At the start of the year, our Challenges for 2024 That Got Our Attention article highlighted five critical learning and development (L&D) challenges revealed by a number of respected research sources. However, we turned the tables and suggested that L&D functions might further their strategic influence by reframing and acting on those challenges as priorities and potential opportunities for the year.
Flash forward and we’re at the mid-year mark — the ideal time to assess the progress made toward claiming those L&D opportunities. Here’s a quick review of the topics we raised in January, along with a few of the actions organizations are taking on each. In addition, we’ve noted some free Atana resources to help you learn more and support your efforts to turn these 2024 possibilities into realities for your organization:
1. The need to improve manager and leader effectiveness
Researchers and L&D leaders strongly agree that managers are vital links between organizations and their workforces, and that investing in people leaders’ abilities to guide, motivate, and develop individuals and teams is critical to producing better business outcomes.
Potential actions for L&D:
- Re-evaluate and redefine managers’ roles to reflect expanding demands and responsibilities
- Simplify managerial duties to remove unnecessary tasks and streamline administrative work
- Rethink performance management systems to free managers from excessive documentation requirements and enable more time for connections with direct reports
Source: Fast Company
2. Persistent concerns about talent
Finding, engaging, and keeping qualified talent is a mandate for every business enterprise. In a post-pandemic work world, providing excellent learning and development programming, along with clearly defined career-progression pathways, remains a preferred strategy for attracting, developing, and retaining top employees.
Potential actions for L&D:
- Emphasize investment in L&D as a means to heighten workers’ commitments to their employers (70% of employees confirm that learning strengthens their sense of connection with their organizations)
- Leverage learning and growth opportunities to attract and engage talent, particularly younger workers who are motivated by career advancement
- Focus greater attention and visibility on opportunities for internal mobility to encourage retention of existing talent
Source: LinkedIn's 2024 Workplace Learning Report
Supporting Atana resources:
Making the Business Case for L&D: Four Critical Themes
5 Steps HR Can Take to Prioritize Internal Mobility
3. Support for positive, healthy organizational culture
Optimizing the employee experience while also delivering on the employer’s obligation to provide a safe and respectful work environment are core fundamentals of organizational cultures that drive high-level enterprise and individual performance. In a business world characterized by rapid and ongoing change, establishing and maintaining positive organizational cultures is a continuous and crucial process.
Potential actions for L&D:
- Create environments that offer safe and empowering spaces for employees to ask questions, share opinions, and behave authentically
- Expand efforts to assess and impact employee engagement, and respond to employee feedback
- Align learning objectives to provide content that reflects and communicates leadership’s vision for the organizational culture
Source: LinkedIn
4. Heightened emphasis on skills
L&D professionals’ daily work lives center on the strategic imperative of upskilling employees to achieve culture alignment, peak job performance, and the workforce readiness companies require to produce business results now while also building the capabilities needed to prepare for future innovation and competitive advantage.
Potential actions for L&D:
- Perform continuous assessments of business needs and workforce skills gaps
- Encourage employees to become continuous learners and shape workplace environments in which learning is viewed as a valuable and normal facet of the employee lifecycle
- Create plans that enable organizations to rapidly implement and realize business benefits from skill-building training completed by employees
Source: Oracle
5. Proliferation of inferior learning content (and the need to counter it)
Enthusiasm for rapid and impressive advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with eagerness to reap AI’s capabilities in instructional design has put the quality of learning content in jeopardy for some organizations. While there are obvious savings in production time and effort to be gained from applying AI to content-creation efforts, L&D functions must carefully balance anticipated benefits with the potential for inaccuracies, biases, and other negative consequences that result in substandard learning content.
Potential actions for L&D:
- Ensure that instructional designers and other L&D staff understand the basics of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential applications to organizational learning
- Assess the implications and potential effects of AI use on overall organizational learning strategy
- Partner with information technology (IT), compliance offices, and other appropriate business functions to craft guidelines governing the application of generative AI in employee learning and other organizational pursuits
Source: i4cp
Mid-2024 is the perfect time for L&D to take a critical look at H1 efforts and outcomes. Has your team succeeded in turning the year’s challenges into opportunities? Use your review to celebrate progress, acknowledge ongoing needs, and determine the best and most constructive paths forward.
Combining engaging, award-winning content with embedded behavioral assessments, Atana takes learners from intent to action and delivers measurable improvements in employee behaviors and attitudes.
