Q: What are the biggest L&D challenges in 2022?

A: There is a lot, unfortunately. This is the list of the most common:

• Lack of time to think strategically. A lot of L&D work is still manual and takes a lot of time. 

• Too much workload. 

• Perceiving L&D as a department which is not working and only waiting to serve.

• Learner engagement and how to increase it. 

• Measure the effects (performance, habits, behaviors) of L&D work. She says there is a lack of knowledge and technology to convert the data. The complexity of the data is too high. 

As L&Ds, we need to design a learning environment where people are more engaged in their learning process and not just for the sake of it, but because they know it'll help their careers it'll help their performance.”

This is the L&D impact on retention, which is different then impact on behavior change and performance improvement. At previous company they tested how people perceive the learning opportunities after taking part in a course and without taking part. The results showed that in both groups the knowledge about courses and learning opportunities grew.  

“If you see that people perceive the organization as having learning programs available for them, that's still a major, major plus because people are looking for growth opportunities”

Q: What are the biggest L&D challenges for different companies from 30 to 200 employees? 

A: Leadership development is the first challenge because these companies usually are in high growth and their leaders should be prepared. Second is tool acquisition for L&D purposes. 

This is connected to what Innential recommends, which is a learning needs analysis. Why? Because with this analysis, you can collect the simple data about what problems you have and what tool would help you.

Also there is a lack of processes supporting the employees engagement with doing courses.  For example, reminders, learning policies, and the lack of an engaging experience from the course providers.

Q: What are the biggest L&D challenges for companies over 1000 employees? 

A: Impact measurement, because companies this size must invest more carefully so you they need data. Scale what you are doing but make sure to keep your learning experiences personalized or risk losing engagement.

“Whenever someone asks me, oh, I bought this tool or I bought this content library. My first question is what behaviors do you need support for people to actually use those tools, whatever they are.”