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As demand for learning, development and training mounts — and budgets dwindle — L&D leaders might be relieved to discover that many employees don’t need slick slide decks or customized courses. They prefer to grow their skills and knowledge old-school style: With and from other people.
Will this change the way learning professionals educate their workforce?
The Personal Touch
A recent LinkedIn thread shared new data from RedThread Research about the methods employees rely on the most for developing skills, with manager feedback topping the list.
In fact, seven of the top 10 methods selected were driven by relationships with supervisors, peers or professional networks. No courses or classes snagged a top 10 spot. And the performance management process was rated one of the most important development tools — one that many L&D leaders tend to overlook.
“I was surprised by the number of methods that didn't involve fancy technology and by the number of methods that are generally not talked about in the L&D space,” said Dani Johnson, co-founder and principal analyst at RedThread Research. “The things that popped in our original survey three years ago and again this time have much more to do with building relationships, learning from each other and building the right culture.”
Johnson notes a shift in the L&D space from before and during the pandemic, to today. She said her conversations with tech vendors and leaders up until recently revolved around self-directed learning. But, toward the end of the pandemic, she started hearing more about guided learning, universities and academies to help people learn specific skills.
“Now, I'm hearing about the importance of learning from each other, sharing that information and figuring out how to capture it as more people are leaving or entering the workforce,” said Johnson.
Related Article: The Personalized Employee Experience Paradox
Branching Out of L&D Tech
Johnson’s LinkedIn post sparked interesting conversations about whether L&D functions are adequately leveraging the people and processes already in place.
Some commenters confirmed RedThread’s findings that scalable social learning — especially for complex skill development — is more effective than throwing narrowly focused e-learning or entire course libraries at people. Others pointed out that people play the most important role in L&D, and that regular, in-the-moment guidance is crucial.
Johnson said the takeaway from it all is that self-directed classes aren’t cutting it anymore — though she’s not sure they ever did.
She noted that while L&D has traditionally tracked “butts in seats” and course hours, technology has since improved and the focus for L&D’s value prop is shifting.
"As data gets better, we're better able to understand how learning is actually taking place in ways we haven't been able to before," she said. “As we get better at tying content and experiences to skills, it's no longer about the 30-minute course teaching people ‘just in case’; it's about making sure people have the skills they need for their job right now, so we can pinpoint what they need to learn moving forward — and that's not always through a course.”
The challenge, however, is tracking and measuring all the peer-to-peer learning opportunities inside an organization, considering many of those take place informally via non-L&D channels.
“For example, Teams, Slack and those types of channels are where people are learning, [but] conversations or Zoom calls aren't necessarily measured by L&D,” she said.
Yet, this is where a lot of the learning is happening today.
“I've seen several new technologies that use GPT so you can practice tough conversations or connect with somebody who has a specific skill,” she said. “These technologies allow us to collect data, so maybe what helps us move the needle forward in learning will come from work tech.”
Related Article: AI Is Changing Learning & Development. Here's How
Development Opportunities and the RTO Debate
RedThread’s research findings didn’t surprise Kimo Kippen, founder of Aloha Learning Advisors and former CLO at Hilton. The data supports the 70-20-10 model: 70% of learning takes place in the flow of work, 20% is from collaboration with colleagues, and 10% is structured.
“It's refreshing to hear that's where learning is taking place, from colleagues, peers, the team you work with or from the work itself,” he said.
“I think where there's a disconnect is the learning function to support those efforts. How do we get managers, supervisors and the workforce to have those opportunities to learn from one another?” Kippen said.
With most back-to-office measures tanking in popularity, organizations need to instead offer employees a compelling reason to return. Can L&D be the key?
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“All the research tells us there needs to be an incentive; you just can't wave a wand and tell everyone to come back to work,” explained Kippen. “Work needs to be a place of inspiration, aspiration and collaboration with created opportunities for engaging. L&D needs to be about creating a culture whereby we're doing more learning by peers, more learning from each other.”
Related Article: Designing a New Rhythm of Collaboration for the Modern Workplace
Frequent Feedback Is Your Friend
When organizations cling to annual performance reviews, they’re leaving development opportunities on the table because talking about skills and learning once a year isn’t effective, noted Johnson. Plus, she said, that conversation is often mixed in with compensation details, which further confuses the issue.
Instead, best practices dictate that frequent, performance-focused feedback better supports learning and development efforts — and employee experience.
In hybrid or virtual settings, leaders need to be intentional about creating connections by scheduling both casual and formal opportunities for meaningful conversations beyond the traditional annual sit-down, noted Kippen.
“The whole performance review space has gone through an evolution revolution; many companies — like Deloitte — have moved away from them,” he said, noting that many organizations are instead opting to create a coaching culture. “Not just up and down but also sideways, so we can do these quick pull-ups and have frequent feedback.”
Kippen points to research showing that millennials and Gen Zs thrive on getting that feedback, which offers a strong social connection that compels them to return to the office. Johnson agreed: Encouraging communities of practices are great ways to bring people together, she said.
“If a manager understands data with respect to their team and what skills they have, it makes it easier for them to have conversations with people,” she explained. “Coaching, connections and opportunities to build people skills that weren't reinforced during their management training would also be useful.”
Related Article: The Art of Delivering Feedback in Today's Hybrid Workplace
The Future Starts Now
Building a coaching culture without a strong learning culture isn’t likely to bolster an organization’s chances of success. That’s why L&D professionals need to ask many questions in assessing the essential skills required by role, said Kippen.
“What is it that we have? What are we missing? How are we going to get what we're missing? Are we going to build or buy what we're missing? What's hot, what's not? What's the emerging skill that we need for the future? And then, how are we going to build or buy to get that?” he said.
Building employees’ skills is also a great retention strategy because most people want to stay within organizations where they’re learning for tomorrow rather than repeating the same tasks every day.
“It's a matter of assessing the work environment and the marketplace, and then assessing our talent to see what we need, how that needs to be improved and what we need for the future,” Kippen added.
While that can seem daunting, companies can be agile in this space by deciding, for example, which top five skills are needed within the next year.
“Be more organic and start small, immediately, with a sense of urgency to develop that capability internally, while also from a long-term perspective doing more of that heavy lifting to setting up a skills architecture,” he suggested.
With robust L&D processes and strong relationships with their supervisors in place, organizations have a better shot at keeping their top talent.
“I would prioritize my investment around creating empathic, authentic, aware leaders, and I would be giving leaders tools to do that better in a hybrid-based format — all enabled by technology. Those are skills for the future that leaders need,” he said.
