Investing in people while meeting budgetary constraints is ‘a tricky balance’

Are employers giving their staff the learning and development opportunities they say they want? The latest data suggests in many cases the answer is no, and businesses are losing talent as a result. So how can employers free up time for staff to take up L&D opportunities without it impacting on the day-to-day job? We have a suggestion. 

This is an issue covered by People Management in ‘How can HR and L&D collaborate to allow employees more time to learn?’ It looks at two recent surveys. The first is the CIPD’s 2023 Learning at Work survey of 1,108 HR and L&D practitioners. It found that while 51% felt their organisation’s people managers encouraged participation in learning and development, only 39% believed employees were given time away from their day-to-day role to take part in L&D activities.  

The second, by Aspire, highlights the challenge in retaining staff. They surveyed more than 900 jobseekers also found that 77% of employees have also applied for a new job while working in their current role, and 62% of those have interviewed for a new position. However, nearly half of respondents said that additional training and development opportunities would keep them motivated and prevent them from leaving.

The article goes on to give the views of a number of HR professionals who make the case for better collaboration between HR and L&D to free up more time for learning. Ultimately though time spent learning is time away from the day-to-day job and that has a cost to it. As Alexander Fahie, founder of tech learning company Ethical Angel, points out creating employee learning opportunities while meeting employers' efficiency expectations is a “tricky” balance.

So, let’s get a view on that from our Head of Client Training, Trish Embley who has been working on finding a solution to this problem:
Trish Embley: “It is a tricky balance. Learning and development is really important but we all know the squeeze on everybody to meet targets. So, I think the answer is we've got to look at the way we deliver training now and make it as accessible and ‘bite sized’, to coin a phrase, as possible for managers so that rather than get them to devote, say, three hours of a day to submerge themselves in training, which, okay, in some situations might be appropriate, but with other particular certain topics they can do as and when, any time, any place. So, they might spend 15 minutes in one day doing a bit of interactive online learning then later on the week they might do some self-study, some reading on some guidance notes, some articles. We also believe that there is no substitution for the practical application. You can go away and read something, or go and do some e-learning, but you need to have that live opportunity. So, maybe some small group team works that can be shorter because a lot of the knowledge has been shared at this point, where you do some practical application. So, I think it's really taking what we used to do in one big silo and splitting it into those smaller pieces that adapt around busy workloads of managers.”

Joe Glavina: “Moving on, Trish, to measuring L&D outcomes and demonstrating success. Another point they flag in the People Management article is whilst L&D brings returns they are typically long-term and hard to measure. Would you agree with that?”

Trish Embley: “Yes, I'd certainly agree that they are hard to measure. We've been trying for years to try and follow up and ensure that our clients are getting their return on investment and it can be really, really tricky.”

Joe Glavina: “The CIPD’s L&D report quotes a learning analyst who makes an interesting point. She says in the case of  formal learning ask managers to get involved with assessing whether the learning has been successful and has made a difference – only 29% do this. What do you make of that approach?”

Trish Embley: “I'd be a little bit cautious about that. I think managers probably feel that they're overloaded anyway and particularly now that we encourage them, and they should be taking responsibility for certain areas of people management. So, I think the approach I prefer is we'd get the same result through a series of what we would call ‘nudges’ after the training. So, for example, at the end of our training sessions we always ask participants to commit to certain actions and then what we mean by nudges is, after the event, we follow up on that. We can do that either through emails or, again, small group discussion, looking back at the learning and, for example, saying in a team meeting we might have a nudge card that says, okay, after your respect at work training, who here has been able to, and would like to discuss, how they've been an active bystander when they've seen something inappropriate in the workplace? We might have an email saying describe how you have approached this issue of performance management. Have you increased the number of one to ones you've been having with the remote workers? Here's a further article you can read. I think through those ongoing nudges we can get a better feel for what has happened as a result of the original learning, so there's our benefit, but also I think it just makes the training and learning more sustainable. It's not something that I come on, I attend, I walk out with great intentions, but then I just go back into my old ways. It means that over the next few months, even the next year, we're making sure that I'm practising what I actually learned and behaviours are altering and if we can capture that through those responses to the nudges, there’s our measurable results.”

Joe Glavina: “A final question Trish which is about businesses finding the money for L&D. We've just been through a pandemic, there’s a cost-of-living crisis, budgets are tight. What's your message to clients on finding that balance?” 

Trish Embley: “Yes, obviously it's tricky times but I think given the battle for talent and the need to recruit and retain, a lot of L&D professionals recognise that if we don't invest in developing the skills of our colleagues then you're going to lose them. So, I think, again, it's about looking at what are the most cost-effective ways of doing this, what forms of training can we develop using the technology that we all got to grips with during lockdown and I think if we do that effectively then we will walk that balance between investing in people, developing their skills, but keeping an eye on budgets as well.”

That People Management article is called ‘How can HR and L&D collaborate to allow employees more time to learn?’. We’ve put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.

LINKS
- Link to People Management article