Dive Brief:
- Employees are frustrated with the learning options and tools offered by employers, a new study from Intrepid revealed. Employers identified leadership, technology training and soft skills as "critical issues" facing companies in the next two years — but most employees believe their organization's learning culture is not effective, the study showed.
- Only 27% of the 1,000 employees surveyed found their employers' L&D offerings to be "embedded in the organization, meaningful and useful." Nearly a third of respondents called their offerings "enthusiastic but off-the mark," and the remaining 41% of respondents either rated their learning as something that "ticks the box" or something that's talked about by execs but never acted upon. The most valuable and effective training is learning directly from others, also known as "collaborative learning," followed by "more time for self-study" in a distant second.
- "Our research is a wake-up call for learning leaders: current approaches aren't working," Sam Herring, Intrepid's general manager, said in the press release. "As companies look to solve their most critical business challenges, they should heed what their learners have to say."
Dive Insight:
One way employees want to be assured they matter to their company is by an investment in their growth and career progression — and that translates directly to learning. The more training they get, the more they want, a previous study by Cerego said, but that same study also notes that only 45% of respondents found the training to be useful. While businesses that offer continuous learning may find it's easier to attract and retain talent, employers must ensure their development programs are relevant to an employee's work and speak to what employees want to do in the future.
Training spend has reached record highs in today's skills-scarce environment, partly to address this complex demand. The tech behind learning programs has only improved over time, offering platforms like gamification and VR/AR to reach employees at all levels of a company. But even something as comparatively simple as offering a mobile-accessible way to complete lessons can go a long way in keeping workers engaged with the content.
Employers also have a very "low-tech" alternative to current learning offerings: encouraging employees to learn together and teach each other. PwC found success in enabling workers to serve as "accelerators" that help coworkers achieve digital fluency in a fast-moving industry. But as the Intrepid study notes, employees want opportunities to approach learning at their own pace. Luckily for employers, self-directed learning will be key to surviving an uncertain economic future.