skillpath industry report: training trends 2018 · important trends we’ve identified that will...

SkillPath Industry Report: Training Trends 2018

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT (L&D) IS A CONSTANTLY EVOLVING FIELD, because the workplace and the people in it are always changing. That means that the purpose and focus of training is also constantly changing.

At SkillPath, we’re constantly striving to identify what lies ahead and how to adapt and grow to meet the demands of our existing and future clients. In the following pages, you will learn about some of the most important trends we’ve identified that will affect your organization soon, if they haven’t already.

You’ll also find insights from our experience in the learning and development field. We’ve delivered more than 16,000 training sessions annually across blended training modalities including eLearning, Webinar and live, instructor-led. That direct experience with organizations from small to large, from public to private, gives us a unique perspective on the challenges our clients face.

We hope you find this information thought-provoking and useful in planning your strategy. We believe it can be a tool for making proactive decisions about how to invest in learning and development to build a stronger, more productive workforce for the future—a workforce that supports the success of your organization for years to come.

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The New Lay of the Land: Social Changes Driving Learning and DevelopmentWe often think that learning and development is driven by specific needs inside an organization—but those needs are also driven by what happens outside of the organization. There is a major shift afoot in the social fabric today that will impact organizations dramatically over the next 5 – 10 years—and it’s driving three training trends that we think are worth examining more closely.

#1: A NEW SET OF LEADERS 10,000 a day. That’s how many Baby Boomers are turning 65 right now. The Pew Research Center says that by 2029, 18 percent of the United States population will have reached the age of retirement.

Boomers, once the largest of the generations, have a big footprint on every industry and walk of life in 21st-century America—and their retirement will have an even bigger one. Many of these Boomers have been key leaders in their organizations, setting the vision and establishing the organizational culture for decades. As they leave, and new, younger leaders step up to take their place, how do organizations maintain the culture and vision that have supported their success for so long—while opening the door to a new future built on a changing reality?

Younger emerging leaders may have big ideas, but many wonder if they have what it takes to seamlessly maintain the organization’s products, services and brand reputation without stumbling. Those are the very things that often are the foundation of the organization’s ongoing success. They are also a major factor in attracting a continuous supply of top new talent.

This loss of a generation of leaders is creating a new challenge none of us can miss: Leadership transition. To ensure a successful transition, the organization must create a continuous “pipeline” of leaders from other levels of the organization.

World-renowned author and leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith says there’s a big difference between succession planning and succession development. The action of developing key employees, rather than spending valuable time on planning, is the difference between successful and unsuccessful leadership transition. Goldsmith notes that many approaches to leadership transition “create a false sense that the planning process is an end in itself rather than a precursor to real development.”

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“Companies that fall short on managing leadership succession and development end up facing performance challenges due to market changes and talent attrition.Those firms will be forced to hire untested external talent or promote internal staff with an inadequate skill set.”

Med Yones, International Institute of Management

#2: A NEW VIEW OF LEADERSHIP Creating a continuous pipeline of leadership is a big task. Leadership is a learned skill, one that takes time and experience to build. That’s why many organizations today are on board with a modern approach that supports a “leaders at all levels” mindset.

It’s a fast-paced and competitive market out there, which means organizations have to respond quickly to customers, opportunities and challenges. There was a time when employees had to go up the chain of command to get permission to react. Today, frontline employees need to be able to respond immediately when a situation arises—strengthening customer relationships and building brand image through quick response, customer focus, and organizational ethics and accountability.

These are also the organizations that build employee loyalty and engagement by having capable and qualified people that they can promote from within. Those promotable employees are already familiar with the organizational culture and aware of past history. They know what made the organization strong in the past, and while they have powerful new ideas, they also know the value of the vision, brand and social market image that supported the organization’s success thus far.

Organizations that are winning in today’s marketplace are those that trust their employees to:

• Think critically

• Make good decisions quickly and confidently

• Work effectively with a diverse set of people internally and externally

• Be prepared to embrace change as part of the natural process

• Solve challenges across the organization through creativity, innovation and collaboration

All this requires training that is designed to encourage and support exploration, practice/application and growth—because leadership is not a simple skill to learn. It takes self-awareness, self-discipline and an understanding of human relationships, as well as strategic and tactical skills.

There’s one more thing to consider looking at this list. Employees today want and expect to be given more opportunity to make decisions, find creative solutions and resolve challenges, rather than just being told what to do and when to do it. This level of trust strengthens their engagement and helps your organization retain the best and the brightest.


