McAlvain Companies, Inc

Nate Hohnstein

Strategic Learning Champion

Like many others, my journey into learning and development was never planned. I wasn't looking for a career change, but I had always had a passion for people and helping them grow.

Before moving into L&D, I worked as a general contractor, where I took pride in developing my employees. I wanted to help people improve, take on more responsibility and see opportunities for advancement. It wasn't until I joined an L&D department that I realized I had found my true calling. As I became more involved in the work, I became more interested in the impact L&D could have on an organization as a whole and that experience has shaped how I continue to build L&D functions from the ground up.

Too often, organizations are more reactive than proactive. Because of that, L&D can be considered a support function: a service desk you call when someone needs training or there's a problem in the field. The process usually looks the same; a request comes in, a course gets built and a survey is sent out. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this approach, but it leaves a lot of value on the table. The strategic version starts well before a course is ever built.

If you've worked in L&D, or any HR function for that matter, you know relationships are crucial to success. We have to understand the business and the people doing the work before anything can move forward. When a leader says, "We need training on X," our value isn't in immediately saying yes. Where we shine is in our ability to ask questions. What's really happening? Is this actually a skill gap, a process, or an expectation problem? Taking the time to understand the problem before reacting to it is where L&D moves from a support function to a strategic partner.

I saw this play out in a conversation with managers and department leaders about the challenges they were facing. One leader mentioned that their new employees were capable but didn't always understand the processes to do their jobs consistently, so managers had become that resource, answering the same questions repeatedly and losing valuable time in their day.

On the surface, it sounded like a training problem: build a course, fill the gap. But the more we talked, the clearer it became that training alone wasn't the answer. What was missing was a consistent way to capture and share that knowledge in the first place.

That conversation led to leaders, managers and L&D working together to provide a more standardized approach, bringing consistency across the organization. It's a good example of the kind of problem L&D can help solve when we're involved early enough.

In construction, workforce capability isn't an abstract concept. It shows up in project delays, safety, quality issues and the aging workforce without enough experienced people coming up behind them. If L&D is only responding after problems appear, we're always one step behind. When L&D is treated as a strategic partner, we have the opportunity to identify gaps early and help build the systems needed to strengthen the workforce. That's the shift I'd challenge HR and business leaders to make.

“Training activity tells you what was delivered. Business outcomes tell you whether it made a difference.”

Stop looking at L&D only through the lens of training. Completion rates, training hours and attendance numbers tell us what happened, not whether the organization became more capable because of it. Instead, look at the outcomes the business actually cares about: Are employees safer? Do we see an actual change in behavior? Are we retaining the people we hired?

If you want more from your L&D function, start in three places:

● Get L&D involved before the training request. Bring L&D into the conversation while the problem is still being understood.

● Ask why before asking what. Understand the business problem before deciding training is the solution.

● Measure capability, not just completion. Training activity tells you what was delivered. Business outcomes tell you whether it made a difference.

The strongest L&D functions aren't simply the ones producing the most training. They understand the business, build relationships, ask the right questions and help the organization develop the people and capabilities it needs to move forward.