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Home / Resources / The importance of using L&D insights to shape a robust learning strategy.

The importance of using L&D insights to shape a robust learning strategy.

Date: Read time: 3 mins.

Is your organisation’s L&D strategy the best it can be?

It’s no secret that employees, now more than ever, are expecting their organisation to offer them development and growth opportunities. With the Great Resignation ongoing, HR and L&D teams everywhere are being tasked with implementing effective upskilling, reskilling, and other training development programmes in order to keep employees engaged and satisfied with their work.

However, this is old news for anyone keeping up with L&D updates following the COVID-19 lockdown. The demands for better opportunities for growth in the workplace have increased - and, in many cases, recognised as valid. Organisations across the globe have been investing in their employees, ensuring they have access to brilliant and fulfilling learning opportunities.

So – problem solved? Hold that thought.

Robust learning programmes are the first piece of the puzzle.

The energy put into implementing L&D programmes within organisations is certainly admirable. Providing opportunities for employee growth has been demonstrated time and again to not only improve employee retention but also to make organisations appear more attractive to potential employees. But if this is the case, why are we still talking about the Great Resignation?

Fitting learning experiences into an organisation’s workflow only addresses part of the problem. Recent research indicates that while L&D investment across various sectors and organisations is increasing, that expenditure is often going to waste due to poor planning and data analysis. Without the means to properly collect and assess the data generated by L&D programmes, there is no way to measure whether the learning is actually useful or providing decent ROI. Moreover, many organisations may need assistance in analysing the information they collate, as well as advice on how to best implement the changes required to get the most out of their learning resources.

In short, learning systems without a great learning partner to provide insight and assistance will often fall flat and fail to address the issues they were put in place to solve.

Using data analytics & insights to embed a culture of learning.

The recent reports about Amazon’s employee retention figures provide clear examples of the impact of poor or improper analysis of learning data. An Engadget article, collecting information from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Employment Law Project, reports that Amazon’s employee turnover is roughly 150% annually - and attributes part of this high turnover to insufficient L&D management within the organisation. The findings indicate employee training data is being inadequately tracked, with no standardised process to measure the impact of training measures on the organisation.

It isn’t only Amazon facing this problem. A recent report from Capita, polling 1,500 office workers and 1,000 HR decision makers, found that only 25% of employees believe their organisation offers a good learning culture.

These points highlight two key ways in which organisations can fall short of providing truly great L&D experiences for their employees:

  1. They don’t know what to do with the learning data.
  2. Having learning opportunities doesn’t necessarily mean an organisation demonstrates a culture of learning.

Ultimately, creating the time, space, and opportunities for learning is but one piece of the puzzle. To properly integrate learning into an organisation, a culture of learning must be engendered by offering employees truly engaging and memorable learning experiences.

Furthermore, data must be collected and analysed at every point of the learning experience. In doing so, an organisation’s L&D offerings can be continuously iterated and improved, feeding back into the learning culture. This, however, takes time, resources, and expertise – which is why some organisations may need to seek out a learning partner that can help integrate great L&D into their workplace.

How Sponge can help.

Our Learning Performance Platform is designed to capture and analyse your learning data and feed it back to our in-house experts so they can design the best learning experiences for your workforce.