Challenges Faced By L&D teams

In this era of ever changing world, people need to be constantly learning to keep themselves up to the pace of the change in the environment. Some CEO’s of traditional organizations believed learning and development teams as a burden rather than an asset.

With times paradigm and mindsets have changed.

The average Skill Life of any skill set has become almost five years, so organizations who aren’t learning constantly will fall behind.

People leave the organization as they want to learn for growth or they have not learnt for growth, in either ways they organization will see a high turnover of employees.

As per some survey published around 8 percent CEO’s see and Business Impact from their L&D programs and around 4 percent see ROI from these programs.

Interesting, right??

What does it mean, either the department is inefficient or the process? Could be either of it. But with the way the environment has changed the way learning happens also have changed. Knowing and addressing the challenges faced by the L&D departments will not only give a good impact on the system but also reap benefits to the businesses on the whole.

I have taken some inputs from the internet to build some of the challenges faced. So, some of the articulated points below are not just my thoughts J

1.   Deal with change. The pace at which the change happens in an organization is faster than the change is been understood and adapted to. Individual employees will also need support the speed on the change if they are to develop the resilience to withstand changes in their own roles.

2.   Budget. Most of the learning departments do not cascade program well stating limited budgets available. Budgets are needed to execute programs, but the departments should also try and get out of the box thinking to handle scenarios like this.

3.   Serve global, virtual or geographically-dispersed diverse populations. Organizations are longer limited to one office or a location and having presence across the globe, this presents direct challenges such as developing the ability to deliver learning virtually or in multiple languages, as well as indirect challenges such as developing a communal sense of unity, whether that’s across different countries or even across different locations in the same city. 

4.   Internal Constraints. This challenge such as lower staff numbers budgets - or from external constraints, such as the demand from customers for increasingly low-cost options.

5.   Acceptance for learning from leaders. When leaders must make decisions on multiple activities, training and talent professionals need to ensure that learning remains a necessity not an optional portion in the plan.

6.   Breaking the Learning. Learners may not be able to spend time at length for the sessions most of the time due to their own constraints and managers are increasingly reluctant to sanction time away from the workplace for their teams. So, there must be shift in the paradigm while planning the training in such a way that content and learning is planned for both online and offline modes and understand the need to change the pace of the training delivered along with the learner’s job function.

7.   Employee engagement. Keeping the employees engaged for their learning so that the training does not just become a checklist but a growth path to keep learners thoroughly engaged through all aspects of the learning experience. Having said this collaboration between the employees is very essential. This not only will give them a cross learning but also will create a sense of bonding with the coworkers.

8.   Support business. Work closely with managers and leaders and think about the skills which the employees need to get a depth of, which in return would to help the organization survive and grow. 

9.   Accepting the World Learning. The world has changed a lot and there have been multiple sources available for a subject on the social media which the learners would want to use. Getting an acceptance on such sources in the learning would engage the employees more.

To conclude, how to cope up with the challenges and make sure the learning is not ignored. Just by selecting a right platform will not help, but changing the standpoint of the complete learning as a need of the organization growth rather than an optional component for the HR to be responsible for.

I will welcome comments and thoughts, or questions which may be able to give more insights on your own experience within the organization or otherwise.

You can reach me out on LinkedIn or email me @ [email protected]