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#3: A NEW KIND OF EMPLOYEE If we are going to ask our employees to be leaders at all levels of the organization, they’ve got to be …

Agile Adaptable, flexible enough to shift on the fly and ready to jump from one team or one project to another with enthusiasm and confidence

Empowered Self-directed, ready to take the initiative, have the authority to make decisions and respond to challenges, and respected and rewarded for innovative solutions that set our organization apart from the rest of the pack

Engaged Care about the outcome; confident in their abilities; and committed to the organization, its customers and the future

Just keep in mind: For employees to be committed to an organization’s future, they must believe that the organization is also committed to them and their future.

How do you develop an agile, empowered and engaged workforce?

It doesn’t happen overnight, but a good place to start is training. However, that training has to:

• Be both conceptual and experiential to provide a safe place to explore a new approach and gain confidence through practice

• Be customized to the needs of the learner, their level in the organization and their job responsibility

• Be directed toward both individual contributors and their managers and supervisors who need to become more adept as coaches and mentors

• Be designed to help employees embrace change, not just cope with it, and help their managers recognize how to successfully lead their teams through it

• Help all employees see the value of a diverse, multigenerational workforce where individual differences work together to support shared organizational goals

• Adapt to the changing technologies and training formats that make learning more accessible, more meaningful and more directly relevant to the immediate needs of the learner. In other words, not just technology for its own sake, but because it supports the learning experience in ways that other formats can’t.


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The Modern Employee: Changes in the WorkforceIt’s tempting to imagine a simple composite employee who represents all of the workers in an organization, but that’s just not realistic. Employees are individuals.

Today we have more generations than ever before in the workplace all at the same time. They have different backgrounds, different jobs, different knowledge and education, unique personalities and goals. They all have essential skills to offer— and very different ideas about what they expect and need from the workplace.

Organizations that are prepared to meet each of these employees where they are—and where they want to be—are the ones that will thrive in the emerging modern workplace and world market. How do we engage and motivate today’s “modern employee”? Start by looking at some intriguing facts …

CHANGING JOBS: ARE MILLENNIALS REALLY MORE LIKELY TO LEAVE?Clearly, the less time an employee stays with your organization, the lower the ROI you’re getting on your learning and development investment. So ensuring that employees are engaged and excited and willing to commit to your organization for the long term is vital to your overall success.

There has been a lot of discussion about the willingness of Millennials to change jobs frequently. According to a worldwide survey of 8,000 Millennials by Deloitte done in 2016, “Two-thirds of Millennials express a desire to leave their organizations by 2020. Businesses must adjust how they nurture loyalty among Millennials or risk losing a large percentage of their workforces.”

One eye-opening finding is that “71 percent of those likely to leave in the next two years are unhappy with how their leadership skills are being developed.” In fact, “50 percent of male and 48 percent of female respondents say they are ‘being overlooked for potential leadership positions.’”

Generally, younger workers are more likely to switch jobs frequently. There has been a drop in the time American employees spend at any given job according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median job tenure for wage and salary workers, which is the broadest category and includes employees just entering the workforce and those about to retire, has dropped from 4.6 years in January 2014 to 4.2 years in September 2016. In 2016, those workers under age 34 had a median job tenure of 2.8 years.

Many younger workers are in entry-level jobs, which they will likely leave soon to move up to something with more compensation and opportunity. At the other end of the spectrum are older workers who have been in a job for more than 10 years and have higher compensation—and more to lose (financially, emotionally, family-wise, etc.) from switching jobs. However, some data shows that Millennials are slightly more likely to stay longer than Gen Xers at a job. This is probably due to their experience with the Great Recession.

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“… while Baby Boomers started working with an eye on gaining stability, raising a family and ‘settling down,’ today’s young workers take none of that for granted. … they are more concerned than their predecessors with finding happiness and fulfillment in their work lives.”

Jeanne Meister, contributing writer at Forbes

CHANGING ATTITUDES: WHAT DOES THE MODERN EMPLOYEE WANT?Baby Boomers came into the workforce with certain expectations. They assumed they would “pay their dues,” be respected for their growing skills and experience and be rewarded for their loyalty and commitment. In return, they were willing to commit to a good employer for the long term and tended to be loyal workers willing to do whatever it took to make the organization successful.

Today’s younger Millennial employees are looking for something more. They expect:

• The work culture to align to their personal values, not the other way around

• Opportunities to play a decisive role in work projects and solving challenges—and not necessarily wait their turn to take a leadership role

• A chance to show their creativity and talents in all job responsibilities

• A continuous (some might say immediate) growth path to expanding responsibilities and increased compensation

Most of all, Millennials want a job that provides personal fulfillment.

