The latest LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report emphasizes what HR leaders have already discovered – the pandemic, followed by the economic and social upheaval, has prompted employees to prioritize flexibility and fulfillment.
This has forced organizations to reexamine their business strategies, workforce models, values, and culture. Canadian HR Reporter found that 50 percent of HR leaders expect to maintain a workforce model where 50 percent or more of their workforce is remote over the next 12 months. It also found that one in four expect to maintain a 90 to 100 percent remote workforce.
A remote workforce can be a challenge for L&D (learning and development) leaders. But according to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, L&D leaders are rising to the challenge and answering employees’ renewed calls for growth and purpose.
- L&D has become more influential
- L&D priorities
- Delivery methods for L&D
- How to measure effectiveness of L&D programs
- Using Kirkpatrick model to measure effectiveness
- Obstacles for learning and development
- How LEAi addresses L&D obstacles
L&D has become more influential
During the pandemic, L&D leaders were able to steer employees through COVID-19 by helping to implement pandemic protocols, remote work, and hybrid operations. With this success behind them, L&D has become more influential over the past year.
The LinkedIn survey found that
- 87% had some to a great deal of involvement in helping their company adapt to change
- 74% agree that L&D has become more cross-functional
- 72% agree that L&D has become a more strategic function at their organization
- 62% agree that L&D is focused on rebuilding or reshaping their organization in 2022
This also means that the expectations, objectives and pressures on L&D have increased and gained greater visibility.
Top L&D priorities
According to the survey, the top focus area of L&D programs in 2022 is leadership and management training. Here are how the top areas stack up.
- Leadership and management training – 49%
- Upskilling and reskilling employees – 46%
- Digital upskilling / digital transformation – 26%
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion – 26%
Other programs L&D leaders have planned to deliver or augment in 2022 include
- Learning competitions
- Leading through change programs
- In-person training programs
- Virtual lunch-and-learn programs
- Creativity programs
- Implicit-bias training
- Data analysis / analytics training programs
A The State of L&D survey by TalentLMS and SHRM asked a similar question with regards to focus of 2022 L&D programs and they found that employers were more focused on providing self-management skills. Self-management skills can include subjects like stress management, decision making and goal alignment. Employees seemed to prefer soft skills training and these were the ones that they wanted the most:
- Leadership – 54%
- Communications and collaboration – 44%
- Critical thinking & problem solving – 42%
- Time management – 42%
- Creativity and innovation – 36%
- Agility & adaptability – 25%
- Assertiveness – 27%
- Empathy – 21%
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) – 25%
Delivery methods for L&D
The LinkedIn 2022 Workplace Learning Report did not address training delivery in detail, but the The State of L&D survey asked how employees prefer to receive their training. Their results reflect what we as learning creators are seeing today:
- Simulation/learning by doing – 64%
- Coaching/mentoring – 51%
- Video – 50%
- Webinars/lectures – 38%
- Textbooks/books – 34%
- Microlearning – 32%
- Audio/podcasts – 19%
- Role playing – 17%
- Blogs/internet resources – 17%
How to measure effectiveness of L&D programs
Evaluating program effectiveness not only shows how useful the current offerings are, it also provides an indication on how to improve the program for the future. Keeping an eye on key metrics enables L&D leaders to allocate resources where they are most needed, uncover issues in the program and ensure that the company is receiving a return on investment.
When asked how they measure the impact of skill-building programs at their organization, the LinkedIn 2022 Workplace Learning Report found that qualitative feedback from employees using online courses and employee engagement survey scores were the top reasons. Manager feedback was the third reason. Other ways to measure impact is to look at the impact on the organization is to look at metrics like
- Learning completion rates
- How quickly your new hires get up to speed
- Employee retention
- Internal mobility
- Time and budget savings
- Progress toward closing skills gaps
Using the Kirkpatrick model to measure effectiveness
Many organizations use the Kirkpatrick model to measure success and value of their programs. The framework uses a level system to gauge effectiveness.
- Level 1: Reaction – Evaluate learners’ reactions and responses to the training.
- Level 2: Learning – Measure knowledge and skills learned during the training.
- Level 3: Behavior – Assess behavioral changes (if any and to what extent) due to the training.
- Level 4: Impact – Measure the training’s impact on business goals and results.
For level 1, look at KPIs like participation rates, completion rates and net promoter score. For the second learning level, measure acquired knowledge and/or skills and transfer of training into daily performance.
For level 3, look at how the employee behaves and performance and general attitude. KPIs like employee morale and performance help to determine behavior changes. Finally, for level 4, look at KPIs like employee retention, productivity and quality of work, sales levels and customer satisfaction.
Obstacles in learning and development
The TalentLMS/SHRM study asked HR managers what obstacles they faced for L&D and these included
- Time – 33%
- Inadequate training tools – 35%
- Low knowledge retention – 24%
- Finding the right content – 35%
- Updating the content – 32%
- Leadership buy-in – 26%
- Budget – 33%
- Employees buy-in – 25%
- Measuring ROI – 11%
When they asked employees what would make training more effective, their top picks were:
- Align training with job responsibilities (38%)
- Make training more social (32%)
- Update training content more frequently (32%)
These are significantly different than the 7 big learning and development challenges identified by the HR Exchange Network which included
- Scaling learning and development
- Teaching empathy
- Planning live events for asynchronous employees
- Providing personalized training
- Determining performance management
- Retaining upskilled workers
The variety of answers shown by these three surveys demonstrate the challenges faced by L&D leaders to help their teams adapt to changes and fill missing skills. At LearnExperts we have lived many (likely all!) of these challenges which is why we set out to solve them. Fortunately, now we can help to address many of these challenges with LEAi!
How LEAi addresses L&D obstacles
Designed by our experienced learning industry experts, LEAi can easily address many of the challenges faced by L&D teams. LEAi is our course content building tool that allows businesses to use content they already have that was not purpose built for learning like product documents, presentations etc. and convert it into training content that is optimized for learning.
The content created by LEAi is also designed in a way that allows our users to develop once and then use that learning content in a variety of ways like instructor-led training, eLearning, knowledge base articles, virtual class content, presentations, webinars, videos and more. Here is how LEAi addresses some of the challenges identified L&D leaders.
Challenge: Lack of time
Solution with LEAi: Since LEAi uses existing content within an organization and creates the training content for you, it reduces the time that it takes to develop training content. In fact, according to our calculations, it takes over 58 hours to create 1 hour of training content using traditional processes on average. With LEAi, it only takes about 17 hours, which translates to a 67% reduction in the time it takes to develop training content.
Challenge: Low knowledge retention
Solution with LEAi: The content created by LEAi is designed to follow our training framework of “Tell me. Show me. Let me try. Test me.” where you instruct the learner on the concepts, demonstrate the concepts, let them try on their own by allowing them to do the practical application, and then perform a knowledge check to see if they have understood the concepts. This aids in both learner engagement and knowledge retention.
Challenge: Finding the right content
Solution with LEAi: With LEAi finding the right content is so much less of an issue. Simply upload various documents from your subject-matter experts and LEAi does the work to create the training content. The content used to create training can be documents, presentations, webpages, wikis, community content.
Challenge: Updating the content
Solution with LEAi: LEAi has a course updater feature that intelligently updates changes to all your courses in seconds so that you can eliminate the mundane task of updating individual courses.
LEAi can address many more challenges faced by L&D creators including reducing the time to roll out new courses and keeping courses updated. Let us give you a demo so you can be ready for the 2023 workplace learning environment.
