In this blog, we’ll look into a few reasons why the L&D department has to prioritize learning and development and not give the backseat it has taken in the corporate world in the past decade. 

The 2021 wave of resignations taught us many things and the main takeaway is that the job market is becoming more employee-centric. 

It’s a good thing. Even more so, the best thing to happen to the employees and also the organization. So, retaining the existing top talents is important and also easier than hiring new talents and training them. 

This is not another rule that the HR world has to follow but it’s the reality of the world.

According to a survey by TalentLMS and Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), 76% of the employees would stay with an organization that continuously invests in their training and development. 

If I have to be entirely logical about bringing down the employee turnover rate, I’d say that the stats speak for themselves. Instead of breaking down the reasons for the high employee churn rate or thinking of ways to retain them, investing in their training and development will help you build a bridge that connects the employees with the organization. 

The US workforce is diverse. Especially, the workforce comprises multigenerational employees who come from different backgrounds, age groups, and perspectives. So, it becomes vividly important for the HR department to bind them all together. 

Now, you might wonder how the L&D can fill in the multi-generational gap within the workforce and I’ll tell you how: When people from different backgrounds work remotely and towards one goal, not only are their work habits different but also their learning habits. 

So, enabling the training and development of a workforce of different backgrounds is extremely important and one of the key tasks of the HR department. 

The multigenerational workforce looks like this:

Baby Boomers: 1946–1964

Generation X: 1965–1980

Millennials: 1981-1996

Generation Z: After 1996

Their learning habits also differ because the baby boomers have more experience than the rest of the age group while the  NewGen or GenZ are more adaptive to new changes and can learn anything new in minutes. 

So, creating engaging content that hooks the attention of all of them is necessary. Having a dedicated L&D team that creates video training materials, course lessons, and product walkthroughs by understanding what the employees (read: their audience) are looking for, can do more wonders for your business. 

This makes it easy for you to bring the employees closer to each other and also make them understand the product/service better. 

Making L&D a part of your business comes a full circle—right from binding the employees together to making the work deliverability consistent. Every organization is built on employees’ talents and the great work they chip in. So, giving them access to constant upskilling and reskilling will put them in a spot where they can outdo their best. 

Because even great minds need to be fed with new information every once in a while. When you invest in the L&D teams, they help your employees to learn faster and deliver better results. 

However, this isn’t a one-off thing. 

Hosting a webinar once and not regularly helping them with learning things that can make their work easier will only stall the progress. The formula goes like this:

The investment in the learning and development department brings a better ROI in the form of improved and desired results. 

Now, the results do not stop just here. The next point is all that your business needs…

You might’ve already guessed it by the end of the previous paragraph (if you haven’t skimmed it already, haha) By results, I meant that whatever the KRAs you have for your business periodically. 

At the same time, a well-executed training program by the L&D team can lead to customer satisfaction. To get into the nitty-gritty of it, here is how the training materials are directly mapped to the output:

Sales enablement content serves as the go-to material for everyone—from new joinee to the star salespeople—on the sales team to refer to while they are on the edge of their seats to get the deals closed. 

Now, you can understand the picture more clearly. The L&D team creates content that helps the team outperform themselves consistently so that they serve their best to the customers. Found the starting point? Yes, it all starts with upskilling and of course reskilling of the employees. 

Now, this is not always a direct correlation between creating a kind of video that builds your employer’s brand. But before we draw a conclusion on this, let me tell you this—You can build your employer brand by:

• Creating the “Life at your organization” kind of videos
• Repurposing the employee onboarding videos into YouTube videos to attract new talents
• Create more employee-generated videos
• Share your small, significant, over-the-roof wins with the world

While all of this helps you build the employer brand directly, creating stunning learning materials and training employees to give their best, adds more credibility to your brand. This could be a qualitative measure of how people outside the company perceive it. 

For example, if your employees, who are backed by an L&D share it with their connections on professional social networking sites like LinkedIn, it builds your employer’s brand, without you putting an additional effort into it. 

I’ve given you the reasons why prioritizing the Learning and Development department in your business—no matter what is the size of your organization—here are some actionable steps for you:

• Start building a team

Just like the Marketing, HR, and Technical team in your company, the L & D team can sprout from the right start if you can identify the right leader for your organization. 

• Give them the right toolkit

One of the reasons why many small to medium-sized organizations refrain from developing L&D content is that they think it’s expensive to hire a team/agency and tools to execute it. While this is partly true, this is 2022 and there is an easy-to-use alternative for everything in the world and SaaS is no exemption. 

With tools like Vmaker Author, anybody in your team can develop the training material within a day or two. All they need is subject-matter expertise. Not only does it save you from burning your pockets on expensive tools, but also does help you save a lot of time. 

If you want to know more about creating video-based learning materials on Vmaker, we’re just a call away. Book a demo now. 

Recommended Reading:

Every L & D Manager should focus on HR Compliance Training – Here’s why

The top challenges of the L & D team & the best solutions to get rid of them

Employee upskilling and attrition rate – What L & D managers should know about?

This is one of the key takeaways from the What’s Next for the “Great Resigners,” Nov, 2021 report by the Cengage group.

But, why? Because it helps them find a new job, switch careers or pursue something that interests them. In the same research, 8 out of 10 resigners admitted that “the pandemic made them reconsider their priorities or professional goals.”

