Data shows ‘a painful rate of progress’ for most practitioners; evidence-based shortcuts are ‘desperately’ needed to kick-start interventions, say experts
Nearly all (93 per cent) learning and development (L&D) professionals want to integrate learning and work, but only 15 per cent are delivering on this, a new report has found.
Although 19 per cent of L&D budget is allocated to learning technologies, and organisations have doubled the amount of technology they use, L&D departments are still struggling to deliver against their goals, according to the latest Towards Maturity 2016-17 Learning Benchmark Report, Unlocking Potential.
The study of 600 L&D leaders from 48 countries found that 95 per cent wanted to respond faster to changing business conditions, but only 19 per cent were making progress. A further 90 per cent said they wanted to play an active role in supporting business innovation – but only 17 per cent were succeeding.
Towards Maturity’s data analysis has identified the L&D strategies that were most likely to correlate with the five essential outcomes of a successful L&D team (improving efficiency, fine-tuning processes, boosting performance, cultivating agility and influencing culture).
Its data shows that L&D teams that achieved goals related to improving efficiency used tactics such as integrating technology into face-to-face training (used by 45 per cent of professionals who achieve this goal, compared to 21 per cent of non-achievers), and regularly reviewing programmes to maintain relevance (66 per cent compared to 35 per cent).
Teams that were successful in achieving goals benefitted from improved performance. Almost three-quarters (71 per cent) delivered learning in time to meet business needs, and two-thirds (66 per cent) used activities to practise learning outcomes.
Laura Overton, founder and CEO of Towards Maturity, said: “This year, we have used a new statistical analysis to highlight tactics that the most successful organisations are using to deliver impact on the most pressing business challenges. With the data showing a painful rate of progress for most L&D teams, these evidence-based shortcuts are desperately needed. Our aim is to use our data to help learning professionals kick-start interventions that will have the biggest impact.”
The report also found that 71 per cent of ‘top deck’ learning teams – those in the top 10 per cent of the benchmark – were led by high-performing learning professionals, rather than individuals with an HR or business background. Additionally, these leaders were active learners, with 90 per cent seeking new work experiences to learn, and 80 per cent proactively building personal learning networks.
Face-to-face learning was still the most popular delivery method (56 per cent), compared to 22 per cent delivered online only. While 7 in 10 L&D professionals were using video and mobile, 61 per cent were failing to achieve significant progress in meeting their goals for a digitally enabled learning strategy.