What is learning and development: overview, importance and training rollout

For a workplace to be as productive as possible, it has to support its employees. Valued staff equals job satisfaction equals maximum engagement in work. Simple, right?

The problem is, employee engagement is under threat — big time. According to Gallup’s research in 2020, 85% of employees were disengaged at work. Add in a global pandemic, the Great Recession and a whole host of other global concerns and, well, the mission is clear: we need to get employees engaged again.

That’s where learning and development (L&D) comes in. Invest in developing training content and learning strategy best practices and the future of your business will look after itself (almost!).

Contents

• The learning and development landscape in 2022

• Why should a business invest in a learning strategy?

  • Employee retention

  • Improved/increased revenue

  • Customer satisfaction

• The 4 steps of developing a training programme that works

  • Assess the need

  • Plan

  • Implement and share

  • Measure success

The learning and development landscape in 2022

Learning and development planning is all about equipping employees with valuable skills that improve a business’s performance. L&D also looks to align employees’ goals with the goals of the company to help both parties progress. 

There’s no denying that L&D has a huge organisational impact and yet according to eLearning Industry research:

• 59% of employees claim to be ‘self-taught’ having have had next to no workplace training

• Half of managers with 10+ years’ experience claim they’ve received just nine hours of training — total!  

• 1 in 3 employees would agree that their organisation’s training is out of date.

It’s time for businesses to turn this around! 

Why should a business invest in a learning strategy?

Learning and development comes in all shapes and sizes. Investing in developing training content might mean nailing your onboarding process or keeping your e-learning content fully up to date. Either way, ensuring L&D best practices can bring a multitude of benefits to your organisation.

The importance of learning and development comes down to:

Employee retention

In a 2021 LinkedIn study, 94% of employees said they’d stay in their role for longer if the company invested more in learning and development. 

Improved/increased revenue

Companies that have good training practices see a 10% increase in productivity. What could an extra 10% boost in output do for your organisation’s bottom line?

Customer satisfaction

One of the best ways to measure the success of learning and development is to look at how happy your customers are. L&D best practices all align to increase customer satisfaction: engaged and well-trained employees deliver a higher quality of service.

The 4 steps of developing a training programme that works

Now that we understand what learning and development is and why doing it right is important, let’s look at how businesses can start to roll out an in-house learning strategy.

1. Assess the need

First up, you need to identify the specific learning needs or knowledge gaps evident in your organisation, department or team. Remember that learning and development strategies will vary across the workplace — there is no ‘one size fits all.

How do you identify gaps and needs? Talk to your teams! Asking employees about the areas in which they feel they would benefit from training not only increases the chance of success, but it shows them that they’re valued too.

2. Plan

As we mentioned above, one objective of L&D is to align the company’s goals with the goals of its employees, so ask yourself: where should you start to deliver the most value? Which knowledge gaps need filling as a priority, to benefit both the business and the team? Look at any existing training material and explore ways to optimise it, as well as develop new training content from scratch. 

3. Implement and share

Before you hit ‘print’ and churn out hundreds of copies of a new laminated L&D booklet, is that really the best way to deliver your content? One of the most crucial best practices of learning strategy is making your training programme engaging and accessible for everyone. Will employees respond best to print-outs or should you design something more digestible and digital?

Businesses can gain a lot from peer-to-peer and social learning, too. According to Harvard Business Review research, some employees hold back from sharing knowledge simply because aren’t aware of how useful their insights could be! So encourage employees to upskill their colleagues and make it easy for anyone who wants to help in developing training content to get involved. 

4. Measure success

Once your learning and development content is out there in circulation, make sure to check in with how it’s being received. Are employees using it? Are they learning from it? What impact is it having for your teams and against your organisational goals? 

This is where developing training content online has its benefits too, as you can easily track who has logged in to the course content and who has completed it.

Get everyone involved in L&D best practices and watch your learning strategy fly!

At the end of the day, the success of a learning and development programme often comes down to employee adoption and engagement. Find out from employees what they want to learn, work with senior leaders to understand how that’ll benefit the business, and then focus on how that knowledge will be shared, applied and measured over time. 

My Learning Hub has all the tools you need to design L&D content in line with best practices. Our cloud-based platform is easy to implement and engaging to learn from so book a demo today.