The Small Business Guide to Learning and Development

As Chief of Staff at CharlieHR, I’ve always strived for an environment where people can grow. My job is to ensure our employees have all the right tools in hand to do so, and one way we achieve this is through learning and development.

In this guide, I’ll share with you what I’ve learned from putting together an L&D strategy at a small business and how you can get inspired to take action and introduce the same.

What is learning and development?

Learning and development (also known as L&D) is a term used to describe everything a business does to encourage professional development among its employees. Training courses, development programs, online learning, and development activities all fall under the bracket of learning and development.

Learning & development is one of the traditional 'core' responsibilities of human resource management. In a bigger company, the HR department looks after L&D. In a small business, it often falls to the operations manager or chief of staff to oversee the learning and development strategy and rollout.

The benefits of learning and development

A good L&D strategy has benefits for every kind of business, but small businesses can really take advantage of the value that it brings to their teams.

Embracing learning and development in your small business can lead to benefits like:

• Skill development — identify skill gaps and eliminate them through training
• Higher levels of productivity — learning or developing a skill can save time and resources
• Employee satisfaction — investing in learning programs can lead to happier employees
• Stronger employee engagement — invite employees to get involved with their own L&D plans
• Higher employee retention rates — happier, more engaged employees tend to stay for longer.

Giving employees access to development opportunities and training doesn’t just help them gain new skills, but it introduces benefits right across the company. In a small business your people are everything, and it makes sense to invest in their development.

6 ways to embrace learning and development in your small business

It’s clear that there are major benefits to investing in learning and development, but how do you do it in practice? From my experience as Chief of Staff at Charlie, here are some of the best ways you can introduce and embrace L&D within your small business.

1. Become a “learning organisation”

It’s easier to commit to L&D initiatives if they feel like they’re a natural part of how you work. To make this happen, aim to become a “learning organisation” where there’s a culture of continuous learning.

Adopting this approach means you retain knowledge regardless of who learned it first, and you can work together to improve processes and systems. When learning is part of your business strategy and culture, everyone benefits.

Here’s what we do at Charlie to embed learning experiences within our culture:

• Document processes — record everything in one place, so it’s easy to find
• Open communication — encourage feedback on processes, and inform people when something has changed
• Shadowing — new hires learn the role by working alongside experienced team members

These may seem like obvious steps, but they’re among the first ones to build a learning organisation that you can be proud of and rely on.

2. Offer access to ready-made learning and development programs

One of the main ways to improve L&D across your small business is to offer upskilling courses and training opportunities to your employees. Ready-made learning and development programs are a great way to start, and they’re more affordable than asking an L&D professional or provider to develop a custom plan.

Some L&D program ideas to explore include:

• Onboarding
• Product training
• Key competencies training
• Technical skills
• Soft skills
• Management skills
• Leadership development programs
• Health and safety training
• Feedback and performance improvement

Decide which programs make the most sense for your business, then look for ready-made online courses, e-learning platforms, or in-person training courses that match your needs.

3. Don’t be afraid to invest money in L&D

Money can be tight when you’re running a small business or startup. When I started at CharlieHR, there was no one dedicated to HR. When I started taking care of operations, it became obvious that L&D was going to be one of our main areas of focus.

Since we couldn’t support expensive initiatives right from the start, our L&D plan required a few iterations over the years. As we grew, however, we were able to inject more money into all of these areas.

Here’s what our learning and development budget currently looks like:

• £750 per person available towards any books, courses or conferences that employees want to attend (they can usually discuss it with their line manager before buying to make sure this fits their needs)
• A conference pot per function so they can attend events where the whole team can learn

Even though this is what we’re set on now, I’m confident this will also change year after year —so another tip is to always consult your team to find out what they want from your business.

4. Run regular performance reviews

Learning and development and performance reviews are closely linked. Performance reviews give you a chance to understand what’s working well, what isn’t, and what you can do to support individuals with their career journey. From there, you can use L&D initiatives to support their growth and development.

Performance management can seem challenging if you’re a one-person HR and L&D team — especially if it’s not your main role. Check out our free guide to learn more about how to do it - beginner-friendly way.

5. Introduce performance development plans

As part of the review process, it’s important to create or update performance development plans (or PDPs). At Charlie, performance development plans give structure to what your team member wants to accomplish. They work as a “north star” to link performance, growth, and company goals — and they could have the same impact in your small business too.

