Introduction
To survive among the stiff competition and enjoy higher productivity, a business organisation must stay agile and encourage learning & development among their employees by offering necessary skill training, use of newer technologies, filling their skill gaps and developing strong business relationships to enable them to adapt to new working conditions, whether going on remote or hybrid mode. During the last two years, the pandemic has emphasised the requirement to keep on investing in learning & development.
HR teams are facing additional challenges due to high pressure to build a robust L&D strategy which is dedicated to up-skilling & reskilling the workforce to prepare them for whatever may come ahead. With this in mind, let’s shed some light on seven of the most pressing issues frequently faced by professionals amongst the new L&D trends.
Top L&D Challenges To Lookout for in 2023
1. Ensuring learner engagement
Engaging employees towards learning & development has been one of the most prominent L&D challenges faced by HR professionals, the only difference being the stakes being highest than ever. Businesses desperately need skilled employees who can quickly adapt to advanced technologies available in the market & take advantage of the opportunities.
While working, individual employees may feel burdened and distracted, which may end up not taking advantage of all the learning & development opportunities available to them.
Sometimes employees may need to be more interactive or remember most of it. To ensure higher engagement, HR professionals can experiment with various ways to engage employees, such as choosing a delivery method that offers higher learning incentives, adopting a curriculum to include multiple styles of learning, adding visuals to spark interest, offering personalized examples wherever possible, and sharing clear training objectives.
Employing appealing learning tactics could result in employees being more engaged in the training, more actively participating in the process, and retaining what they have learned for longer. With the right learning technologies, you could also create & share personalized learning experiences that employees find relevant to their assignments.
2. Teaching Soft abilities and emotional quotient
Once the HR professionals can gauge the employees’ attention, they must be taught the right skills to meet the organization’s requirements. Nevertheless, most believe empathy leads to better leadership; soft teaching skills could be more challenging. For instance, teaching someone to use technology and how to become better at leadership or become a better salesperson could be two completely different tasks.
3. Meeting Needs of a diversified workforce
In a globalized world, where workplaces are distributed worldwide, the diversity of learning preferences is augmented through the difference in time zones, languages, cultures and backgrounds.Thus, employers should offer learning & development training in different teaching formats, using more digitally savvy methods for tech-savvy employees who are more likely to be engaged with digital channels while preparing relevant content for old-age employees.
4. Implementation of Digital Transformation
Before the pandemic, some businesses undertook business transformation while others considered adopting digital transformation tools. But suddenly, all of them had to adopt new technology quickly to survive the pandemic placing all the burden on the HR professionals for Learning & Development professionals to train the workforce and make them deal with all the impacts of technological changes.
Therefore, Learning & Development professionals and their teams must ensure that the employees are learning new technologies and updating themselves on the job. Further, employees undergoing a digital transformation must invest in advanced digital adoption solutions that offer on-screen guidance and real-time support to make a smooth transition. These digital adoption tools could also significantly reduce the time taken to board new users.
5. Organizational Culture for a Remote Workforce
Business organizations put a large number of efforts into developing a thriving and pleasant workplace culture which serves as the measure for selecting employees who endure within the business culture and as a tool for attracting and recruiting talent with the added glitz of onsite amenities, maintaining higher employee happiness, and promoting improved coordination and communication.
However, with the debate about working remotely or in a hybrid office situation, it is difficult for HR and L&D teams to define corporate culture and develop new strategies for fostering culture online because teams are now spread across the globe. With more and more employees being comfortable in remote working spaces, the L&D team must invest more time & resources in developing processes for virtual and distributed workforces.
If such a challenge had happened two years, L&D teams would be more prepared to meet such demand. However, after two years of living with the pandemic, L&D professionals have more experience and would not require to build these processes from scratch anymore.
6. Retaining Up skilled Workers
Undoubtedly continual investment is a crucial requirement for every business to achieve higher growth & productivity. But, it is also essential to acknowledge the fact that some of the skilled employees are going to use most of their learning for their new employer.Thus, the retention of highly skilled employees is a common challenge faced by L&D professionals worldwide. To remedy this situation, it would be a good idea to make employees feel valued, throw specific challenges and offer incentives for good work would be vital.
Hence, businesses evolving their organizational culture and changing their policies need to address their employee’s need for flexibility, career development, and support for their emotional well-being.
7. Optimize budgets for Learning & Development
Since most start-ups run on tight budgets, how would they ensure the delivery of training facilities to their employees while facing budget problems? It is another crucial challenge faced by L&D professionals & business organizations facing today.
While the management leaders may have shifted their budget priorities towards the transformation of business processes manually to digital tools after the pandemic or towards other activities such as recruitment or marketing activities, raising salaries or benefits to improve employee retention.
As a result, your employee development teams are left with the option to achieve more with less. Still, you could do several things to bootstrap practical training for your team, such as encouraging knowledge sharing, offering access to third-party self–directed learning options through a shared learning platform, connecting with government agencies for free safety & compliance training, implementing mentorship and cross-training options, etc. These are some low-cost employee training solutions your organization may consider meeting the organizational needs while running on tight budgets.
Bottom Line
Despite the challenges listed above, learning & development strategies are crucial for businesses intending to fill the skill gaps in the skill sets of their workforce to stay relevant & competitive in the present and the future. Establishing an organizational culture that encourages learning can inspire employees to actively contribute to enhancing the productivity and development of the business.