Human Resources Center of Expertise Model

When instructional design is part of Human Resources (HR), it is often housed within organizational or talent development functions. Many organizations have adopted an HR model that breaks enterprise functions such as recruiting, compensation and benefits, inclusive diversity, and learning and development related groups into Centers of Expertise (COE), which are also sometimes called Centers of Excellence. COEs typically focus on setting strategy, creating processes, and designing interventions deployed through Human Resource Business Partners (HR BPs) who are aligned with each area of the business. The names of learning and talent Centers of Expertise vary and may be called enterprise learning, training and development, talent management, leadership development, organization effectiveness, or development, among many others. Often, instructional designers reside within such departments and employ their trade on behalf of that business or support internal department clients. Typically, the work of HR instructional designers spans the organization because they across organizational boundaries and serve the enterprise. Instructional design that supports the creation of an enterprise high-potential leadership development program is an example. This is not an exclusive focus of HR instructional designers who may also get involved in local projects.

Embedded Model

In many organizations, instructional design is embedded within a business unit. Unlike an HR Center of Expertise, which primarily focuses on enterprise initiatives or projects, business unit instructional designers typically report to non-HR areas. The focus is typically on design projects that are unique to one organizational part. Business-centric instructional design functions are often part of a functional or technical training department. Where such functions report can vary. In a manufacturing company, for example, the function could report to operations, quality, sales, supply chain, finance, safety, engineering, technology, or general management. As with human resources, in business unit training departments, instructional designers perform their responsibilities for that part of the business.

Instructional Design Community of Practice

In some organizations, there may exist part-time instructional designers who do their work only on a periodic basis. These “virtual” practitioners do not belong to an instructional design department. In such situations, the phrase “strength in numbers” may be appropriate because the capabilities, capacities, and talents that exist among these individuals might be harnessed to unleash greater value than having them work in isolation.

This harnessing process may be initiated by one or a few practitioners who spot an opportunity and lead the way. This person or group may reside in the corporate COE, an embedded learning function, or somewhere else. Often, this leadership results in creating a formalized or informal Community of Practice (CoP). The purpose, focus, and scope and the work, meeting frequency, format, and work output can vary widely, but it is often the result of the gap that exists, the opportunity that may be realized, and the interest and energy of the individual or group leading the charge.

The University of British Columbia has an Instructional Design community of practice whose website (http://ctlt.ubc.ca/programs/communities-of-practice/instructional-design/) attempts to attract prospective members by asking, “Are you an Instructional Designer who is involved in supporting faculty to improve their learning environment or teaching practice? Interested in knocking down walls and connecting with other Instructional Designers?” The site defines the CoP as “The Instructional Design (ID) Community of Practice aims to be ‘a self-sustaining community where like-minded members connect with others, online and face-to-face, about integrating technology, discussing hot topics, exchanging best practices, sharing the latest tricks for technology tools, trading examples of delivery methods, collaborating for research, exploring evaluation techniques, and much more.”

The description of the community of practice at University of British Columbia depicts what a CoP in many organizations might represent. Its purpose is to create connections, share best practices, provide support and assistance to one another, and find opportunities to collaborate and add value that otherwise might not be created if they were working independently. of other practitioners. The value and benefits that any instructional design community of practice may realize can also vary widely. It may stop at creating social connections whereby practitioners learn other practitioners exist. Such superficial relationships may be deepened through structured or unstructured interactions, which may be accomplished in-person or virtually. These relationships may be strengthened further by more deliberate and purposeful interactions. Meetings and interactions amongst practitioners are planned, intentional, and focused on achieving objectives, outcomes, and benefits. The greater the frequency and depth of interaction among practitioners, the greater the potential benefit to both fellow practitioners and to the “host” organization.

Establishing Standards of Excellence and Governance

Some instructional designers are commissioned or take it upon themselves to establish standards of excellence and governance structures and processes for instructional design practices. Doing this creates agreed-upon standards by which instructional design processes, services, and practices will be carried out within the organization. By doing so, greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved and variability and redundancy reduced. It provides a blueprint or roadmap for instructional designers to follow when carrying out their work. It also gives organizational stakeholders a clear set of expectations regarding instructional design support for their project. Standards help to raise stakeholder understanding. This deeper awareness and education can create greater appreciation of instructional design and the rigor that must be exhibited to ensure that successful outcomes are achieved. Clear standards may also include the expectations instructional designers have of the stakeholders, increasing enrollment and even active engagement in the process, which is another key to success.

