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Employers worldwide are encountering a significant challenge: there is a shortage of skills, making it more essential than ever for individuals to develop new career and technical abilities. However, employers are not adequately equipping their workforce with the necessary skills to thrive in the job market or the evolving future of work. Research from TalentLMS and Vyond revealed that 66% of U.S. employees feel the need to acquire new skills to succeed in their roles. Furthermore, the study found that if their employers fail to provide training, learning, and development opportunities, approximately 41% of employees are considering leaving their current jobs next year.
Interestingly, only 1 in 10 employees were offered training on AI this year, despite 85% expressing a need for AI training and understanding its potential impact on their jobs. The research also identified five key themes and trends within the learning and development space that employers need to adopt and integrate into their employee engagement strategy for the coming year. These include personalized learning tailored to individual employee needs and goals, integrating career management and skills-building with wellbeing and workplace training, utilizing AI to impact training development and engagement, aligning training with business goals and objectives, and fostering interpersonal skills for the new hybrid workforce.
Personalized Learning
Employers are facing the prospect of managing an employee-centric workforce. Employees know what they want, and millennials and Gen Z, who are rapidly overtaking Baby Boomers in the workforce are demanding more attention be given to their holistic job satisfaction. They're driving global trends such as Quiet Quitting and The Great Resignation that we saw after the pandemic, and they are leading the way in demanding fair pay and equality, turning down jobs that do not suit their lifestyles and walking away from roles that do not align with their core values.
As such, they need specialized attention to suit their individual needs. Besides, since the pandemic where we've been working remotely on a mass scale, the workforce has expanded globally, with people from all backgrounds and cultures driving market expansion and business growth.
Due to these unique aspects, a one-size-fits-all approach is inadequate and a lazy attempt at best, to supply the skill gap. Employees need support from their managers to create individualized learning plans and professional development paths that incorporate a wide range of environments and learning methods for professional growth.
This could include hands-on learning, teaming up with a different department, peer-to-peer mentorship, customized learning modules, and flexible learning options that incorporate various learning styles.
Career Management Skills
To feel that they matter more than just the extent of the job they perform, employees need managers who care about them holistically—their well-being and career success. For employees to be more engaged, they need managers who can think beyond the extent of monetary value to their own organization, and genuinely invest in and progress their teams individually to the next level.
Where organizations failed with the mass rounds of layoffs over the past two years, was that many employees were inadequately prepared to face the challenges of re-entering the workforce. They lack job-readiness skills such as personal branding, LinkedIn usage, selling oneself effectively in interviews, and presentation skills—so they have been unnecessarily thrown into confusion and financial difficulty due to being out of the workforce for an unnecessarily long time because they are ill-equipped to fare in the job market.
If managers prioritize career management skills for their team members, much of this could be avoided, especially if the organization is forced to lay off some percentage of their workforce later for budget or other reasons.
Interpersonal Skills
Transitioning to the hybrid workforce model and thriving in it demands special attention to cultivating interpersonal bonds and relationships with team members, clients, stakeholders, direct reports, and senior management.
Remote-led lifestyles have left many employees closed to themselves, lacking part of the human touch, which is essential to healthy, thriving work relationships and businesses.
Therefore teams must receive training on interpersonal skills such as communication, active listening, and the art of delivering engaging presentations via Zoom or other virtual platforms. As a manager, you should lead by example and take time to polish your own interpersonal skills to adapt to the needs of your hybrid workforce, ensuring misunderstandings due to poor communication skills are minimalized.
It's very apparent that managers and learning and development teams have much to do in the way of progressing their employees, and providing effective and adequate training. Employees demand more than the cookie-cutter training they've been provided. They need a holistic approach to their well-being and career enhancement.
Employers need to get on board soon, or they risk losing a significant proportion of their workforce and the talent gap will be even greater.