We’ve all heard the expression ‘you learn something new every day’ but, for many employees, this is simply not the case. L&D functions are being faced with tightening budgets but higher expectations and, as a result, training and development falls to the lower end of the priority list, leaving employees stuck using traditional, static training methods to cater for multiple work scenarios.
As the uptake of e-learning in business grows, organisations have started to adapt and drive flexible and intuitive learning, through web-based applications. Yet many businesses still struggle to take into account the varying make-up of their workforce, its current skill set and ever-changing learning needs. The outcome is that L&D directors are unable to convince their employees of the benefit and value of their internal learning system or function. According to the survey, employees view their colleagues as a more valuable resource for acquiring new skills or knowledge, than their internal learning management system. Overall, the internal LMS was seen as only marginally more valuable than Google or an employee’s own professional network, when needing to acquire new skills or knowledge quickly.
The need to provide learning for new skill demand becomes even more pressing in swiftly evolving, high-pressure industries. For example, financial or defence sectors, where employees are expected to learn new regulation and compliance rules regularly, need to be readily prepared to learn these new legislation changes almost overnight. L&D leaders with their fingers on the pulse not only have to understand the urgency of these training needs but also need to ensure that they minimise the gap between training ‘need identified and learning deployed’. Worryingly, only 53 per cent of HR and learning leaders in large enterprises (10,000 employees or more) reported that they can currently provide relevant training and skills quickly enough, to keep pace with how their markets, competitors and customers are changing.
Ultimately, learning strategies will need to become much more agile, in order to support employees of varying levels in feeling equipped to respond confidently to industry change. This means L&D directors need to look at vastly improving the way learning is delivered, tailored, published, scaled and managed. Yet without the right tools and technology to support the L&D function, personalised learning can seem a near-impossible task, no matter how necessary the need. Agile personalised learning, supplemented with the right technology, is just one strategy that can have a positive impact on the way in which employees view an organisation’s investment in training and how they regularly engage with, and retain, the subject matter.
With more than 70 per cent of HR and learning managers globally believing that employees view HR (which includes the L&D function) as providing little to no learning, or just the minimum skills for them to succeed, it’s a call to action for L&D departments that cannot be ignored.
Source : https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/feature/learning-tailored-peoples-needs