There are other benefits to establishing instructional design standards of excellence in an organization. Where many practitioners are doing independent or isolated work across an organization, having standards can help to create a common language and expectations. It can also help to reduce variability and even raise the bar on quality and performance related to instructional design work. Greater efficiencies can be achieved because less “reinventing the wheel” may be required to achieve tasks. From a talent mobility standpoint, having shared standards of excellence can foster easier movement and transition of instructional design talent from one part of an organization to another because there is a common baseline of practice, which makes transitions smoother. This can foster career development opportunities among instructional designers because they may be more qualified for openings in other parts of the organization using the same standards they are operating under, which may improve one's competitiveness for a new role.

The words “governance” amd “standardization” sometimes cause a negative reaction among some stakeholders. Rightly or wrongly, governance can be associated with bureaucracy, inefficiency, slow decision making, and inflexibility. Unfortunately for those attempting to implement governance structures, these perceptions may be well grounded. Governance and standards can be mandated in a top-down manner or they may be implemented in a more grassroots, consensus-based manner by those involved with the processes being standardized. Knowing that some may be highly leery of such attempts is helpful because it can ensure that a filter is used so efforts to implement standards don't become extreme and sacrifice the benefits.

When attempting to implement standards, involvement by those closest to the process under exploration is suggested. Perhaps an organization is attempting to establish standards related to learning evaluation practices in an environment where various learning practitioners conduct evaluations in different ways. This decentralized and inconsistent approach creates inefficiencies across the organization. One way to achieve standardization in such a situation is having the organization's executives mandate that a common evaluation tool, with standardized questions and a centralized evaluation system or database, be used. An alternative approach to creating a standardized approach to evaluation, absent a mandate, would be to bring the practitioners together to agree on what should be common and standardized. Exhibit 17.1 contains a list of possible guiding principles that can be used when attempting to set standards or governance in instructional design practices.

Once a practice is identified, whether by mandate or through consensus, as a candidate for becoming a standard, additional work must be done. A standard may be seen as one best way of doing things, but that may not always be the case. For various reasons, such as cost, complexity, resources, or time, a standard may not represent the best way of doing things, but rather will be adopted as the common way of doing things. Once it is decided upon, various parties involved must adopt that common practice, process, tool, or way of operating. Documenting the process or practice as it's intended to be operated becomes an important way to not only capture the agreed-upon way of doing things, but also for communicating that to various stakeholders involved.

When standards or governance is set in an organization, an accompanying plan of controls typically comes with it. As the name suggests, a control is a means by which to ensure the practice is implemented as designed, designated, or agreed upon. Controls may be self-administered, and even built in to the practice itself, so the users of the Standards themselves ensure consistency and application. An employee who operates a process in a pharmaceutical manufacturing process may have a checklist to ensure standard procedures are followed. Other controls may be measured and monitored by managers. In the pharma example, the manager of the process may observe whether the procedure is being followed and take corrective action if it is not. In other situations, an independent third party such as a quality control department or internal or external auditor may be responsible for objectively ascertaining whether the standard is being adhered to.

When instructional design standards are established, they are typically governed or audited by the instructional designers themselves, their managers, or other members of the learning and development organization. Sometimes, instructional design standards are included in an organization's larger standards, governance, and controls framework when such standards include a training component. Examples include standards related to safety, regulatory, legal, compliance and customer. In such cases, they are likely to be subject to third-party audits. In these more high-profile or high-stakes situations, failure to pass an audit may lead to follow-up actions to remediate the problem or may cause financial or other penalties that can sometimes be severe or costly. These types of scenarios often lead to required standards as discussed previously. Sometimes, the standards transcend the organization itself and are based on industry-mandated practices. No, or little, discussion, debate, or consensus is necessary. What must be done, by whom, and how is specified in very black and white terms.

The Instructional Designer Competencies: The Standards, Fourth Edition provides a comprehensive framework that can be a starting point for establishing standards of excellence. Given the wide-ranging standards outlined in this document, there will likely be a need to prioritize among them. Using various criteria can reduce the list and ultimately help choose which standards to adopt.

