What does the ideal L&D department look like?

[Joanna Higginson]

Web 2.0 technologies, social media, rapid tools, VLEs and much more have changed the way we learn but have L&D departments changed with it?  If we want to resource learning properly, what does the ideal L&D department look like? If yours is pretty close to perfect please share it with the rest of us!  If yours isn't, what is it that you'd give your right arm for and why?  Clearly there's an organisation-specific element here but, generally speaking, what levels of resourcing should we be aiming for and which roles are essential to being able to support our organisations well?

[Nigel Harrison]

Simples. You need enough Performance Consultants to map across to each major area of the business, to assess new requests for L&D and define the business value and do the high level design of performance solution with the line (the priority list of value then drives all your projects) You need a small group of internal project managers to manage projects and liaise with trusted suppliers. You need a great IT guru to drive your web site, on-line role profiles and attached learning solutions etc All other roles are out-sourced; any good deliverers you encourage to join your list of trusted suppliers, likewise with developers, you do not need these skills in-house. Run everything as a project. The line managers do delivery and coaching. Easy peasy

[Simon]

'Ideal' is bespoke for the organisation as you say, but there are a number of elements/roles you might expect within an L&D focussed team. We have the following roles within our team which reports into our HR Director under the wider HRD group:
- Head of L&D
- L&D Manager
- Learning technologies Manager
- Organisational Effectiveness Manager
- Learning & Development Admin Supervisor
- L&D Co-ordinator
- L&D Administrator
- No trainers.

Interestingly the business wants a return to trainers, and a quite learning-technology resistant