Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2022 - 29

Preparing for
Disruption
According to a recent Deloitte CEO
survey, 47% of CEOs are prioritizing more
training and development. The survey
emphasized that in the year ahead, the
greatest disruption in the market will be
a labor/skills shortage, as selected by
nearly three-quarters (73%) of the CEOs.
Preparing today's talent for existing
and future business needs will require
organizations to:
Provide skill-building experiences
and knowledge on-demand across
the company.
Create on-the-job learning, apprenticeships,
rotation, project and work
teams where employees are learning
while working.
Give employees an opportunity to
apply skills to new roles that might
be outside their specialty to boost
agility, innovation and retention of
high-performing talent.
Create a learning strategy that
supports enterprise-wide needs for
organizations such as digital acumen.
With a hybrid remote workforce amid
and beyond the pandemic, companies
introduced new applications that
necessitated employees' reliance on
technology. It is critical to various job
roles that employees have access to
more technology-oriented training to
grow their technical skills.
Keeping the
Workforce Sharp
While technical jobs are increasing,
automation and artificial intelligence (AI)
are reducing the need for certain roles
going forward. However, new talent
demands are emerging with a more
significant focus on human-centered
roles than we have seen in the past.
Of late, the need has shifted to what
was once known as " soft skills " -
communication, creativity, problemsolving,
critical thinking and cultural
understanding - to achieve more
positive collaboration and unleash the
diversity of people, perspectives and
approaches across the workforce.
Departing employees have often cited
the main reason for leaving is because
the role itself was holding them back. By
enabling more career mobility, L&D can
address this issue.
A key area for L&D leaders is to deliver
learning strategies that enable internal
career mobility for employees so that
they can elevate their skills and grow
within their existing companies. In
addition to specialist and role-based
skills, we should prioritize portable skills
that can be leveraged across business
areas to create more opportunity. And it
takes different approaches to develop
these types of skills compared to
process and functional skills.
Employee turnover is expensive, and
today's labor market is competitive.
Attracting talent with the right skills can
require a range of tactics, from signon
bonuses to increased salaries and
other perks. Take steps now to ensure
the best employees do not quit, taking
with them their company experience,
industry
knowledge
and leadership
to the competition while leaving the
existing company consistently needing
to fill talent gaps. With various other dayto-day
responsibilities and challenges,
we need to pull the plug on this neverending
hamster wheel. This circular
issue will not allow for businesses to
advance if companies continue to need
to replenish talent while top performers
head for the exits. Such churn prevents
businesses from moving forward.
Now is the time to think creatively about
retention of those top performers. For
example, place greater emphasis on
intangibles (e.g., culture and flexibility)
as opposed to the usual, " traditional "
benefits (e.g., compensation) to
strengthen a company's ability to attract
and retain talent.
L&D Digital
Disruption
Moving forward, our goal should
be to challenge and transform our
organizations' L&D infrastructure. As
a business-critical function that can
greatly impact employee and business
performance, the function must be
designed for relevance and optimization.
As such, L&D leaders should be asking
themselves: Are we organized to ensure
a learner-centric culture? Alternatively,
has L&D become a function for delivery
of learning design, responding to our
organizations' needs?
More than just delivering training,
today it's all about how L&D operates
as a business. This is similar to
how businesses need to evolve
their service delivery strategies to
remain competitive.
Balance stability with being dynamic
- what work activities can be stopped
or re-envisioned in your L&D so that
you can allocate funding effectively to
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https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/chief-executive-officer/articles/ceo-survey.html https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/chief-executive-officer/articles/ceo-survey.html https://www.trainingindustry.com/glossary/soft-skills/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/glossary/transferable-skills/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/magazine

Training Industry Magazine - Winter 2022

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