70/20/10: what Learning & Development is really about

Okay, the title is inflammatory; L&D is not just about this, BUT; you can’t thinking about L&D without knowing this, and thinking about it. If this is not in your mindset when discussing L&D, you’re really just wasting your time. This model is arguably the foundational concept of workplace learning.   It posits the following:

-              70% of what we learn come from doing.  Challenging work; tasks, actions, responsibilities that are new or near new to us, such that we need to develop new neural pathways (i.e. learning).  These are new tasks, new situations, new questions that you need to provide answers to. Any time someone starts a new job, does something they have done before or don’t do routinely, they are learning. This learning is regular and pervasive- it’s always going on. Anytime someone is doing something that they couldn’t with their eyes closed, they are learning.

To give an HR example; you may have recruited teachers before, so a new teacher role isn’t learning.  But a new role (e.g. an Accountant) could require you learn a little about that job (what experience/qualifications/titles are good), you might engage a new agency (with different T&Cs), your relationship with the agent may be different (you have to chase them).  All of which are small learnings you save away for next time, that no one sat down and taught you.

-              20% is learnt from developmental relationships, or informal teaching.  Where someone explains something, checks something, guides you, gives you feedback.  This can be within a formal management relationship (e.g. your boss) a mentor relationship (a senior person in the team), a manager you work with, or even outside of work. 

To give an HR example again, you might sit in on a disciplinary meeting as the notetaker.  The senior HR person running the meeting might take the time to provide you the documents in advance, talk you through them, explain before the meeting what will happen, and explain afterwards what actually just happened.

-              10%. Formal learning.  This is courses, workshops, conferences, degrees and so forth.  Any time you are off work, focused on structure learning objectives with the explicit purpose of upskilling you. Is reading this formal learning? Sort of.

Limitations and takeaways

More knowledgeable people on the subject than I would contend that this model is outdated, inaccurate and simplistic, and in many ways they are correct (the round numbers alone give it away).  But disagreements over the finer details do not remove the overall key takeaways you should, well, learn:

-              It’s not all about courses.  The common misunderstanding of L&D is that courses=learning, and if you’re getting courses, you’re developing, and if you’re not getting courses, you’re not getting developed.  In fact;-

-              Courses can be placebos.  The above assumption that is endemic to most workplaces is that if you’re sent on a course, it’s a good thing, you’re being invested in, and you’ll come back smarter and more knowledgeable.  But if an employee come back invigorated, but goes back to doing exactly what they did before, and 1, 2, 6 months later, they can’t recall anything they learnt and haven’t changed anything, have they really learnt?

-              Different is learning.  Every time an employee does something different, they are learning.  The question is; how much difference comes as part of the job?

Some jobs are highly repetitive; payroll for example is highly repetitive, with payruns often being the same run after run.  Other jobs are highly varied; a stand-up comedian gets a different crowd every night, and is judged every joke. 

-              Teaching doesn’t just come from the boss.  The manager has the greatest capacity to teach, but this often isn’t the case.  Often its colleagues- both in the the team and outside of the team who provide feedback, input and guidance on how an employee is performing.  Personally I’ve had dozens of bosses, but haven’t learnt anything meaningful from any of them, but instead most of my mentoring has come from sideways or diagonal feedback.

In practice

This is great theory, but what does this mean for HR policy?  I need to do L&D, it’s one of my KPIs. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but a few practical ways this theory can re-shape our mindset.

-              Don’t ignore L&D just because you don’t have a budget.  Too much L&D thinking begins and ends with the budget; I’ve got $XX,XXX in FY25 (or $0) so let’s spend it.  So little of learning is about about structure learning, so if your approach is only to think about learning that comes with a price tag, you’re missing so much.

-              You’re here to help, foster and nurture natural behaviour.  There are two things that you can take from granted; people will learn, and some people will teach.  This is happen without you.  But conditions can exist within the organisation to be conducive, or be adverse.  For example:

o   Working from home policies

o   Remuneration (e.g. sales incentives)

o   Adversarial office politics

o   Contractors or employees

All can have significant impacts on knowledge sharing.

-              Recognise the little learning opportunities.  Different= learning, so begin to recognize the little ‘different’ events that come up day-to-day as opportunities for learning.  This could projects (big and small) different tasks, new areas, new customers.  This can be trade off between efficiency (Dave is our best digger driver, so he’ll get it done faster) and breadth of knowledge (it will be good for Andy to know how to do in case Dave is sick).

-              Second and rotate.  Job rotation is a key tool for learning, and in part, retention.  Different is learning, and is variety away from the dullness of repetition (for most but not for all).  Job rotation- move someone to different tasks and responsibilities is a good way to keep people learning. 

Secondments are essentially the same but longer and more formal.  Seconding an employee into a different role is a good way to keep their learning going, but also requires good HR practices; you need to make sure they can always go back to where they were before.

-              Be careful of job enlargement.  If there is a poisoned chalice of the modern workplace, its job enlargement.  Job enlargement is giving people additional responsibilities and tasks to do; this does come with positives (for instance, overseeing a new team in addition to your current) but does come with negatives (it’s more work).  Job enlargement can accidentally be a punishment for being good at job, so unless the person has spare capacity, be cautious with job enlargement.