Top 3 Challenges L&D Will Tackle in 2022

Our recent survey of Learning and Development (L&D) leaders revealed a focus on employee retention, reskilling and acquiring more employee feedback to steer their learning initiatives. Based on the survey, our Enterprise Learning 2022 Annual Report shows how learning teams will respond to these needs by revamping learning materials, addressing skills gaps and training employees on improving the customer experience.

The first blog based on the report outlined 5 Trends Top of Mind for L&D, and the second blog revealed three statistics around how L&D is investing in technology and content. This third series in the blog will tackle three challenges that L&D intends to face head-on this year.

Alongside shifts around employee skills and engagement, L&D leaders also need to focus more on how they’re setting their companies up for success by providing great customer experience. This change can be seen in the top three priorities that L&D professionals say their programs need to address while working with lines of business executives. Let’s break them down one at a time, starting with the biggest mover.
 

Customer Service and Conflict Resolution

The top two priorities were the same as our previous survey, but in 2022, an emphasis on the customer has moved up significantly—from eighth to third place. This change could represent how challenging several factors (supply chain, worker availability, rapid digital transformation) have been over the past two years.

Indeed, 80 percent of customers expect better customer service, with respondents saying they expect more responsiveness and empathy post-pandemic, according to a 2020 study from Hiver.

This issue is particularly pronounced among technology companies, where 59 percent cite customer services and conflict resolution as a top priority, ranking higher than closing skills gaps.

That said, in industries such as healthcare, the emphasis is still directly on employees, which could be a result of the immense strain the pandemic has placed on workers in this sector. Here, the top three priorities are evenly split among employee engagement, onboarding success rates/time-to-performance and closing skills gaps.
 

Business Metrics

Measuring success is a perennial focus for L&D teams, and it ranked number 1 again in our latest survey. Teams are always looking for ways to track progress and measure ROI. We’ve done a piece on L&D metrics that matter to the C-suite and a particularly powerful one that lists 10 Learning Analytics to Live By.

Knowing the business and aligning with its goals is often step No. 1. To ensure staff are educated and engaged to bring the company success, the L&D team must know what success means to the C-suite. Once those goals are outlined and agreed upon, L&D can establish the metrics it can contribute to—and report on. Most metrics reside in three key areas:

• Customers (satisfaction, retention, Net Promoter Score, etc.)
• Operations (staff mobility, product defects, unit cost)
• Revenue (sales, margins, EBIT)
   

Closing Skills Gaps

Skills gaps were an issue long before the pandemic. And while employment rebounded last year (U.S. unemployment fell to 3.9 percent at the end of 2021), that number doesn’t tell the whole story. As the pandemic continued in 2021, many workers reevaluated their careers, prompting millions of employees across industries to leave their jobs, creating the Great Resignation.

This trend obviously affected staffing decisions, as many companies struggled to find enough workers. In our survey of 200 business leaders and decision makers, availability and cost of labor was the number 1 concern for customer support in 2022.

Generation X, Millennials and Gen Z, which comprise more than 70 percent of the workforce, are challenging the norms of work. The average job tenure has decreased from 9.2 years in the 1980s to 3.4 years today. More than 90 percent of millennials do not plan to stay for more than three years in a job. Companies have to hire for key positions every couple of years as opposed to a decade, in the case of the Baby Boomer workers. When you couple the loss of knowledge with the cost to onboard/train new employees, the expenses really begin to rise.

Alongside costs, however, the Great Resignation also influenced the quality of training and professional development programs. This is especially true at large organizations, where 61 percent of respondents said it’s affected the quality “a lot” or a “great deal.”

The good news is that many L&D professionals seem to be setting the stage for better retention. In terms of preparing for future needs and trends in learning, our survey finds that the biggest emphasis is on employee engagement/experience and reskilling.
 

More on Changes and Trends

For more insights around how L&D teams are preparing the workforce of tomorrow, today, be sure to download your copy of our Enterprise Learning report, Proactively Planning: How L&D Leaders Are Adapting to an Unpredictable World. You’ll get actionable data and learn trends on the future of work, from those who will be leading the learning and development.