Besides turning to The Standards as a potential source that could be considered, there are other ways to establish standards of excellence related to instructional design. A more organic approach is one alternative. Instructional designers themselves or managers could ask themselves “what could have a positive outcome on the organization if we were to establish a standard around it?” A list of potential areas could be generated and then narrowed using criteria such as the ones listed previously.

Recruiting Instructional Design Talent

Recruiting is perhaps one of the most strategic parts of talent management and human resources functions in organizations. The reason is that identifying, selecting, and hiring the best talent at the right time for the right role helps to propel an organization forward in pursuit of its purpose and strategic objectives. Poor hiring decisions can lead to headaches, heartaches, underperformance, and sometimes the decision to separate with the person and start from scratch. Hiring the best talent possible, within budget, is typically much easier and effective than trying to motivate, engage, or develop an employee who should not have been hired. There's an old adage that says “it's easier to hire a squirrel than it is to train a turkey to climb a tree” which underscores the importance of hiring the right talent.

Recruiting instructional design talent begins when a vacancy is identified either due to departure of an incumbent or a new position being created. A compensation range is typically determined using external benchmarking and internal salary analysis to ensure that strong candidates can be attracted and secured through a competitive pay package. Sourcing of candidates is done internally or through directing search efforts in the external marketplace to secure a candidate from outside the organization. Position descriptions are developed to describe the job requirements and typically include things like the number of years of experience, educational background, technical skills and knowledge, and the key interpersonal, communication, or leadership skills desired. Exhibit 17.3 is an example of a job position description for an instructional designer.

Once potential candidates are identified and narrowed, often through resume review or phone screening done by search consultants or recruiters, interviews with the hiring manager and others are conducted. Others involved in the process may include recruiters, peers on the learning team, customers, and others who will interact frequently with the designer and would have a stake in the selection process. Sometimes several rounds of interviews are conducted with candidates and may be one-on-one, done in pairs, or panel style with multiple people interviewing the candidate. Interviews may vary in duration with the standard length being 45–60 minutes.

When a candidate progresses to the interview stage (by phone, video conference, or in person), it would be expected that some of the interview questions would be based on competencies. Many organizations use a common approach known as behavioral interviewing. If behavioral interviews are used, those conducting the interview pose questions to the candidates based on selected competencies and the questions would be aimed at actual past experiences. The philosophy of behavioral interviewing is that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Candidates are asked to describe a situation, what they did, and the outcome or result. If an interviewer was attempting to determine an instructional design candidate's proficiency in dealing with conflict, the following could be asked “Tell me about a time when you led an instructional design project team that experienced some sort of conflict.” The candidate's response would be framed as “Describe the situation when…,” then “What you did in this situation,” and finally “The result or outcome (or what happened).” A strong response will describe the situation and the actions they took and what happened. This level of detail gives important clues about how the candidate has handled critical situations in the past, giving the interviewer a window into how he or she might perform in their organization.

Or course, behavioral interviewing is no guarantee of a successful hire, but it does help to increase the chance of success. Similarly, having multiple people interview candidates can provide additional perspectives and increase the likelihood of uncovering a candidate's strengths and weaknesses. Selection assessments, especially those that are research based and objective, can provide additional important insights and information about a potential candidate's style, personality, and other attributes important to know before making a hiring decision.

Onboarding Instructional Design Talent

Once a selection decision is made and the candidate accepts the offer the onboarding process begins. Onboarding is an important talent management process that helps to ensure a new employee, or a current employee entering a new role, makes this transition smoothly and effectively. A poor onboarding experience can cause an otherwise highly enthusiastic employee's motivation and engagement to plummet. When onboarding is done effectively, it helps the new person understand important aspects of the organization, culture, and role so they can become both productive and engaged rapidly. Many organizations have onboarding programs that help to achieve these objectives at both an enterprise level and at the departmental level. Often, more generalized onboarding begins even before the candidate's first day when they are physically on-the-job or even considered a full-time employee. Once the new joiner begins employment they may attend a new employee orientation program to provide general information about the organization, culture, benefits and other important information. As the new instructional designer progresses toward the department they will be part of, onboarding becomes much more specific and can include introductions to key people, an overview of department objectives, and access to key technology platforms used by the department. Onboarding culminates with a focus on the role the person will assume. Often conducted by the manager, the focus is on reviewing individual goals and objectives, setting expectations, discussing working styles and preferences, and assigning new or existing projects, tasks or work to be performed.

