Our major new global research project, ‘Agile Learning: Living with the Speed of Change’ examines how HR leaders around the world are delivering learning at a time when there is huge pressure to deliver new employee skills to the front line more rapidly, more often and with much greater impact than ever before.
The findings illustrate the learning challenge faced by HR practitioners around the globe, in organisations of all sizes, and why their approach to learning and the way they deliver it needs to become much more agile if it is to realise its true potential, and keep pace with the speed of change.
We looked at the views and experiences of HR Leaders across a range of related topics, such as how well is HR delivering learning to its workforce, how is the speed of change having an impact on learning strategies, and to what extent are HR teams able to prepare for future skills demand?
For instance, we found that a large majority of HR practitioners don’t feel they are even close to working to their full potential in delivering learning, and we also found that Google is often considered a better option for acquiring new skills and knowledge than an organisation’s own.
Many large enterprises (10,000 employees or more) are struggling provide the training and skills quickly enough to keep pace with how they, their markets, competitors and customers are changing. The picture is slightly more positive for much smaller organisations, but as the employee count grows the problem deepens.
This presents an enormous business challenge, and one with the potential to effect a huge range of issues, from employee satisfaction and motivation, to bottom-line results. But HR leaders are very mindful of the challenges they face, the role they are able to play in employee learning and how effective they are seen to be as a result.
The idea that HR is viewed as ‘extremely useful’ by employees for skills development is supported by only a very small minority of survey respondents. More specifically, most HR leaders globally believe they are seen by employees as providing little or no learning, or just the minimum skills for them to succeed.
That’s just a snapshot into a fascinating piece of research. For the full findings, click here to download the report, and please let us know about your experiences in delivering learning in a rapidly changing economy
Jeremy Langley, marketing and business development director at talent management and acquisition software vendor, Lumesse.
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