What we learned from L&D in 2022

The compounding factors of slow economic growth, inflation and recession within the UK could well mean a continuance of budget restrictions for many organisations this year – especially when it comes to hiring new employees; meaning that businesses will need to invest in the learning and development of their existing employees and – for those that do hire – speed-to-competency of new recruits will be a critical factor in maximising training ROI, reducing operational risk, and fuelling business growth.

In turn, it is expected that more employers will look to their HR and L&D functions to further support in-role upskilling and job mobility; as getting the ‘right people’ skilled in their role should lead to greater levels of job motivation, satisfaction and business productivity.

Learning & Development: in review

Reports suggest that 72% of L&D programmes deployed in 2022 were focused on building employee skills, as future-proofing their respective organisations was cited as the most pressing concern for businesses. 46% of L&D professionals reported that the skills gap is widening within their business and – critically – 49% said that they know executives are concerned that their employees do not have the right skills to execute business strategy [1].

As a result, the majority of L&D teams prioritised learning programmes aligned with this specific requirement last year. Leadership and management training, Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), employee performance support, and upskilling and reskilling programmes accounted for the top five areas of focus for L&D, with employee retention and supporting internal career development coming in at nine and ten respectively on the priority list.

What employees want from workplace training

There was an increased focus on employee personalised learning initiatives too, with the top three motivators to learn at work – specifically cited by employees – all continuing to illustrate the requirement for L&D to ensure they provide more individualised training and in-role development programmes to meet specific requirements. The top three motivators for employees were all connected to career progression and were associated with:

• Supporting employees to stay up to date in their field.
• Training being personalised for their interests and career goals.
• Assisting them to get another job internally, be promoted or get closer to reaching their career goals.

The L&D skill set has also been developing to keep pace with the changing nature of business requirements. There has been a documented rise in L&D professionals acquiring new skills in analytics and use of numerical data to utilise in key business areas – particularly within operations. The primary objective of which is to ensure that the function can continually add greater value to their organisation by using data to demonstrate how learning transfer from L&D programmes are influencing improvements in employee capability within targeted business areas.

In short: as business leaders further require their L&D functions to align with business strategy, this is necessitating an increasing requirement for L&D to capture and utilise performance data to evidence that workplace learning is having a positive impact on performance metrics and business outputs.

In turn, L&D are having to become more accustomed at talking the time-poor language of C-Suite; keeping reports succinct whilst showing tangible evidence of how their learning initiatives are contributing to the bottom line.

With increasing C-Suite attention, budget restrictions, and organisational pressure to ensure that the function is developing employee skills and capabilities to influence and sustain future business growth, L&D teams reported that they were busier than ever. L&D programmes being deployed in 2022 – ranging from D&I to large-scale upskilling and reskilling initiatives – have all increased since 2021. 

Evidence-based practice remains 'stagnant'

However, even though L&D reported they were becoming more cross-functional, the evaluation methods for assessing learning transfer remains stagnant: qualitative feedback from employees using online courses, employee engagement surveys, and manager feedback were the top three success measures in 2022.

In fact, these success measures are nothing new. In the 2021 CIPD Learning and Skills at Work Report, it was noted that measuring the impact, transfer, and engagement of L&D activities are continually hampered by barriers to evaluation; specifically expressing that ‘success’ cannot be effectively measured via end-to-end course questionnaires or post-training surveys [2].

They also stated that evidence needs to permeate and inform every step of the decision-making process. And – whilst the report indicated that there has been a slight rise in the proportion of organisations now critically evaluating the impact of their L&D initiatives in some way – the primary barriers still directly relate to assessing the wider impact on the performance of the business and how the transfer of workplace learning is reflected and measured within the in-role performance of employees within their day-to-day job function.

In 2022, our Artificial Intelligence – Clever Nelly – conducted over 100 million employee knowledge interventions within organisations. On average, employee baseline knowledge of critical workplace subject matter (relating to product and services, policies, processes and compliance) was just 54%; meaning employees know around half of what their employer required them to know to optimally perform their role.

Behavioural learning science dictates that we forget as much as 80% of what we are taught within the first 30 days when there is no attempt to retain it. Therefore, transient factors – the process of forgetting occurring with the passage of time – shapes how well we retain and effectively apply required learning content.

Without a continual assessment and improvement methodology to mitigate these transient factors, it is inevitable that some L&D teams will continue to be hampered by a lack of evidence that illustrates how transferred learning is improving employee capability and business performance.

Cost-effective, employee-centric solutions like our AI are supporting L&D professionals to guarantee that their workplace training is learned and retained by employees, whilst also empowering L&D teams to access the on-demand metrics to make critical interventions and demonstrate the wider operational and economic business impact that their training is having on targeted business KPIs.

Microsoft recently reported that our AI has specifically helped them to increase employee subject knowledge by 19% across specific lines of business, increase First Contact Resolution by 9%, Customer Satisfaction by 5% and reduce Call Handling Times by 12.5%, illustrating the positive impact that the right technology can have on employee performance and productivity when aligned with the expertise of L&D teams. The case study is available to access below.

Sources:

[1] LinkedIn, ‘2022 Workplace Learning Report: The transformation of L&D’, 2022.
[2] CIPD, ‘Learning and Skills at Work Survey 2021’, 2021.