The Evolution of Learning Organizations in the BPO Industry

Gone are the days when L&D was viewed as a nice-to-have function — or are they?

We'd love to think that the profession has done everything that it possibly could to prove its value and justify its existence, connecting training costs to performance outcomes that impact revenue (thank you, Donald Kirkpatrick). 

The organizational structure plays a critical role in determining the size, visibility, and influence of the L&D function at the table. In this post, I will share the structures that I've been part of over the past two decades of my L&D practice in the BPO industry.

The University

In this structure, Learning and Development (L&D) operates as an independent function that partners with other areas of the organization to address learning needs and strategies. As a new trainer, this setup opened my eyes to the wide range of skills expansion opportunities across various functions. A few years later, as a training leader, it was helpful to align standards and best practices across all teams. The L&D voice was strong and it resonated across all training teams. Because we were growing as operations teams experienced hypergrowth, growth opportunities were endless. If I may use myself as a case study, I became a training manager within a couple of years of functioning as a process trainer. It was the same career story for most of us budding leaders.

On the business side, things were a bit different. The product and process teams, at least those supporting clients with billable trainings baked into their SOWs (Statement of Work), generated revenue for everyone else who did not. We were primarily a cost center. The inside joke was that we were NRG (Non-Revenue-Generating) groups, which is why we sat right next to the photocopying room. It must be the toner fumes but we were definitely a happy tribe. 

Bye, University.

When our beloved head of training was retrenched, we organized a farewell ceremony. During the graduation rites, he left us with a tall order. He told us that we were graduating from the "university" and should now be ready to face the real world, where we would need to do whatever it takes to support the business while staying true to the discipline. I added the second part based on our frequent coaching conversations.

There is no "University" in the real world. Reporting lines were realigned based on our core functions. The process and training teams were moved under Operations, while HR absorbed the corporate development programs. 

Truth be told, before the retrenchment of seasoned leaders, I drafted Project Phoenix. In this project, I proposed that the New Hire Orientation team be transitioned to HR. We had started to feel that the training function had become an administrative vortex due to the sheer volume of mandatory items we were tracking. My boss asked if I had developed the concept on my own and whether I was a Harry Potter fan. Yes to both. We were supposed to discuss the transition plan, but then the unthinkable happened. It turned out that I was on the same page as the masterminds behind the organizational changes.

Where does the L&D voice fit into this structure? It's hard to say. Each function needed to align with the needs of the businesses they now reported to. In every delegated task, we had to find a balance between meeting business needs and advocating for learning and development principles.

The Content Design and Development function (now commonly referred to as Curriculum/Program Development, Instructional Design, Learning Experience Design, etc.) is highlighted in this structure because, at some point, it will stand on its own.

The Instructional Design Renaissance

COVID Pandemic, 2020. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. With a series of lockdowns and businesses to run, companies turned to the scalable powers of digital learning solutions and virtual classes. Everyone loved the results. The race to agility sired Instructional Design teams.

We have seen these variations to date:

• Instructional Design team supports all products and process training (or a specific client)
• Instructional Design team supports HR Talent Development initiatives (from mandatory courses for newhires to leadership development courses)
• Instructional Design team supports both

It’s interesting to observe how a function that was once part of a trainer's and training leader's responsibilities has now emerged as its own distinct function. This refreshing renaissance comes with its own set of challenges. 

Organizations that may be familiar with L&D are now scrambling, and sometimes struggling, to establish performance metrics for instructional designers and instructional design teams. In BPOs, what was once familiar has become a dangerous crutch. Agent metrics are sometimes applied to Instructional Designers. It's still a long way to go, this getting-to-know phase between BPOs and their Instructional Design teams. But we will get there, we saw the same thing happen to training roles many moons ago.

And somehow, we're back.

Another structure we've seen in Operations and Sales teams is similar to the "University" model, with support from other functions. This structure is customer-centric. It includes process and quality teams that oversee the customer journey, an instructional design team that creates learning interventions based on data and insights from process and quality, and a training team that delivers the content.

I had the opportunity to manage a training team under this structure and I truly appreciated how the degree of specialization in each function helped establish and build expertise. The learning interventions were highly targeted. For example, in some of the training sessions we delivered, we needed to include specific phrases in the agents' spiels to ensure that quality and process teams could run speech analytics for process compliance.

For the discipline, always.

As BPOs evolved, the L&D function turned into liquid or gas, taking the shape of its container. I've seen it adopted by Operations, HR, Process Excellence, and Consumer Insights. You could almost taste the transformation when it happened.

So what can we do?  I'd say we should keep our heads down, be intentional with the initiatives we roll out, and stay updated on industry trends (because neither we nor our employer are the center of the universe). My manager recently shared a powerful message: if what you're doing isn’t driving quality and performance outcomes, drop it.

We are insoluble and intrinsically colloidal. We will mix where poured but we will always do things, where and when we can, for the discipline.