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?