Is your approach to L&D engaging or disengaging your workforce?

It’s commonly accepted that learning at work is a key goal for most employees. Whether that’s on-the-job learning, or more formal courses, improving knowledge and skills is what gives employees the ability to progress in their careers. Failing to offer learning opportunities, being unfair about how those learning experiences are divvied up, or not putting thought into the L&D available to employees can all be a recipe for disengaged staff.

The last few years have been less than “normal” for the business world, and a lot of organisations have poured their energies into simply staying afloat. When times are tough, it can be tempting to take a knuckle-down approach that doesn’t leave a lot of room for new learning opportunities – outside of experiencing what it’s like to work during a crisis! And while employees may have been accepting of this in the early stages of the pandemic, people now want to get their work lives back on track.

No learning and development – what message does this send?

If you’re not currently offering all of your employees the ability to upskill and learn new things at work, the message you’re sending is that you don’t value them enough to invest in them.

This is especially damaging for those workers who are new to employment. It’s a critical time to learn both technical and people skills, and this impacts their ability to shape their future career. Their progression from entry-level roles relies on the learning they’re given from the outset.

Failing to invest in L&D can also be a red flag to employees that the business doesn’t have solid long-term plans, and that a role in the organisation may well be a dead-end job.

James Mcilvena, LHH’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, noted in his recent podcast conversation with The HR Leader, Insights into how to measure talent mobility: “Almost any one of our listeners, if you collect exit survey data, I guarantee the lack of career opportunity is either number one or two. Outside chances, maybe number three on your employee reasons for leaving. But vast majority, it’s going to be reason number one or number two.

“What are one of the main things an employee does if [they’re] considering working for an organisation? I’ll go and figure out if I know someone who works there, and I’ll ask them about that organisation. One of the questions at the very top of my list will be, what are the opportunities there? How do they treat you? Do they invest in you? Do you have plenty of opportunity? Do you do interesting work? Do you work with other really smart people? And having a good program to this, answers most of those questions,” he added.

L&D for some but not all = alienating part of your workforce

Another mistake businesses may make is to offer learning to some, but not all staff. This may be because the organisation has seen a particular need for upskilling in one area or has identified succession gaps that need to be filled. Whatever the reason, your employees who are forgotten will be resentful, and the employees being given the learning experiences, but seeing colleagues left behind, will likely feel uncomfortable.

The trick here is that not everyone needs to be offered the same training, but everyone does need to feel like the L&D they can access shows that everyone is equally valued. There are so many ways to offer learning in today’s working world. Andrea Tham of Gilbert + Tobin and Nyrissa Filetti of MLC School have both spoken with The HR Leader, offering ideas for the future of learning that organisations can draw from.

Ms Filetti shared, “I’ve certainly seen the idea of quick DIY, do it yourself, videos being really successful ... you can actually get the employees being a part of the solution and doing quick videos themselves. So, it’s got a dual benefit that’s high production, low cost, quick outcome, but it engages the people who need to, or would be benefited by the experience of sharing their ideas and being connected.”

L&D without any heart

If you want to avoid a lack of learning opportunities, and you know that being unfair in how you offer L&D across the business isn’t the way to go, don’t fall into the last trap of delivering a program that is without consideration and thought – your employees will see straight through it. 

In a recent HR Leader and LHH webcast, Career and talent mobility simplified, James Mcilvena talked about having a holistic view of talent mobility and stated: “I think the overarching approach and what I’ve seen where it works well versus not working well is all of these parts I’ve just talked about linked together. Getting one part of it right doesn’t get the same outcomes. If you invest in learning mechanisms and you give people the time and space to learn, but they don’t know what they’re supposed to learn ... As an employee, where do I start?”

He added: “And so, I think that the key is if you can be deliberate about a combination of this is what we value, this is what we provide for you, in what we provide for you, there’s plenty there for you to go and learn to do. We support you.”

If you’re looking for inspiration on how to tackle meaningful learning in your business, Andrea Tham illustrated how L&D can be like a dinner party, a very useful approach.