How L&D Improves Career Pathing Outcomes
Professional development is coming to play a central role in employee retention, engagement, and success.
The 2023 Workplace Learning Report found that the percentage of learning and development (L&D) professionals partnering with executive leadership in their organization is surging, and with good reason. As employees increasingly associate job happiness with their own personal growth, the role of L&D is clearly becoming pivotal to a productive and profitable future.
Read on to explore how professional development and career pathing initiatives are pushing business forward, with L&D in the driver’s seat — and how to take the lead.
Agile organizations fare better
Organizations that are positioned to respond with the greatest agility are more likely to weather whatever comes their way next. With the lessons of yesterday driving investments for tomorrow, most leaders understand that the key to unlocking organizational agility lies in developing a skilled workforce.
Creating a people-centric culture through career pathing
In the latest Workplace Learning Report, 83% of organizations named building a more people-centric culture as a business imperative.
Climbing the (narrow, easily blocked) corporate ladder is a thing of the past, replaced by a much more effective strategy that centers the skills, drive, and desired career goals of individual workers. When aligned with corporate goals, career pathing helps your organization develop the talent you need to gain a competitive edge.
89% of L&D pros believe that proactively building employee skills will secure future organizational success.
These wins are achieved in large part through optimizing investments in your workforce through skill development and a learning culture. With roughly half of L&D professionals working closely with C-suite members, it is up to L&D leaders to make the case for this investment.
Why an L&D career pathing strategy matters
Learning and skill development are essential components of career pathing. The Workplace Learning Report offers important data points for L&D leaders to keep in mind while developing their corporate career pathing strategy.
Developing the skills your workforce needs
Skill building remains a critical function of career pathing. The talent disruption of the pandemic shined a light on skill gaps within organizations. With this hard-earned lesson in mind, it is important to look ahead to the skills that are most in demand now, and which have the greatest durability.
The skill sets needed to succeed have changed by 25% since 2015, and are projected to change by 50% in 2027.
These 10 skills are currently in highest demand:
- Management
- Communication
- Customer Service
- Leadership
- Sales
- Project management
- Research
- Analytical skills
- Marketing
- Teamwork
While role-specific skills are in high demand, so are core people skills, especially as more workers are connecting within a hybrid workplace.
Building a proactive learning culture
By implementing and managing user-friendly tools like online learning software, L&D leaders can empower a learning culture throughout their organization. This means, for example, helping managers work more proactively with their teams to directly develop customized plans. These tend to be much more effective at driving results than blanket organizational programs with no follow-through.
Only 35% of workers were encouraged to learn by their managers.
Sure enough, L&D leaders cite “supporting career development” as one of the top three priority training topics for managers.
Attracting top talent
As organizations recover from upheaval and work to reorganize their workforce around the skills they need, one key opportunity to explore is forming a partnership between L&D and talent acquisition.
Learning leaders often have a keen insight into which skills workers possess within the organization, and can help the talent acquisition team prioritize hiring internal talent to fill these new roles.
Learn more: How Learning Programs Attract and Retain Top Talent
Skill building and career pathing: Keys to organizational agility
Embracing a people-centric culture of skill building and career pathing is crucial for enhancing organizational agility.
With a skilled workforce, organizations can quickly pivot to new opportunities and adjust their strategies to meet changing market demands. Skill building fosters a culture of continuous improvement, where employees are encouraged to seek out new learning opportunities and take ownership of their development. This results in a more innovative and agile organization that is well-equipped to navigate the ever-evolving business landscape.
Dive deeper into the 2023 Workplace Learning Report: Building the Agile Future
Help your employees develop skills they can use right away.