21 insights to maximise your L&D investment

Learning and development is popular these days. Budgets are up and responsibilities are growing. The number of resources for upskilling workers is at an all-time high. Mobile, social, and cloud technologies are reinventing how employees learn, adding more flexibility and autonomy to the experience. And yet, learners aren’t happy.

Their satisfaction levels don’t reflect the brighter industry picture. Coursera, a U.S.-based MOOC platform surveyed hundreds of L&D professionals and learners about their goals, priorities, and challenges. They uncovered both sides of the story to see where L&D was aligned with employees and where they were missing the mark. Here are the 21 fresh insights, from the report. It can help you to reflect on your approach to be able to identify the gaps and get more effectiveness from your L&D strategy.

1. L&D budgets are on the rise.

2. You have more ways to delight your learners than ever before.

3. Bold ideas are moving you forward.

4. Something’s broken — employees aren’t satisfied.

5. Both parties agree L&D is a two-way street.

6. Employees are hungry to learn.

7. Employees don’t learn so they can leave, they learn so they can stay.

8. Helping employees grow is L&D’s top goal.

9. Hard skills beat soft skills in the battle for L&D investment.

10. Learners have their eyes on soft skills, too.

11. L&D starts and stops with quality for learning leaders.

12. Only half of employees are satisfied with quality.

13. You have to worry about quality so your employees don’t have to.

14. Content relevance is what matters most to employees.

15. L&D isn’t delivering relevant content.

16. Everyone agrees: there’s not enough time to learn.

17. Most employees want to learn in bite-sized increments.

18. Employees want a better mobile experience and credentials that count.

19. The classroom isn’t dead, but online learning has the edge.

20. Online degrees: the future is already here.

21. Specialisations prove skills have been mastered.

Views are personal.

The author is the founder and CEO of Talent Power Partners a global Leadership development company based in Bangalore. She is a leadership development specialist, an ICF-certified executive coach [PCC] and author of the book - Team Decision Making.