Engaging and Retaining Instructional Design Talent

The term engagement is defined as having the motivation to actively allocate personal resources toward tasks associated with a work role. (Kanfer 1990; Rich, LePine, and Crawford 2010). Engagement has been linked to performance and positive organizational and talent outcomes including retention, engagement, morale, job satisfaction, productivity, and performance. While not a talent management lever, engagement and retention is an outcome of effective talent management strategies and in some models is considered a key component. Determining the level of engagement, developing strategies to enhance it for instructional designers, and achieving these positive outcomes, is not dissimilar to how one would approach it for any other employee. High engagement is important to strive for with all employees, but given the direct correlation with retention and performance, it is especially critical to achieve with critical talent such as high performers, high potentials, and employees with highly valuable expertise or capabilities that the organization needs to achieve its objectives.

Assessing and enhancing employee engagement is a leadership activity. Some organizations invest large amounts of financial and people resources to participate in surveys to measure employee engagement. The Corporate Executive Board can help organizations to gain insight into their employees' perceptions of past events, current experiences, and future expectations through using their HRLC's Employee Engagement Survey. Gallup provides another common assessment. They have identified 12 questions that can be tracked over time to provide organizations insight into their employees' level of engagement, as compared to other organizations. Such tools are used to determine overall engagement and also the key drivers of engagement. An engagement driver has been identified through statistical analysis to have a correlation to overall engagement. A common engagement driver across a wide variety of organizations and industries is career advancement. Other factors that can correlate, positively or negatively, with engagement include compensation, sense of teamwork and cooperation, and manager relationship.

Besides measuring and attempting to improve engagement at a more macro or organizational level, managers are well positioned to ascertain and take actions to improve engagement within their teams. Even if armed with department-level engagement data such as the type described previously, it's important to understand engagement at an individual level. This often happens on a more informal basis through one-on-one conversations with direct reports. Being highly attuned to the mindset, morale, and attitude of employees comes more naturally to some progressive managers. Others, who may be less dialed in to their people, may need to work more diligently. In either case, focusing on employee engagement is an intentional and purposeful pursuit (Rothwell, Alzhahmi, Baumgardner, Buchko, Kim, Myers, and Sherwani 2014).

Developing Instructional Design Talent

To avoid the “cobbler's children” syndrome, a robust development strategy for instructional designers is an important part of an effective talent management strategy. Many instructional designers have been formally educated in instructional design methodology and skills, through a certification program or a graduate degree. ATD (Association for Talent Development) has created a certificate program for instructional designers to refresh their instructional design skills with more updated technology based techniques. Several well-known colleges and universities have masters and even doctoral programs focused exclusively on educating instructional designers (Penn State University, University of Wisconsin, George Washington University, Syracuse, Boise State, Florida State, San Diego State are a few). Obtaining a degree or certification is an excellent way for a current practitioner to enhance their instructional design skills. It's also a means by which a person can enter into the field as a new practitioner.

Individual Development Planning

Most talent management frameworks include some sort of development planning component in which an individual creates an action plan in partnership with his or her direct manager. A development plan is typically based on formal and informal input from various sources, such as performance management feedback, manager observations and input, peer or customer feedback, or formal assessments that the person may have participated in. These insights help the designer surface and articulate his or her top strengths and weaknesses, which are often given more palatable terms like opportunities or areas of improvement.

Through this heightened sense of self-awareness of strengths and opportunity areas combined with clear understanding of performance objectives, development goals are crafted. These goal statements articulate the outcomes or focus of the development efforts. Strong development plans go beyond stating the goal and often include other important elements such as milestones toward the goal, metrics or measures of success and support, or resources needed.

While the development plan focuses on the individual, ideally others are involved in supporting the person. First and foremost is the manager of the individual (Rothwell and Chee 2015). The direct manager is well positioned to provide feedback that can help in the up-front efforts to raise self-awareness and create the plan. Importantly, the manager can provide ongoing observations and feedback and support that will help ensure success. Support may come in encouragement and more tangible support such as providing time, resources, and opportunities essential to achievement of development goals.

