Learning and Development 2020: A Mid-year Pandemic Update

Because the coronavirus pandemic has turned American business on its head, many learning and development (L&D) professionals are wondering how the new normal of work will affect employee training trends going forward. Obviously training modalities will have to change on the fly, but what else will be different these days? Or, is your training budget going to fall victim to tough times too?

Employee training has always been one of those expenses that is easy to cut during times of crisis — such as the current global pandemic. However, when things get tough is exactly when companies need to double-down on their employees’ L&D. In business, if you’re not moving forward, you’re going backward.

What makes this dereliction of training employees even more inconceivable is that one-fourth of the American workforce — about 36 million workers — have jobs that are rooted in automation. Sadly, especially during the last two decades, many workers have feared that they would be replaced by that same automation and artificial intelligence (A.I.).  

The good news is that attitudes are changing

Today, instead of being replaced by robots, many workers are discovering — to their pleasant surprise — that their employers are upskilling and reskilling them through training is much more cost-effective. Plans that were created before the pandemic were not abandoned, but strengthened.

For instance, AT&T has spent over $1 billion since 2018 to reeducate more than 100,000 employees for the skills they will need to meet advances in technology today and over the next decade. Similarly, IBM has set aside $600 million just for employee L&D in 2020.

Other corporate giants like Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, and Walmart, to name just a few, are acting with broad plans to retrain large segments of their workforces. This signals that the “future of work” is no longer distant and on the horizon. It’s already here.

Here are the L&D trends you need to act upon for the rest of 2020 and into 2021: 

1. Online learning is critical

According to LinkedIn's 2020 Workplace Learning Report, companies are devoting more resources to employee learning and development, particularly online learning. In fact, 57% of the L&D professionals surveyed said their companies would be investing more in online learning than before.

This makes sense as Millennials and Gen Z workers, the largest segment of workers today, have grown up with technology and are much more comfortable learning this way. However, even older workers embrace the flexibility, portability, and convenience of online learning. With working from home being the norm during the pandemic, online learning can be personalized and completed on an employee’s schedule.

2. Organizational leadership needs to fully support a learning culture

In the LinkedIn survey I mentioned above, one of the main takeaways was that executives support learning, but often do not create a learning culture within the company. More than 83% of L&D pros say their executives support employee learning, but only 27% say their CEOs are active champions of learning.

Leaders who don’t plan exactly what they want their training to do are wasting resources. In a successful learning culture, management, HR, and L&D personnel work together to define the values, processes, and practices that employees, departments, and the organization can use to increase their performance and competencies.

3. Clarify standards for learner engagement 

How will you measure employee engagement and the success of your training? To effectively measure the impact of training and L&D, do the work on the front end, really understanding your goals and the business challenges that you’re trying to solve. If you do that first, it’s easy to understand and measure how learning has affected outcomes.

4. Make training a social event

According to Chief Learning Officer® magazine in its new 2020 State of the Industry survey, 81 percent of learning leaders plan to adopt new training techniques, 70 percent say their blend of training delivery methods will change, and 73 percent plan to develop more custom content.

Online learning modules can enhance the benefits of learning socially in groups and among teams, even when they aren’t all working in the same place. Even with remote learning for employees working from home, make training more interactive by providing live formats with Q&A sessions, quizzes, interaction among participants, and role-playing.

This fosters a sense of community. Augmented reality and virtual reality can also be used through workers' mobile devices to increase engagement. When possible, in-person classes can also offer the benefits of social learning even with social distancing in place.

5. Concentrate on “portable skills” and tech training  

Portable skills are the ones learners can take to any job within your company. Usually, we think about so-called “soft skills” like communication and leadership training, but there’s so much more. In March, when COVID-19 effectively canceled every public seminar we had for 2020, our virtual instructor-led training (VILT) events became our top training tool for learners and we were blown away by our most popular topics.

Learners cannot get enough of Power BI training, advanced Excel, and our other “hard skill” courses. With Big Data becoming the coin of the realm in business today, being able to gather it, extrapolate it, and analyze it may become the most important skills of 2021 and beyond.

6. Keep employee training updated 

Keep the training strategy updated based on the skills your business will need in the future. According to one statistic from a LinkedIn report, 85 percent of jobs available in the next decade do not exist yet. Set your employees up so your organization can compete in such an ever-changing marketplace.

Your organization can still thrive with the right training

Successful leadership recognizes that their employees are diverse, multi-faceted, and resistant to being boxed into certain roles. By recognizing their skills and interests and cultivating those through L&D, companies can keep workers motivated and engaged, decrease turnover, and ensure greater success.     

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