London (UK), June 2013 - Organisations can’t afford to stand still - and neither can the L&D managers who support them. Acclaimed learning technologies expert Laura Overton will be explaining why benchmarking is so critical to Learning innovation, and ultimately business success, in a webinar on 14 June.

Those responsible for setting and influencing L&D strategy are under pressure. They need to add value and transform learning to support their organisations. But the world is changing so rapidly - how can they do that effectively, given limited time and resources?

In a bid to support L&D professionals achieve their goals, The Corporate eLearning Consortium has launched a webinar series with advice and inspiration from leading experts in the field. The series starts on 14 June with a webinar at 11am led by Laura Overton, the celebrated Learning Technologies expert.

According to Laura, benchmarking is critical to Learning innovation - and ultimately business success. In the webinar, she'll be identifying how benchmarking can help improve the take-up of learning technologies, affect management engagement and productivity, and ultimately boost a business's bottom line.

She'll be drawing on previous benchmarking input from more than 2,200 organisations across all sectors and from around the world to provide practical advice, hints, and tips based on what works. Or, in Laura's words: "Why re-invent the wheel?"
 
In a nutshell, benchmarking, says Laura, the MD of Towards Maturity, can help L&D managers to

• create a sense of urgency - by comparing their approach with the success of others
• be accountable - setting a personal baseline for today to help demonstrate progress tomorrow
• step up to the challenge
• promote change, in the wider context of organisational change - motivate their teams to become industry leaders not followers, provide an external perspective to help engage stakeholders with new ways of learning, and justify an investment for change
• deliver results, faster - increase staff engagement and results, learn from common mistakes rather than making them, set "SMART" targets in their business plan based on trusted industry metrics
• positively affect their business culture – open-learning environments bring speed to change

All of which help to establish a technology-led learning culture that contributes to business agility, effective change management, and great organisational performance.