Top trends in learning

Reflecting the push to hybrid and remote work, employees report they are focusing their training investments on communication and project management, according to Udemy’s 2023 Workplace Learning Trends report. 

Some top surging business skills on Udemy’s platform include customer experience management (up 449% year over year), nonverbal communication (up 268% year over year) and business communication (up 211% year over year). Project management and leadership, alongside communication, led as top consumed skills overall.

But employees — likely aware of a looming recession — also worked on job search skills, according to the report. Job search skills training surged 495%.

“Employees are looking for the next great work opportunity, even if their employers don’t know it, reflecting the ongoing effects of the Great Resignation and the Great ReShuffle,” the report said.

Lessons on personal productivity and time management remained the top two consumed personal skills overall, however, reflecting workers’ ongoing desire to manage stress and fight burnout, according to the report.

Learning programs can be a bridge to well-being for workers, one expert wrote for HR Dive earlier this year, especially if they are self-directed. And L&D — especially when it enables internal mobility — can be a boon for retention in an uncertain economic environment. That’s because employees who can envision themselves advancing at their current workplace may be less willing to leave, according to Eagle Hill Consulting data released in September.

Few people hear “performance review” or “quarterly check-in” without a pit forming in their stomachs. When performance reviews can be uncomfortable, or even a precursor to layoffs — a churning, recession-era fear expressed by Google staffers recently — it’s understandable why the process inspires unease. 

According to HR experts, developing a culture of continuous feedback can assuage these worries twofold — a dynamic discussed in “Setting Up Managers for Success Beyond the Performance Review,” a panel hosted by L&D company LifeLabs. 

With perpetual feedback, workers can get on the same page as managers about their expectations and deliverables — and necessary strategies to link the two. In turn, managers give their direct reports a chance to meet KPIs successfully, panelists said. 

“It comes down to consistency,” said Joseph Ifiegbu, co-founder and CEO of talent data company Eqtble, during the panel. “Review should be a part of your day-to-day conversation. It shouldn't be a surprise when you say, ‘Hey, this is something that has not gone right.’”

Here are actionable tips panelists offered for creating a feedback-rich work environment.

Understand the “why”

Why is it important to have more frequent performance reviews? One reason is so that managers and supervisors have a better understanding of their direct report’s performance. In particular, Ifiegbu told the audience how a lack of regular check-ins can lead to recency bias. 

In essence, without regular check-ins, stellar performers who hit a slump recently might receive unnecessarily harsh reviews — and slackers who’ve been getting lucky may receive undue praise.

Take framework into consideration

Before jumping to blame an employee, managers and HR pros should look at the company feedback frameworks, Involvi Consulting President Ashley McKarney told the panel. “Look at the processes that the company has provided in how to do the job,” the human resource consultant said. 

Next, managers should assess whether they have clearly communicated expectations to their direct reports and have given their team the necessary tools and bandwidth to achieve their goals. “Look in the mirror,” she continued. “‘How have I done as a leader in preparing them for that success?’ After those two things — [if] as a leader, you've done everything you can and so has the company — then maybe it is that person in their role.”

Stop hoarding feedback

“The other thing about only leveraging the performance review — as your one place for feedback — is that people tend to hold on to feedback until it is time for the performance review,” Vanessa Tanicien, LifeLabs' director of product strategy and event moderator, said. “‘Protective hesitation’ is when folks decide not to breach touchy subject matter situations because they don't want to get into conflict. This happens all the time within the workplace.”

She added, “that is another reason why we want to think about giving feedback as a perpetual experience.” 

What happens when managers don’t do performance reviews effectively? Tanicien brought up the phenomenon of “managerial debt,” as coined by venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. 

Sometimes, she said, leaders take “shortcuts” with their direct reports. “We don't do everything we need to do, but what happens is our culture takes a hit, that person's development takes a hit and that managerial debt decides to pile up,” Tanicien said. “We can invest in the core skills of coaching, feedback, productivity and prioritization, effective one-on-ones. We’re able to pay that debt down.”

