According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, employees ranked learning and growth opportunities as the number one driver of thriving work culture — an increase from ninth in 2019. As demand for learning and development specialists nearly doubled over the last year, the need for successful L&D in organizations is as significant as ever, with new work environments and a massive skills gap looming.
With a growing workforce that operates differently than ever, L&D programs have had to map traditional approaches to a highly digital world with different values in mind. Successful organizations and learning leaders have used the opportunities and challenges over the last two years to cultivate programs that address the new and old needs of their people. With a focus on elevating managers, building skills and fostering a culture of inclusion, L&D leaders are working to build off of traditional learning experiences into the increasingly digital and flexible future of learning.
Programs for change
Switching to the virtual environment in 2020, many learning leaders had to leave behind programs entirely or adapt already existing ones. “We adjusted a little bit to being in this environment, but it’s largely the same sorts of programs that are needed,” says Robina Bhasin, director of talent development at Penn Foster Education Group. “People are still people, and we struggle with mostly the same things. Performance, giving feedback and trying to navigate those difficult situations.”
In addition to the same sorts of traditional programs, new offerings were designed to address digital upskilling. “We get a bunch of requests from different groups and departments to build a workshop around a particular topic they’re struggling with,” Bhasin says. “Much of it is around work-life integration.” One team requested a learning program to help have inclusive conversations over Slack and manage the balance between informal and professional, and have an inclusive environment for teams.
One universal pinch point many organizations had to retool for remote work was onboarding. For Bhasin, a structured onboarding program was a crucial internal program that came out of the last few years as Penn Foster has been entirely remote. Like much of the industry, when not in person, it’s challenging to “help people come in and have an understanding of the company,” she says.
Their program helps new hires connect with colleagues, understand the company’s strategy and more. One part of the program helps foster a connection between new hires and executive teams who meet each month in “coffee with leadership” sessions to “get to know them as people and really just trying to create that connection,” Bhasin says.
Another aspect of learning culture that has risen in importance through the pandemic and is vital for the success of programs are managers — the connective tissue of any successful organization. Managers are often the only point of contact for internal networking and culture in hybrid or remote environments. “How do we help our managers have the tools they need to feel like they can create a meaningful experience for their new hires?” Bhasin says. “Making it easy for managers to have the things to be able to engage their new hires as they’re coming in is one of the pieces that we built during the pandemic and obviously continues to be something we’re thinking about.” Including leadership development with new and more senior managers, she adds that the goal becomes supporting people in different places.
Despite increased rates of burnout among managers over the last few years, just 25 percent in L&D say they have prioritized manager training focused on well-being and work-life balance. As the most critical factor for employee experience, the resiliency of managers is vital. Among companies that struggle with manager care, employees are nearly 50 percent more likely to apply for a new job.
In response to the rise of awareness around mental health, Penn Foster partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to help people “with their own wellness and continue to support our learners who are dealing with so many challenges,” Bhasin says. The program helps workers “feel like they have the resources to take care of themselves and know how to set healthy boundaries with people.”
Sticking with growth
With a massive reshuffling of talent and the increased role of hybrid work due to the pandemic, pools of learners and their skills may be entirely different for learning leaders to understand. “People are signaling satisfaction with their workplace with their feet. Having poor retention is a business problem,” says Laura Roberts, senior director, corporate leadership at Jobs for the Future. One of the best ways to increase employee retention is by simply investing in employees to foster an organizational culture built on growth and training opportunities.
These development opportunities come in many forms, but a straightforward way to signal paths for development and training is crucial. “We have a whole talent framework that lays out exactly what the different practices are,” Roberts says. From clear, on-the-job training that helps workers “identify the skills they need to get to the next level,” or by building “an internal talent marketplace so that if people are hungry for a shift, they can shift internally rather than leave.” Organizations that excel at providing growth and internal mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years, nearly double the amount of organizations that struggle to provide growth opportunities.
Even programs and benefits that support education to help people obtain degrees or certifications can make a marketable difference, Roberts says. “That is something that employees, particularly younger employees, are paying a lot more attention to and making choices about where they’re going to go and how long they’ll stay based on what those offerings are.”
As the pandemic shifted where and how we work, it also shifted the employer value proposition for corporate leaders to expand their development offerings. These offerings include general benefits, inclusive culture initiatives and talent development opportunities such as “training, education benefits and emphasis on learning and development at all levels have all emerged as things that more investment is directed towards,” Roberts says. The proof is in the investment — according to LinkedIn, about half of L&D professionals have more spending power than in the previous six years.
Making the business and social cases are important to employees and executive leadership, who are usually focused on “profits and losses and performance,” Roberts says. “We pay attention to it. We model forecasts based on that, and we’ll pivot.” In 2022, 53 percent of learning leaders have a seat at the executive table compared to just 24 percent in 2020. It’s crucial at this moment that L&D has a seat at the executive level so they can gain support from their organization’s top leaders.
For Bhasin and Penn Foster, after going through a merger with Carrus in 2021 and experiencing leadership overhauls, they’re now in crucial stages of change management while still committed to supporting their people. “In terms of the programming we build, there are all kinds of things going on,” Bhasin says. “A lot of it is going to be about how we continue to support both business and our people, and evolving what we do to meet those needs.”
Providing an environment for growth where programs are designed to benefit the people is an opportunity for leaders and practitioners. Many seem to have capitalized on it. “We spend too much of our time at work. If you’re in the position to make the workplace fruitful and valuable for someone, not just for the sake of the company, but for their overall trajectory or their family’s trajectory. What a privilege to be in that seat,” says Roberts. ”I’ve seen a lot of corporate leaders step in and own that and advocate for that internally.”
What will the future hold?
At Penn Foster, continuing to evolve what it means to be a great place to work will take programs scaled to business needs and the evolving expectations of learners — the future of work is driven by the progress of today. “This sort of intentional checking in with people and creating space in our one-on-ones and whatnot to see how people are doing, I think that was always something we needed to be doing,” Bhasin says. “The pandemic made it so that it forced us to say, ‘You need to be doing this right,’ and created a space for it. I see a lot of these being things that we continue to do into the future.”
From providing clear pathways for growth to recognizing employees as individuals with their own needs, the pandemic “has accelerated a lot of things that we’ve been pushing for, for a long time, which is the silver lining of crises like these,” says Roberts. With change expected and a recession looming, there’s still plenty of room for optimism: “I’m not convinced that even if we head into a recession, it’s going to feel the same as it has in the past. I think the climate overall is really different and unique right now.”
