Laci is a Global Senior HR Analyst at XpertHR, a division of LexisNexis.
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People have always been described as an organization's greatest asset, however, more so than ever in the past, leadership subscribes to the notion that they are the very fabric of organizational success. Lack of learning opportunities through career development and advancement is cited as three of the top five factors that drive today’s employees to leave jobs, and leader effectiveness is the number one priority for HR this year. In response, 83% of organizations seek to build a people-centric culture and nearly the same percentage of corporate learning functions are stepping up to help. As such, the global L&D market is projected to soar to more than $487 billion by 2030 which represents a compounded annual growth rate of 8% over the next seven years. L&D is no longer a competitive advantage; it is a business imperative. With a renewed focus on L&D comes a fresh look at learning strategies.
Today’s Corporate Learning Is Getting Reshaped
Traditional learning approaches representing lecture-led, multi-day workshops and catalogs of uncurated, self-paced e-learning courses in just about every topic are being traded out. Data-driven learning approaches are taking their place, and they focus on building skills and capabilities in employees that are required to meet business goals while being in alignment with personal areas of interest. Leaders require new capabilities to support the creation of a delightful employee experience, employees expect perpetual and tailored growth opportunities, and business and HR leaders are figuring out how to use internal job mobility to deepen employee productivity and heighten leaders' ability to focus on what matters to today’s employees—the employee.
Let’s look at each of the four trends that CLOs are using to reshape workplace learning.
Prioritize Leadership Development
The pandemic, a looming recession, and layoffs are creating a new, uncharted and transformational time. Boards of directors and the C-suite are asking for leaders to build a resilient organization that enables employees to thrive in the face of change. Yet, fewer than 1 in 4 employees said their organizations care about their well-being, and one survey found burnout is at an all-time high with 42% of the global workforce respondents reporting they feel stressed with depleted levels of energy.
So are organizations helping leaders navigate these new workplace twists and turns? Yes. Last year, organizations allocated more than 40% (which is greater than a 30% increase from that invested in 2021) of their corporate learning budget to leadership coaching specifically for the purpose of developing leaders’ human-centric skills including authenticity, compassion, empathy, humility, transparency and vulnerability. Organizations that develop their leaders’ human-centric skills understand the deeply strategic and impactful nature of a healthy people-first culture. If learning strategies for leaders are void of these critical skill-building areas, business results suffer.
Implement A Skills Strategy
Gartner research indicates that 58% of employees need new skills to be successful in their current jobs, and a Gallup survey shows that more than half of those surveyed indicated they want upskilling. In the absence of a skills strategy, employees will change jobs seeking out a skills-based organization—one that values employees for their skills (not just their knowledge) and aligns employees with critical work based on their unique skills.
Upskilling strategies start with quality content, but that alone is not enough. Knowledge learned through highly curated content stays as static knowledge unless it is applied. This is not a new phenomenon but one that, still, is rarely practiced. The best forms of practical skill mastery often occur in the form of augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) and in the flow of work. Practice-based skill building creates a growth mindset and instantiates new behaviors engaging employees in their own career development while helping employers build inclusive cultures, expand their pool of top talent and retain great employees even during turbulent and uncertain times.
Design For Zig-Zag Career Growth
While high-impact organizations are deploying a skills strategy, still more than 80% of employees' role changes involved moving to new organizations. This data suggests that organizations might be implementing skills strategies but are not presenting employees with opportunities to move about internally (laterally and downward, not just upward) where their skills can be perpetually aligned and realigned with business-critical work of personal interest. This zig-zag approach to career growth relies upon an active internal talent marketplace. Successful internal mobility strategies are defined by at least three calls to action:
- Assign a change team: Alert employees about what an internal talent marketplace is and its key role in supporting their skill-building expectations; transparent communication improves the employee experience.
- Enlist leadership commitment: Reward leaders for sharing talent across the business; leaders who hold their talent close to the vest stymy the viability of an internal talent mobility strategy and ultimately, business impact.
- Look forward: Inform the organization’s workplace planning strategy with skills data derived from the internal talent marketplace; knowing which skills across the organization are lacking is essential information for business planning purposes.
Use Data And Analytics
Proving learning's impact has been a challenge forever, it seems, and is one that still prevails. More than half of learning leaders indicate they feel executive pressure to measure learning's impact. But there is good news: Many believe there is now a way to measure the value of learning on business results. The key is to identify the right metrics such as promotion, retention and engagement rates, and correlate those rates to employees who have successfully acquired or deepened their skills to get critical work done. In so doing, L&D’s intended purpose can be better articulated and quantified in a world where the focus of learning has shifted from knowledge-building to skills-building.
The greatest challenge in using data and analytics to indicate the impact of learning lies in the fact that many L&D professionals believe their corporate learning team is not qualified to distill learning insights from data. To move forward, allocate learning budget dollars to the data development skills for learning professionals, and then hold them accountable for tracking and reporting on a single skills-based metric that matters to the business.
As the future of work transforms, so does the future of learning. To better support today’s workforce in our people-first workplaces, a skills-based learning strategy is needed. It should prioritize the development of human-centric leaders and offer lateral career movements for employees’ growth both informed by data that exposes skills requisite (and lacking) to achieve business goals. This is the new learning blueprint for today’s forward-leaning and high-impact Chief Learning Officers. To be sustainable and thrive, organizations can no longer treat learning as a perfunctory set of training programs. Learning must be redesigned to be a strategic business imperative.
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