, managers and leaders (Mohanraj et al., 2023). For example, managers would be interested to learn hard aspects of work such as planning, managing, organising and controlling while leaders would be interested to understand themselves as leaders and learn ways to create an effective vision. Conducting learning need analysis can benefit United LEC by closing the skills and knowledge gaps, use its learning budget effectively and develop a culture that fits people and organisation. It makes sense to begin with a crucial understanding of what skills and knowledge leaders and managers need because this helps an HR manager to understand the key areas of need and focus on learning materials and training budget (Proberts, 2023). The proactive nature would also help people professional to upskill leaders, managers and staff before knowledge and skill gap has a detrimental impact on the company. Use of questionnaire, assessment texts, and job design and analysis and competency framework can help United LEC HR in understanding learning needs.

Designing leadership and management interventions

Using the learning need analysis and assessment data, HR professional should now design an effective LMD intervention tailored to bridge those gaps. Some of the key aspects to consider in this step include training materials, case studies, training methods (formal training, web-based, books, conferences, coaching and mentoring) and budget (Howard et al., 2021). It is important for an HR manager to carry a research to determine which method will deliver learning effectively. Some method will work better for some and poor for others. There is no one-size-fit for all and therefore, training materials and methods should be flexible to meet needs of everyone.

Evaluating the programme

Once the learning has been delivered, it is the responsibility of people professionals to evaluate the effectiveness of learning. An HR manager would ask; are the learning programmes developing the necessary skills and knowledge? What is the success and how can this success be measured? With targeted skills and knowledge in hand, people professionals should determine the extent to which managers and leaders as well as teams are applying them at work. The use of surveys, interviews, post-learning assessments and measuring achievement of KPIs can help to understand the effectiveness of training (Alsalamah and Callinan, 2021). Some of the key metrics to measure within United LEC include level of satisfaction, turnover rate, engagement level and productivity. If these are positive in comparison of costs used during the learning process, then it means the programme achieved its intended purpose. However, non-success areas can also be identified and take actions for further improvement.

Evaluate the different concepts and range of approaches that are available for effective leadership and management development (AC 2.2) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

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