The world is gradually reeling from the aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic. The fall in industrial output, setback on foreign trade and an overall restrictive environment had undermined business growth.  Governments of different nations are doing their best to rebuild the economy.  At this time of uncertainty, employees are more interested in upskilling themselves to look for new opportunities than sticking to the same job for security.

Why has upskilling become so important? Is the custom of taking up a job to pay the bills passé? Let’s explore

Employee upskilling is employees taking up courses and training programs to improve their skills. These skills help them learn advanced concepts to get better at their job. Employees upskill themselves when they feel stagnated. The lack of growth in the workplace pushes them to pursue something new like a new job or a career altogether. And, to do something new, they need to gather knowledge from external sources. 

Upskilling employees is not just a strategic move for them. Companies also stand to profit from the growth of their employees. We will also cover how companies can upskill their employees, but before that here’s how employee upskilling helps with their all round development. 

Heightened employee motivation

When employees get themselves upskilled, they get a renewed sense of motivation to work on their tasks. Daily office work can get boring after a while. This drops the productivity level for employees, and in the long term, they lose motivation to perform tasks with proficiency. With the new dose of motivation from upskilling, employees rethink about how they can apply their newly attained knowledge. They start looking at the process and tasks differently. Instead of just getting the job done, they emphasize on how it can be improved for better results. 

Desire to solve bigger challenges

Armed with knowledge, employees feel more confident to take on new challenges at the workplace. When they’re willing to take challenges, they’re signing up for leadership roles. By connecting the dots, it’s easy to understand that upskilling helps in inculcating leadership skills in employees. Knowing what you’re getting yourself into also proves that employees are self-confident about their skills. In a tough situation, they will not give up without trying.

 Multiverse of knowledge 

 Upskilling also fills the knowledge gap. Earlier, they might feel a bit estranged due to the lack of familiarity with business terms or their area of work. For example, a field marketer could’ve never heard about SEO as it doesn’t affect their job directly. But, after a certification course in SEO marketing, they will not only learn it, but also participate in discussions. This opens up different streams of specialization for them within their area of work. 

 Increased engagement

 Add all the above points, and you’re now looking at an employee who is ready to engage with anything that has to do with their organization. With more knowledge power, willingness to take challenges, feeling motivated, employees display complete support towards new initiatives and plans made by the company. This high engagement goes a long way in paving a great future for the company too. 

 Worthy asset

 A weekend online course or a full-time classroom pedagogy, whatever the case maybe, an employee creates an asset when they decide to upskill themselves. This will be with them for their whole professional career. The decision is like an investment, and it remains as an asset wherever they go. They can use this to give a better life for themselves by quoting a higher salary in their next job switch.

While upskill has a host of benefits, companies can risk losing their most valuable employees if they’re not attentive. Because upskilling also opens the door for their employees to look for opportunities elsewhere. Here are a few steps that companies can take proactively to stop employee turnover due to upskilling 

 1) Make a strategy

A strategy will give an ideal launchpad for companies to start working. Here, they have to identify what are the skill gaps existing in the organization. They can identify them by interviewing managers or surveying employees directly. Once they have the result, they can prioritize which skill they should try to fill first, and then move on to the next. This will keep the process streamlined and avoid confusions.

2) Discuss the type of upskilling program

 Upskilling can be done in multiple ways. The best is the one that works for both the organization and its employees. To decide the mode of upskill course, the management has to figure out the following things –  

a) How many employees will attend the program?

b) Duration of the course

c) Content of the course 

A few points can be added here, but these are like the cornerstones. Once these have been figured out, the rest of them will fall into places.

 3) Try a mentorship program

Before directly heading to an online course or a training session, companies can start with assigning a work mentor. These mentors are senior employees who build a personal bond with employees to help them get better at their jobs. They answer their questions, solve their doubts and try to show them the future of the role in the company. Because this bonding is done at the personal level, the learnings can be deeper and more interesting for the employees.

 4) Develop a learning culture

 Learning on-the-job is a continuous practice. It cannot be a one-time thing. If organizations are serious about seeing results from their upskilling programs, they have to build a culture of learning in the organization. The managers have to be trained by making them feel like teachers. They are not just for getting work done, but also for investing in the development of the employee. The employees should be reminded about the perks of upskilling and how they can reap benefits from them. Keeping learning at the center of the organization’s culture is the most trusted way of retaining employees.

5) Promote self-learning

It’s quite possible that a company doesn’t have an internal L&D team or the bandwidth to create courses for employees. In that case, they can still encourage employees to learn by asking them to enroll in external online or classroom courses. In return, the company will pay for the course fee. This way, they can ensure that they retain the best talent without taking the load of creating courses or arranging training sessions.

Employees are finding ways to stay relevant in the current times. They want to advance themselves to new roles and take more responsibilities irrespective of what’s happening in the world. If they’re not finding opportunities for growth in their organization, they will upskill themselves and look for opportunities where they can leverage their skills to the maximum. This is highly beneficial for their self-growth. However, for companies they stand to lose high potential employees. By becoming proactive, they can give opportunities to their employees to upskill themselves and find relevant opportunities within the organization.

Recommended Reading:

10 Best Corporate LMS (Learning Management Systems) For 2022

Why are people leaving their jobs?

7 upskilling and reskilling strategies to improve employee retention

How do visual guides promote remote work productivity?

15 Best practices for creating training videos