Professional Skills Development

Beyond developing the more “technical” skills, knowledge, and tasks essential for successful performance as an instructional designer, developing nontechnical skills is equally important. These so-called “soft” skills can include a wide variety of areas such as communication, leadership, project management, negotiation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills. Many organizations offer internally conducted courses, workshops, and e-learning offerings that cover topics such as these. Most involve an in-person or classroom-based component so participants can not only learn about the skills, but also practice them and receive feedback as they work to build their capabilities.

Besides internal offerings, many external providers exist for instructional designers and other professionals to attend these types of skill building opportunities. They may vary in length from one day to five or more depending on the depth of coverage. Some are held in an “open enrollment” format where participants from different organizations attend. Private or closed sessions are attended by participants from the same organization, often with the external vendor conducting the session onsite. Participants attending external seminars pay a set amount to attend and the prices can range from one hundred dollars or less to thousands depending on the program, the provider, and the length. Many colleges, including community colleges, and universities offer a variety of higher-end executive education programs as well as shorter workforce development programs. Seminar and workshop providers such as The American Management Association (www.amanet.org/), Management Concepts (www.managementconcepts.com/), the Institute for Management Studies (www.ims-online.com/), online provider cornell (www.ecornell.com/), and many others offer hundreds of in-person and e-learning programs to help designers build their skills and capabilities and contribute to effective performance.

Besides leadership and soft skills professional development, many designers engage in ongoing development to keep their instructional design skills sharp or to build new skills and knowledge to improve their job performance. Newer instructional designers may benefit from short courses or certifications to build their instructional design skills. Experienced designers may benefit from refresher courses and from courses that go deeper and specialize in particular topics or skill areas such as advanced instructional methodologies, e-learning design, multimedia strategies, and other technical skills. Some of the more common sources for instructional design-related training are the Association of Talent Development (www.td.org), Capella University (www.capella.org), and Kaplan University (kaplanuniversity.org).

Conferences are another means by which amateur and experienced designers can build their instructional design skills. Many organizations offer conferences where instructional design practitioners at all levels congregate to learn the latest in instructional design techniques. Some of these include the International Society for Performance Improvement (www.ispi.org), the Association for Talent Development (https://www.td.org), the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (www.aect.org), and the Masie Center (www.masie.com).

Career Development and Progression

Another key area of talent management relates to career development and progression. Career development in organizations helps employees identify their goals and aspirations, identify strengths and opportunity areas, set career goals, and develop plans to achieve their goals. There are many parallels between career planning and development planning mentioned previously. One distinction is that career development is longer term whereas development planning is typically shorter term in pursuit of nearer term performance goals.

Career development and progression for instructional design may be less open when compared to general career development for other professions. One way to think about career development in a somewhat defined field such as instructional design is to look at the opportunities to progress both vertically or upward in the organization and horizontally or laterally. Vertical career progression involves advancing from a lower-level to a higher-level role, typically with increased scope, responsibility, expectations, and compensation. There may be several tiers of instructional designers in an organization. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that an organization has three tiers of instructional designers. An Instructional Designer Level 1 may support projects being led by a more senior designer. An Instructional Designer Level 2 may lead smaller-scale projects and participate in more complex large-scale projects under the guidance of a more senior designer. An Instructional Designer Level 3 may lead large-scale projects and provide guidance to less experienced designers. It's easy to imagine a vertical progression through these three levels.

Lateral career progression involves moving into a new or different area at the same level with comparable scope, role expectations, and salary. When individuals engage in lateral career moves, it may not appear to be progression, but it can help them to build broader skillsets that ultimately help them prepare to assume higher-level roles. Lateral career development can also be helpful in entering into new areas without having all of the immediate skills needed. It can also help to build a broader perspective, which is important as one ascends to higher levels within an organization.

The likelihood of short- and long-term success for lateral moves is enhanced if the individual involved is interested and motivated for both the immediate lateral move and the future vertical opportunity. If someone loves their current role or does not aspire to advance, then forcing it to occur may backfire and lead to decreased morale and attrition.