Plan. Engage. Inspire. How to make your L&D budget count in 2024

Plan. Engage. Inspire: Make your 2024 Learning Budget count.??

In 2019, 99% of L&D professionals agreed that if skills gaps weren’t closed, organisations would be negatively impacted in the years to come. The 2023 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report puts agility at the centre of its message, for both learners and organisations.??

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In volatile times, it can feel like the safest path is the most familiar. This can leave both professionals and the organisations they work for stuck in patterns that are no longer truly serving their goals. The WEF recently revised its prediction that 50% of workers would need upskilling by 2028 – it's now 2025, a narrow window for organisations to take action. It's clear that self-development can build career resilience. It's clear that agility is the only way to adapt to an ever-changing economic and political landscape. And, it’s clear that the time is now. But how can organisations ensure their investment in learning is having optimal impact on both their people and their bottom line??It's a question I often gets asked when speaking to leaders.

The LinkedIn report found 83% of businesses wanting to build a people-centric culture. With employee experience becoming more and more crucial to the attraction, retention and productivity of hard-fought-for talent, it's no surprise that cultivating this kind of culture is priority. But this kind of shift takes more than the rolling out of ambitious programmes; it involves the deployment of smaller actions and interventions to inspire the workforce to come aboard in earnest.??

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“Progress toward career goals is the number one motivation for employees to learn” - LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2023?

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Upskilling is the future of work, but what’s important here is to frame workplace learning around the goals, interests and aspirations of the individual, demonstrating not only that it can offer self-development tools but be part of an employee’s internal mobility within the organisation. If you can show your employees you are truly invested in their interests, you can then show them how this aligns with the vision of the company itself. At the two-year mark, an employee who has made an internal move has a greater chance of staying with their company. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean promotion, it could mean a side-step to a role more suited to their goals, facilitated by the learning of new skills through company initiatives. Essentially, it's about focusing on the talent you have and how they can best serve your purpose; if they are motivated and engaged in their work, you stand to benefit too. When just 26% have been encouraged to learn a new skill and just 15% encouraged to move into a new role, it's clear there’s more to be done to capitalise on the positive impact of internal mobility. This is where HR and L&D leaders can really work together to ensure optimal outcomes.?

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When it comes to planning your learning budget for 2024, you can better facilitate this agility by moving from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more meticulous model where you seek to be even more specific about the skills gaps and training needs of your workforce, whilst looking ahead to the likely requirements of a fast-moving future. Collaborating with management and getting meaningful feedback from employees can lay the groundwork, and then you can use performance data to see where poor performance and poor confidence intersect, for example.??

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When money is tight, it's obviously important to prioritise the highest impact interventions - but always consider the longer term in order to foster the kind of learning culture that will drive engagement and resilience within your teams. 49% of employees say they don’t have time to spare on learning. This is where culture is important. If learning is offered without the consideration of ample time provision, it can become a burden; an extra thing to ‘squeeze in’ - not an ideal learning mindset. Companies with a culture of learning are 92% more likely to innovate. As we said, this is a process that happens in the micro. And one of the key parts of that is through role-modelling, where even the top of the C-suite get involved. This can really unite an organisation behind its common aims and ensure no one feels undervalued in their role. As we know, ‘one rule for us, another for them’ does not go down well in any setting. Looking outward to emerging trends is also key - no organisation is an island and how we move with the rest of the world matters greatly to the sustainability and success of our businesses. ? ?

Once you know what you want to do, gaining employee buy-in is the last crucial step. But perhaps it shouldn’t be seen as a last step - if we are continuously engaging with our workforce in order to strategise, the buying-in process has already begun. It becomes less of a chore that’s added to the pile of requirements upon them and more a natural part of working life.

Self-development as standard.

Learning as fundamental.

Career planning an organisational norm.??

These are key to successful business performance.

There are of course other ways to increase engagement - with incentives and competition, but remember if you do use these methods to relate them back to the work and the ultimate goals of the employee. Otherwise, it becomes a bit of an empty gesture. Far better to truly inspire to increase motivation and build the all-important learning culture that will supercharge the impact of our precious time and money, and get us moving in the right direction before time runs out.??

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