The role of learning and development (L&D) in the corporate environment has turned more important than ever after the 2020 pandemic hit. As a matter of fact, L&D for organizations has broadened to be one of the top business agendas across the world, as teams everywhere rush to support unprecedented changes to their organizations.
The realization that 34% of employees quit because of lesser Learning and Development opportunities is a worrying factor for organizations. On the other hand, 94% of employees agree to stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.
With the nature of work changing and a majority of jobs turning obsolete, L&D initiatives have become an integral part of organizations. As we begin planning for a post-pandemic world, L&D must be part of our vision.
Let us explore the top 6 L&D trends to watch out for in 2022 and beyond.
- Building Learning Ecosystems
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Training
- Learning in the Flow of Work
- Personalized Learning
- Transition to LXPs
- Data-driven L&D
Building Learning Ecosystems
Industries have largely approached Learning and Development using a top-down approach that took employees out of the workflow. This was the time when LMS dominated the development landscape and decided on the content that would be provided. Learners had very little flexibility or control over how they gained knowledge.
This is when the course libraries like Udemy, Udacity, and EdX took off. Employees don’t want to learn in isolation but rather want to be a part of a larger learning ecosystem that connects learners with each other for collaborative learning.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Training
Even though Diversity and inclusion training (D&I) had been gaining attention prior to the pandemic, but it has been rightfully grown in 2022. With 76% of Americans stating that discrimination remains a critical problem in the workplace, organizations need to rebuild their policies. Organizations need to reinvent their values, learning opportunities, hiring practices, and demographics to cultivate a progressive learning environment.
In the process of deploying D&I training on an organisational level, Learning and Development intervention plays a crucial role. Some notable places of L&D intervention include succession planning training, diversity councils, employee resource groups, and equitable career advancement opportunities.
Learning in the Flow of Work
Since remote working has blurred the lines between personal and professional lives, learning in the flow of work has brought about a paradigm shift in the Learning and Development space. Learning in the flow of work focuses on delivering knowledge through an individual’s day-to-day job, that is, learning by doing.
Learning in the workflow encourages employees to be more proactive, take ownership of their learning experiences, and achieve their personal and professional goals.
Direct mentorship, microlearning, and knowledge-based projects are some of the ways to integrate learning into the flow of work. Large enterprises already use many such methods in their Learning and Development initiatives, proving that learning can happen within the work setting, and this trend will remain strong in 2022.
Personalized Learning
The pandemic drove transformations in the Learning and Development space, like replacing week-long mandatory training sessions with more personalized experiences that cater to an individual employee’s schedule and needs. As a matter of fact, a recent global study found that 93% of companies strongly agree that personalized learning helps improve organizational as well as individual performance.
Personalized learning is a great way to have people learn more often, retain the knowledge, and apply it faster, which is also the reason the course libraries like Udemy are popular. This method of Learning and Development will help elevate business productivity, and the obvious result will be better performance and better profit in 2022 and beyond.
Transition to LXPs
The past year has witnessed companies investing heavily into corporate reskilling at scale to meet the increasing knowledge gaps and high turnovers. This is led to the emergence of Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs), a centralized solution that ensures employee engagement with a more social and knowledge-based approach. The arrival of LXPs has transformed the Learning and Development space.
LXPs provide learners with interactive training experiences that can reskill them with in-depth understanding and higher engagement. Compared to an LMS, LXP promotes a learner-driven approach compared to a company-driven way of learning. This allows users to choose their own manner of learning and how they arrive at their own training goals.
Data-Driven L&D
The rise in big data has continued to prove how essential information can be to all facets of a business. By incorporating data in Learning and Development programs, enterprises can track cycles of learning that can be adapted based on business-driven data and growth goals that also accommodate employee outcomes.
Often, training programs fail to consider real-life situations and cease your employees’ professional growth. One of the ways to avoid this is to assess the impact of L&D programs by tracking different KPIs.
The KPIs of the future must include -
- Knowledge retention
- Participant satisfaction score
- Training performance vs. performance of the organization
- Employee engagement
- Stakeholder satisfaction
Quantifying the value of Learning and Development initiatives isn’t simple, but L&D professionals can measure the impact of learning to some extent through employee feedback, and by combining data with it, a complete picture of this impact can be extracted.
Draup for talent is a reskilling and talent intelligence platform driven by artificial intelligence with extensive knowledge of the talent market. Draup identifies reskilling and skill-based curriculums/certification programs offered by worldwide institutions/universities, ensuring that your company stays ahead Learning and Development initiatives.