Take time for self-review

Per McKarney, self-awareness and understanding of both a team’s capabilities and potential are helpful traits for the feedback-minded manager. Humility, in the vein of saying “I don’t know” or “this is my first time doing this,” are also key. “That creates that culture of safety and two-way feedback, so that if there is something [negative] going on, it's an easier conversation,” McKarney said.

Feedback as a “two-way street” was a recurring theme throughout the panel. Notably, Ifiegbu recalled a boss who would start each check-in by asking if he could be doing anything better as a manager — a habit that left an impression on Ifiegbu.

Give talent a soft landing place

Another takeaway was the importance of cultivating psychological safety.

Empowering employees to take creative risks is another part of fostering a positive workplace culture. If employers create a place where it's safe to “fail forward” and make mistakes without severe penalization, workers will be more likely to move forward with confidence, McKarney said.

The goal is to imbue talent with an “ongoing sense that they are a contributing member of the team,” McKarney said, and that “it's hard to run the company without them.”

HR pros have to pitch budgets just like everyone else. And while employee learning and development seem like a given, especially in a tight labor market, it’s not always a slam dunk.

There are ways to sway a CEO, sources say, including pointing directly to how a program will meet a business need, using data the right way and finding influencers within the company to help you make your pitch.

Tie the request to a business need

The good news first: many L&D budgets have survived the pandemic. According to a joint TalentLMS and Society for Human Resource Management survey, more than half of 356 HR managers said their L&D budgets increased in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 67% said they expected this trend to continue.

But “more than half” still isn’t everyone, and L&D doesn’t exist in a vacuum, especially when working for a C-suite that’s skittish about a potential recession. That’s why the projected results of a proposed L&D initiative should point to how it will strategically push forward a business need, or solve a business problem, said Megan Dillon, senior manager in learning and development at Q-Centrix.

“Oftentimes you can point back to the mission and vision of the company,” she said, and how the proposed ask will strategically work towards those core tenants. Or get more granular about connecting the proposed actions to how the company is doing and where the company’s leaders want it to be, she said. So if an L&D initiative would save costs, say it. If it would generate revenue, say it. And show how.

That’s especially true for any L&D initiatives targeted at employee recruitment and retention, said Doug Coffey, assistant teaching professor of human resource management at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.

CEOs look at L&D as a way to invest in employees, he said, they “use it as a retention tool or to gain competitive advantage.”

“Building succession management and a consistent workforce are more important now in this setting,” Coffey continued; any return on investment that can be attached to employee attraction and retention can give it an extra boost in a CEO’s eyes.

Use data, but tell a story

Putting numbers behind your ask can help a CEO justify your budget request. What those numbers should depend on is the specific initiative and industry sector. So if an L&D program will generate revenue or increase a company’s specific KPI or increase productivity, say so in the request, said Dillon.

“Maybe you’re solving a problem, like X amount of folks are doing something that is a potential hazard or creating additional cost spending for an organization,” she said. “Show that your learning initiative is going to decrease the amount of times that folks are doing this thing they shouldn’t be doing, and how you’re going to save the company money that way.”

And when you have numbers about that specific initiative, report back. “Businesses care about numbers. You need to showcase and tout [success] just like someone on the operations side would do,” Dillion said.

Whatever statistics you use though, they’re usually not enough to stand on their own, said Coffey. He teaches students who are good with number crunching but “they present it more like an elevator analysis,” he said. “That’s not really telling any kind of story.”

Instead, think of your L&D budget request as a movie, with the story of why you want that fund as the leading actor and the data in a supporting role. “You have to articulate it in words, but then you support it with data,” he said.

Influence more than just the CEO

While a CEO may make the final call, they’re often not the only one who will be giving input on a final L&D budget decision. Those managers whose departments will be affected by any L&D program also should be on board.

“It’s really important for L&D folks to know and understand who the stakeholders are and who is influenced by them,” said Dillon. Making sure you know what these managers truly need, and getting their input on any proposed learning and development initiatives, can help HR make a push to a CEO as a team.

Influencers may not be tied to the ask either, she added. “Maybe they’re not going to be the ones who are spending money to get training off the ground. Maybe they’re going to be partners with HR and another business unit or function,” she said. HR and L&D pros should “have a better understanding of the level of influence,” and see how they can “cheer you on and support your initiative” where appropriate.

