L&D's role in the New World of Work

A recent report (Leading with Learning: Insights and Advice About the New State of L&D by LinkedIn Learning) which looked at enterprise learner activity on LinkedIn from the “pre-COVID” period of January and February compared to “the COVID-19 starting point” period of March and April 2020 concluded that right from the beginning of the crisis, two things happened: employees spent a lot more time learning, and L&D professionals quickly mobilized to support employees as they moved through these changes.

If you weren’t in an organisation that supported employees to manage these changes then you may have had employees leave because they believed they weren’t offered enough opportunities for career growth. New national survey results from Instructure, conducted by The Harris Poll, show a significant disconnect between how companies think they're doing when it comes to developing their workforce and the reality of employee needs. In fact, 70% of US employees say they're at least somewhat likely to leave their current company and accept an offer with a new company that's known for investing in employee learning and development, according to the study.

Many organisations focus on training when their employees are first hired but don’t realize that they should be developing training throughout the entire employee lifecycle — from the time they are hired until the day they retire. Employees want organisations who invest in their growth through career blueprints and ongoing development.

The key to ongoing training success is designing and championing a Learning and Development program with clear career guideposts and steps to reach each milestone. This helps you create long-term employees who drive measurable business results.

Throughout the entire employee lifecycle, learning leaders should support the organisation to prioritize developing skills that will support long-term employee growth. Such an approach keeps employees engaged and focused on reaching the organisation’s goals and priorities. In addition, the investment in training at different stages of the employee lifecycle reinforces the value of your workforce and their long-term development.

Start with the end in mind

Simply creating a Learning and Development course or program isn’t enough. You must follow up with your learners once the ‘training element’ is complete to try to combat as best you can the Ebbinghaus “forgetting curve” where there is a likelihood that learners forget up to 90 percent of what they learned unless a embedding strategy is employed.

Embedding strategies attempt to make learning stick by surrounding formal training with pre-work and post-work tasks (further reading and reflection, peer coaching etc. curated further learning). Pre-work activities introduce training topics and prepare learners for the primary training, while post-work activities solidify the learning by encouraging learners to think about how they’ll apply what they’ve learned to their role.

Such strategies have been shown to improve knowledge retention and help employees put what they’ve learned into practice. It ultimately leads to sustained behavioral change that positively affects an organization.

If your organisation has experienced a similar learning spike as documented in the LinkedIn leaning report , then now is the time to package those statistics and share them with your executive leadership to underscore the value learning has brought during these challenging times.

Let your Executive colleagues know that the continued rise of learning validates that

1. employees value learning now more than ever before,

2. they are building the learning habit to help them adapt and cope with change, and

3. Learning and Development can successfully meet employee needs with learning content, exactly when they need it.