Here’s what PDPs look like at Charlie:

• Set a concrete development goal — for example, a senior marketing executive’s goal might be “to be promoted to marketing manager in a year”
• Set a clear timeframe — make this realistic and achievable, to keep the employee accountable
• Focus on one or several areas to execute your plan — for example, if a goal is to “increase organic traffic by 50% by the end of the year” then consider the day-to-day tasks and habits you need to make this happen
• Use L&D budget to cover any skill gaps — if training is needed, map out what support your employee needs to be able to reach their goal.

When “plans” can often be forgotten about when they’re not very strategic, our performance development plans include the right mix of structure and flexibility to make them easy to use.

6. Differentiate yourself from other companies on the market

At Charlie, we have a strong sense of our brand as an employer, and this helps us stand out from the competition. We want potential employees to know what working for us is like, and having a strong or creative approach to L&D can make you an attractive workplace to top talent.

Although a healthy L&D budget is not the only way to go about this, it sure helps as it shows a commitment to investing in employee growth and career opportunities. Other ways you can use L&D to stand out include offering free access to a wide range of online training courses, paying for tickets to industry conferences, and hosting exciting in-house learning opportunities.

Ultimately, I’ve come to learn that people who join startups really have a knack for the grind. They enjoy the freedom of having a personal employee development budget and booking courses that feel right for their own personal career development, instead of being forced to attend traditional employee training courses.

How to put together a successful learning strategy without a big budget

In a small business like yours or ours, we don’t have access to an unlimited training budget or a large HR team that can coordinate learning and development at scale. But what we lack in some areas we more than make up for in others.

In a larger company, learning and development programs are highly structured and more traditional — think in-person training courses and access to large-scale online courses. L&D programs are less flexible and personalised, and more focused on box-ticking.

For smaller businesses, there’s room to get creative and enjoy all the benefits of L&D — even without a big budget or HR team.

Here’s what L&D can look like in a small business, including some inspiration from Charlie’s own L&D strategy:

• Personalised training programs — every employee has their own personal development plan that can include training needs and requests
• Regular check-ins — meet with learners regularly to make sure their plans are still aligned with their goals
• Provide an online learning platform — there are many learning management systems (LMS) on the market that give you the opportunity to pay a fixed fee with plenty of options for your team members to learn more about the area they’re interested in
• Training budgets — at Charlie, employees can send a request to use the training budget towards a team or career goal
• Discretionary spend budgets — offer a small budget every year that employees can use for less expensive courses, books, events, and workshops
• Pay for ad-hoc training — let employees know you’re happy to make decisions about effective learning experiences on a case-by-case basis
• Organise mentoring and coaching in-house — match new employees up with experienced team members so they can learn technical, soft, and managerial skills
• Social learning — learning from others by working alongside them
• Continuous learning — a culture of always learning through experimentation, personal study, and learning programs.

At Charlie, we’ve also got three exclusive ways of making sure our team members have enough time to dedicate to their L&D.

This doesn’t cost us any money, and shouldn’t impact the team’s productivity, but is a great way to make sure everyone gives time to their own projects and learning.

Here’s how we do it:

• A monthly exploration day that gives everyone the chance to work on their own project
• 2 hours per week to dedicate to their learning and development (whenever they want to use them)
• A regular show & tell event with a facilitator, where the whole company can learn something new from each function.

All the initiatives above combine together to create an ideal environment for learning and development, and help us adopt an approach of continuous learning. These activities aren’t expensive, and they’re easier to introduce into a small business than other L&D projects.

Make learning and development a focus in your small business

Creating a culture of learning and development happens over time, but with the advice in this guide you’ll have a solid framework for how to get started. Use these tips and steps to bring a L&D focus into your small business.

Learning and development FAQs

Still curious about learning and development? Here are some of the questions we get asked most often and our advice on the topic.

What is the goal of learning and development?

The goal of learning and development should be to invest in the growth of your employees. Whether it’s to learn a new skill or reskill in an area, L&D gives you a way to invest in training programs, courses, and experiences that support your employees’ growth and development.

Is L&D the same as training?

While you might find that people refer to them as the same thing, they’re slightly different. Training can be part of L&D, but learning and development has a much wider remit.

What is another name for learning and development?

Some HR professionals might refer to learning and development (or L&D) as people development or talent management. They’re often referring to the same thing.

What is an L&D framework?

An L&D framework is another word for an L&D strategy. Your learning strategy should align with your business goals and explain to stakeholders and employees what your approach to L&D is. It should include L&D initiatives, budgets, metrics, and more.

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