Without clear career paths at their workplaces, employees will likely walk, according to a report published by Cornerstone People Research Lab and Lighthouse Research & Advisory.

Close to 3 in 4 workers surveyed said they want to know about job opportunities inside their organizations. Employees who don’t know about those opportunities are nearly three times more likely to say they wouldn’t be interested in working other jobs at the company — and would be 61% more likely to be ready to quit their current job, according to the report.

“One resounding truth stood clear: As the days of lifetime commitments to a single employer fade in the rearview mirror, employees’ desires to pivot, grow and stretch within their current companies are on the rise,” Cornerstone said in a statement about the report.

The report indicated that employees want to know what their options are and want the opportunity to explore those options. But for those options to even matter, employees must feel a strong sense of belonging to their organization, the report noted — and that often starts with managers.

But managers may still need training themselves, other reports have shown, especially if managers need to coach direct reports through a career map. While L&D investment may feel like a big ask as a recession looms, a combination of increasing recruiting costs and high turnover may make a focus on internal pathways a necessity, one MIT Technology Report noted. 

A lack of learning opportunities can create barriers to that same mobility that workers in the Cornerstone study said they wanted — something that may also disrupt retention efforts, an Eagle Hill Consulting report said.

And as a recession bears down on the U.S., employers may need to keep in mind that the talent pool will likely be small even if the economy falters. An aging workforce and changing notions of what work even looks like may keep the market tight for years to come, Glassdoor said in a recent analysis.

If Yellow reaches a goal of training 1,000 new drivers in a short period of time, the LTL carrier will have Rich Frazer and his fellow certified safety trainers to thank.

Frazer, one of Yellow’s 850 safety trainers, spends every other week providing new hires with on-the-job training so they’re prepared to hit the road. When he’s not teaching, he typically drives 570 miles round trip each night from Joliet, Illinois, to Toledo, Ohio, to switch loads with another driver from Knoxville, Tennessee.

“There's more to driving a truck than just hanging onto the steering wheel,” said Frazer, who has 31 years of truck driving experience. “There's just so much safety stuff that we've got to instill into these people.”

Strategies: Adding trainers and academies, offering ‘earn-to-learn’ enrollment

Yellow is confronting labor challenges in the industry by expanding its private driver training academy network. The LTL carrier, which used to train drivers through four different operating companies, brought the process in-house in 2021.

Yellow added eight training academies this year for a total of 22, and it expects to open three more before the end of next year. The additional 200 safety trainers certified in the past year have helped the carrier approach its end-of-year recruitment goal: about 700 drivers have graduated so far this year.

The carrier now offers tuition-free, earn-to-learn paid enrollment, said operations safety manager Shane Smith, who oversees more than a dozen of the academies. In addition to its safety trainers, who teach on-the-road skills, the company employs about 50 instructors who help students prepare for their CDL tests.

“We have a capacity of about 150 seats per month to give the students plenty of accessibility and availability to get into a class,” Smith said.
 

Preaching patience and building confidence

Yellow requires drivers to complete 160 hours of hands-on training in a driving academy before getting their CDL. Then, drivers must complete another 160 hours of on-the-job training, known as “finishing school,” with a certified safety trainer before the company hands them the keys and allows them to haul loads.

As a trainer, Frazer preaches the virtue of patience on the road above all else. It’s how he’s driven nearly 3 million accident-free miles.

Frazer often asks his students to repeat explanations back to him to ensure they’ve absorbed the information, and he won’t let them in the truck until they’ve completed a pre-trip check on the vehicle.

“Safety's everything out here,” Frazer said. “We all want to come home to our families safely, and that starts before we even get into the truck.”

Watching drivers build confidence under his instruction is the most fulfilling part of the job for Frazer.

“When I see that light bulb come on in a student and teach them how to drive, it gives me a big sense of accomplishment,” he said. “It’s why I do it.”

Routing drivers — and others — to careers in trucking

Yellow pays students $17.50 per hour during training, and beginning driver salaries range from $65,000 to $75,000. To boost retention, fleet managers have stepped up their engagement with drivers, working with them on career development plans, according to Smith.  

