Many companies are showing an enormous passion for training existing resources. We have discussed learning academies in the past. But we had targeted discussions with several companies, and few trends emerged.
With organizations bringing down their on-site operations to the baseline in the wake of COVID-19, L&D initiatives of these companies were expected to face the most obvious hit. The unexpected blow to sales, business functions and economy has toppled the business continuity plans of even the stalwarts in the industry.
The sudden shift from on-site operations to remote working has been proven to be more demanding than expected to most organizations. Companies across the globe have devised various contingency plans to address the issue of the affected economy, reduced sales, and business functions. Hiring freeze, partial payment of salaries, pausing of hikes, promotions, incentives, and layoffs have been the most popular cost-cutting methods adopted by most of the organizations.
Despite the business world keenly focusing on cost-cutting efforts, Draup’s interactions with its clientele revealed an interesting fact. The majority of the organizations have chosen to retain and fortify their L&D initiatives, much against the popular assumption. This revelation was the key to understand the renewed passion and emphasis on training, reskilling, and L&D of the internal workforce across industries.
A deep dive into the facts around training, learning and development initiatives of global corporations yields the following insights:
- Nearly 70% of the organizations declined the plans of cutting down on L&D initiatives
- Major companies with hiring freeze are also to continue with L&D efforts seamlessly
- Nearly 90% of the business leaders believe L&D to be the key in bridging the skill gaps
- Well over 40% of the organizations have adopted the latest technology to facilitate virtual L&D sessions
- Large number of organizations turn towards training and reskilling initiatives to equip their internal workforce for remote working conditions
Despite the most obvious benefits targeted by the organizations through L&D initiatives and training sessions, the unpredicted changes brought into the business functions of various practices have increased the responsibility and expectations of these initiatives. The sudden shift to remote working has pushed the workload of teams off-balance in most companies. The workload for research, sales and support teams are witnessing an all-time peak on one hand and on the other, it has taken work off the table for marketing, logistics and other such teams.
Organizations are staggering to restore balance in the workload without losing out on their employee assets as well as business assignments. Disintegrating the low-operating teams, reassessing their potential for learning, training, and reskilling them to facilitate internal transfer and increased staffing to teams with a massive flow of workload is the most ideal way out opted by these organizations. Hence L&D, training and reskilling initiatives earn their place in the front of business transformation, making it worthy for organizations to invest in them.
Draup continues to support its clientele in combating the challenges of L&D initiatives during the remote working season. The talent tab on Draup’s Talent Intelligence Platform helps organizations identify the courses and certifications imperative to move into a new job role, thereby facilitating internal team transfers. Additionally, the reskill navigator strengthens the efforts by effectively analysing the skill gaps between the start roles and the end roles, along with efficiently predicting the job readiness and proficiency levels.
