Current challenges and the
demand for digital learning

“Doing more with less has become a very familiar phrase in the current climate. Not just for L&D, but also for the vast majority of jobs out there. With challenges in recruiting and retaining employees, there’s an urgent need to upskill the existing workforce in areas that were covered by specific roles in the past. The impact is that the demand for rapidly creating training solutions on specialist subjects has increased.”

“We’re very good at finding answers to questions and solutions for problems. The challenge is making sure those are the right questions, and those are the priority problems. L&D does not exist in a vacuum of ‘learning’. While we’re working on our improved performance-focused approach to problem solving, we’re also figuring out how to be efficient and effective at the same time with our business stakeholders. Sometimes, this means saying no to good intentions if they’re not going to make a difference.”

“L&D continues to face many of the same challenges it has for the last decade: keeping pace with a hyper-modernized world, evidencing value beyond completions and smile sheets and contending with fractured engagement across the organization. However, these challenges have become even more pressing to resolve due to tightening budgets and L&D being constantly scrutinized by the wider organization.”

It’s a challenge to correlate development to the speed of business and too often we take shortcuts or we prioritize activity over impact and end up wasting the time of our workforce on learning interventions that aren’t designed to bring value.”

“The challenges facing L&D are no different than they were in the past…what is new is the transformation into Skills-Based Organizations. This is a massive shift in how work gets done and in turn, and how individuals are upskilled. Long-form role-based curricula are no longer viable. Likewise, content consumption doesn’t upskill. L&D needs to be heavily involved in the broader HR initiatives, such as Talent Marketplaces, to be in lockstep with people development and internal mobility.”

“Focusing relentlessly on closing the massive skills gap that exists [is a top challenge]. We’re in the largest-scale job transformation in human history and we have a capability crisis that’s costing market share for business and leaving too many people behind.”

“Research we did in mid-2022 found that L&D teams may not have the skills they need to help their organizations thrive. L&D functions are being asked to tackle big, strategic, org-wide problems, and they’re getting much more visibility at very senior levels of the organization. In this new role, L&D functions must primarily operate as components of the larger organizational ecosystem, not as an L&D silo. To do this, L&D functions need more leadership skills, more collaboration and teamwork skills, and more core business skills. “

“On top of the skills shortage at an organization level, there’s a shortage of people with L&D skills. That means that L&D experts are having to train up people who are coming in from different fields/backgrounds. This represents a great opportunity to increase quality and leverage new skills to do better learning, but is an added timesuck.”

“Organizational change is the biggest challenge. Keeping ahead as much as possible and knowing that new hires coming in will need to flex in the very near future so we have to message and prepare them for that experience.”

“As with any large, continually evolving and transforming organization, the challenge is being able to deploy the right resources and learning opportunities across every function and geography as required and to effectively communicate those opportunities and their benefits to all for whom they are available.”

“Unfortunately, engagement remains the primary issue. We invest time, energy, budget and resources into our L&D functions and yet our employees still do not engage. Why aren’t they connecting? This is the question we are still struggling to answer in my opinion.”

“As the recession drives more competition for talent and the need to focus much more on employee retention, skills growth and employee engagement are critical to keep and attract those top candidates. For companies to differentiate and adapt much more quickly, they rely on employee skills, knowledge and individual innovation more than ever.”

“L&D were already feeling overwhelmed in 2022. This sense of overload isn’t going to change anytime soon with many teams having a stake in everything from onboarding to Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion to performance management.”