But tackling the broader labor challenges across the trucking industry requires carriers to redouble their efforts to publicize the benefits and opportunities available to freight transportation workers beyond just drivers, Frazer said.

“We need drivers, but there's so much more that I think people don't understand that this industry has to offer, whether it's in a supervisory position or being a dockworker or in management or a clerk in the office,” Frazer said. “We need to be a little bit better at getting the word out.”

Subverting stereotypes about where knowledge and wisdom resides, the “reverse mentoring” model positions junior employees to mentor senior employees. Since 2011, Cisco has run a such a program, joined by the likes of Ernst & Young, PwC, Unilever, P&G, Heineken, the Latin American headquarters of CitiGroup and ditto HP. Beyond tech and manufacturing, there’s a precedent for business leaders in the construction lane and at insurance companies also adopting reverse mentoring into its L&D initiatives. 

What do these programs have in common? Typically, younger employers are getting their older colleagues hip to new technological processes and progress in social justice movements. It’s a way to unite generations while keeping employees of all ages engaged. “Nobody likes to feel stagnant within an organization,” said Lydia Frank, marketing VP and career expert at HR mentoring software company Chronus. 

Moreover, as layoffs and hiring freezes ripple across industries, Frank suggested that reverse mentoring specifically is a way to prevent brain drain at a company. “Regardless of what happens with the current economy, there's going to be a set of employees that [are] staying with your organization — whether you're still growing, whether you're planning layoffs, whatever it is,” she said. “The employees that are standing [will be] propelling your business forward and need to continue to feel invested in.”

Reverse mentoring programs can also mitigate intergenerational prejudice, Maggie Wooll, a former research lead at Deloitte, wrote in an essay for BetterUp, where she is managing editor.

“Older colleagues might view millennials as spoiled and entitled. And younger team members may think baby boomers are resistant to change. With Gen Z entering the workforce, additional generational stereotypes are likely to form,” Wooll continued. “Reverse mentoring can help break down these stereotypes and bridge the generation gap… Embracing the ideas of people of all ages can make your company stronger and more resilient.”

HR managers should note that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission audited discrimination claims and found that federal agencies with fewer age complaints generally had higher perceived inclusion in the workplace and higher rates of job satisfaction.

As one might imagine, with millennials and Gen Z cementing their status as digital natives, multigenerational learning programs often center around technology. (By the way, employment law experts discourage the use of “digital native” in job listings, as it can be discriminatory against Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.)

In her own professional experience, Frank has also seen reverse mentoring programs prioritize technology upskilling for older employees. For example, an employee who “has been on the job for decades and they're bringing so much wisdom and experience to bear, but they don't necessarily have the newest, greatest kind of technical skill” could benefit, Frank said.

The push to close the tech gap for older workers is poignant; in 2022, an IBM executive made waves for his discriminatory use of the term “dinobabies.” In speaking about the IBM lawsuit, an HR analyst told HR Dive that the tech industry is especially susceptible to ageism and blatantly embraces “youth bias.” Similarly, in a February 2022 report from Resume Builder, 38% of respondents in the hiring sector admitted to ageism while reviewing resumes. The reasons they cited were imminent retirement (37%) and lack of experience with technology (37%).

Another common reverse mentoring topic is diversity, equity and inclusion, and the nuances of those issues, including cultural awareness, ranging from gender identity to other social justice issues, Frank said. Younger mentors can fill in co-workers who “​​grew up in a certain time or certain set of circumstances, and maybe aren't as culturally aware about how things have shifted,” she explained.

The experience is useful to both parties. MaameYaa Kwafo-Akoto, an Allen & Overy senior lawyer, shared her reverse mentoring experience with Financial Times; she said she gained greater perspective on upper-level management and how her firm operates internationally. In turn, she said, she sought to help her older, White male colleague “understand the challenges ethnic minorities, working mums and people from working-class backgrounds face.”

“The workplace has really changed over time and the expectations of employees are different, in terms of what they expect from their leadership,” Frank said.

