02 Feb Successfully Incorporate Learning and Development in your Company?

Effective Learning and Development (L&D) programmes can help companies thrive in an increasingly competitive business landscape. Many organisations are now finding L&D programmes are key to growth and innovation, to the extent that LinkedIn has reported that a third of companies globally will invest more in L&D programmes year on year.

Well-developed L&D programmes focus on the growth and future performance of an employee rather than solely the immediate role requirements. Consequently, they can help attract and retain top talent. Learning and Development programmes enable companies to strategically and simultaneously re- and up-skill their workforce while helping to develop employees’ engagement in the workplace.

Improving your company’s L&D strategy

While companies have been investing more in the professional development of their workforce, they can still struggle to evaluate the impact on participants.

About 85% of employees find that some of the learning programmes on offer by their organisations do not match their current and future performance needs. They are likely to be more engaged with the organisation when they are provided with the learning opportunities they want, and that benefit their professional development.

Investing in L&D opportunities that fit the needs of employees enables their growth and grows overall company achievement. To get most out of your investments in L&D, your companies should sustain an effective development plan for your workforce:

Weave it into your company’s culture. By developing a learning-based culture, you establish your company as one which promotes and values employee development, subsequently growing employee engagement. Provide plenty of opportunities for your team to get involved in the planning process of your company’s L&D. They can also serve as subject matter experts or assist in assessing and reinforcing training for new and current staff.

Your company can celebrate employee success and achievements upon completion of the training and other learning activities. Let everyone in your team know when a team member has finished a training course and how it contributes to their growth within and outside the workplace.

Champion L&D with your senior leaders. Inculcating a learning culture into your organisation requires senior management championing L&D. While many executives express their support for investing more in L&D of the company, only 27% of them are active champions of learning.

To show managerial support toward the employees’ growth, you may start creating and curating executive courses for your workforce’s career advancement programmes. These can inspire employees to participate due to proximity and relevance.

Another way to have your leaders champion L&D programmes is to have them directly involved. They likely have a range of skills that would benefit other employees, have members of your leadership team run a course now and then to show your team that your leaders are committed to helping everyone develop.

Inspire the need for mentorship. L&D professionals must also design career development opportunities for employees such as informal learning, which can include mentoring. Mentorship is a collaborative learning relationship and working alliance that is often between a high-performing employee and a less experienced individual but is often successful with an external mentor.

This approach is a proven and effective L&D programme, enlightening and empowering employees to the challenges of performing and excelling in a dynamic work environment.

Provide flexible learning options. Many companies are adopting blended learning, a mix of in-person and online learning experiences for employees. To meet the needs of the increasingly diverse, multigenerational workforce (not to mention COVID-19 impacts), 57% of talent developers are now spending more time managing online learning solutions.

Online learning solutions allow learning experience in the workforce to be flexible and accessible.  Meanwhile, these platforms are very efficient to get quantitative data and qualitative feedback to prove the impact of learning.

As well as regularly updating L&D programmes, your company can inspire, motivate, and partner with employees in creating development programmes that work for them. Effective implementation of L&D in the workforce ensures a high level of employee engagement and makes the company keep up with the rapidly changing business environment.

Learn more about improving your employees’ L&D with Talegent’s talent development solutions and request a demo.