Along with cementing topics of discussion, HR folks should be diligent about following up at every stage of the program. In the mentoring space, one mistake Frank has seen is that employers drum up a program, announce it and “expect all the dominoes to fall into place.” People teams need to continue to promote these mentorships, “rather than letting them happen organically,” she said. “Because anything that happens organically can also fall off organically.”

One concern HR pros might have is how to frame this program. In LiveCareer’s Aug. 3 multigenerational workplaces report, 81% of respondents — which comprised Gen Zers, millennials, Gen Xers and baby boomers — said it’s difficult to report to a manager or supervisor that’s younger than them. Arguably, positioning younger employees as mentors could be read as favoritism and the kind of ageism that L&D professionals are aiming to combat. Frank’s tip for dissolving these worries is to emphasize empathy and understanding, and that all people can learn from each other, despite their differences.

“Don't you believe that anybody can learn from anybody?” Frank said. “There are good ideas that come from anywhere and everywhere, and we want to ensure that those ideas are flowing back and forth.” In that same vein, the wisdom held by older employees is invaluable. “They can pass down institutional knowledge to people coming into the organization, to get them up to speed,” Frank told HR Dive.

“People are naturally curious; they want to learn, they want to grow,” she continued. “It's about giving them the opportunity to do so.”

The whispers regarding the metaverse as the future of work are getting louder.

Beyond gaming, just as many people want to use the metaverse for socializing as they do on-the-job training, a KPMG report suggests. KPMG categorized its survey-takers as current metaverse users, likely tech users, the undecided and unlikely metaverse users. Of the current users, 92% noted the value of connecting with friends and family. The same percentage also expressed their belief that the metaverse “can enhance learning opportunities, including job training, school, and higher education.” 

Similarly, 91% of likely users said friend and family connections through the metaverse could be valuable; 89% of likely users also nodded to the metaverse as a tech that could potentially enhance their learning and development.

Most of the current, likely and even undecided users surveyed acknowledged that the metaverse “provides new business opportunities to meet and connect, or network.”

“U.S. adults are increasingly adapting to creating real life experiences across the ‘phygital’ world,” Cliff Justice, the KPMG Enterprise Innovation lead for the U.S., said in a Sept. 8 press release. The KPMG exec also implied that metaverse usage would track for current human behavior, noting that many aspects of everyday life “from banking and telemedicine, to learning and working,” are trending toward the virtual.

Most current, likely and undecided respondents were interested in using the technology for telehealth appointments, virtual tours of museums or historical sites and shopping. Ranked right after those options (and alongside streamed concerts and digital fashion shows) were virtual company meetings and L&D opportunities (65% and 65%, respectively.)

Earlier this year, Harvard Business Review chronicled avatar-based virtual reality platforms beyond Meta that are revolutionizing the workplace, like NextMeet, PixelMax, Microsoft (through a technology called HoloLens) and Metaverse Learning. The review also emphasized VR’s educational potential, as well as other facets of HR: serendipitous encounters in the (virtual) workplace akin to “bumping into” a colleague in the office, mystical well-being spaces, food delivery integration and “live status tracking.” 

This emerging narrative around the metaverse and the future of work is interesting, given that some social critics remain skeptical about Mark Zuckerberg’s avatar universe, Meta — the best-known company in the space. Outlets on the gamer side and CNN have chronicled the lackluster quality and technological limitations of Meta’s graphics. The New York Times has continually dunked on Zuckerberg for what is framed as a lack of innovative follow-through, post-Meta-rebrand hype.

More specific to HR, chief people officers may need to consider the ways toxic facets of work culture can translate digitally. For one, sexual harassment in the metaverse continues to be a pervasive issue. Notably, this was on the radar of KPMG survey-takers, about a third (31%) of whom were worried. 

Cost aside — Meta Quest 2 goggles are a $400 investment — HR professionals can also note the learning curve that comes with this L&D technology. Career experts have told HR Dive that generational differences in technology aptitude can be solved with “reverse mentoring.” This L&D model empowers younger employees to educate older employees — typically on tech use and progressive cultural issues — and can mitigate ageism. 

As with all innovation and business, HR folks will have to weigh the pros and cons to ensure the metaverse is a good fit for their organization.