Other differentiatorsWe know from a wealth of research that:

• Boomers have different communication preferences than Generation Xers and Millennials

• Each generation is motivated by different kinds of rewards

• Each generation differs in the way they like to learn, or the platforms on which they like to access learning

A survey by Future Workplace reveals other differentiators. Here are some of the results—which may surprise you.


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MULTIPLE GENERATIONS AT WORK FINDINGS 1

1 Workplace flexibility trumps salary and career progression for employees

• Managers underestimate the primary importance of flexible working hours for all workers

• Younger employees also value the opportunity to express their creativity, corporate values that match their own and employer assistance in paying off student loans

2 Workplace flexibility is a valued benefit, but working from home is not

• 47% prefer to find a job where they can primarily work from any location (of their own choosing)

• 45% prefer to find a job where they go to work on-site, away from their homes, with colleagues

• 7 % prefer to find a job where they can work from their homes most or all of the time

3 Workplace flexibility is a valued benefit, but almost half are unaware of company policy

• Only 44% of all employees are aware of telecommuting policies offered by their employers

4 Generational tension pervades the workplace

• 66% of Millennials agree that “My personal drive can be intimidating to other generations in the workplace”

• 61% of Millennials cite opportunities for career progression among top three criteria that make an employer attractive

5 Boomer bummer: Disengaged in the workplace

• 22% of Boomers are somewhat or very dissatisfied with opportunities for career progression

• Boomers are least likely to think that workplace training provides opportunity to learn new skills

6 Satisfaction with career progression varies by generation

• 71% of Millennials are somewhat or very satisfied with their opportunities for career progression

• 19% of Generation Xers are somewhat or very dissatisfied with their career progression

7 All generations look to employers for life skills training, not just for career development

• Financial planning was a priority for 23%, foreign language for 15% and health and wellness for 6%

8 More Gen Xers than Boomers expect to work until age 70

• 85% of Generation Xers—more than any generation—agree that they will work until age 70

• 78% of Boomers agree that they will be working until age 70

9 Millennials/Gen 2020 diverge in communication and learning approaches

• To communicate, they predict more use of video conferencing, texting and internal social networking

• To learn, they most value mentoring, formal classroom, tuition reimbursement and peer collaboration

10 Managers recommend nine key skills for the workplace of the future

• Leadership development

• Managing change• Workplace

technology skills• Critical thinking

• Innovation and creativity

• Oral communication• Business acumen• Data analytics• Global mindset

1 www.futureworkplace.com


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Highlights to consider

Learning orientation

• All generations are interested in personal and professional development. They’re seeking to improve their lives and their work.

• Millennials and younger workers list “mentoring” and “formal classroom” as top choices for learning delivery. (Classroom learning is becoming the norm—again. In fact, some industry insiders have deemed 2018 as the year of classroom learning.)

• Clearly, learning and development play a key role in keeping employees engaged and in retaining them

Flexibility and agility

• Flexibility is key for Millennials accepting a job and staying in it

• Millennials don’t seem to be as interested in working from home as once thought; they just want to be able to work anywhere, anytime via technology—and under office policies that recognize the need for that flexibility. Millennials value this more than salary and other rewards.

• Surprisingly, many Millennials aren’t even aware of telecommuting opportunities at their workplace

Engagement and motivation

• Millennials feel they aren’t getting enough notice for their potential, or enough training in leadership skills to help them advance (Deloitte). For Millennials, this opportunity to advance is a big criterion for any job they take—and keep.

• Boomers, as well as Gen Xers, are less engaged in part because they see little opportunity for advancement and don’t see as much opportunity to learn new skills that will benefit them in the workplace

• To keep Boomers and Gen Xers (sources of organizational culture and knowledge) on the job, show them how to gain skills they can use. Demonstrate their value by designing for their needs and goals, as well as those of the upcoming generations.

One of the best ways to show employees that they are valued and being prepared for expanded job responsibilities and opportunities is through targeted and meaningful learning opportunities customized to their needs, interests and level.


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MENTORING: CONNECTING THE GENERATIONS Boomers are the repositories of an organization’s culture and past leadership vision. They have helped guide organizations to where they are today, and their loss poses a risk for the future—unless we can pass their knowledge and skills on to the next generation.

Luckily, many Boomers and Gen Xers do not intend to retire until 70 or older, according to surveys. While that may frustrate some Millennials looking to move up, it provides a bridge between the generations to ensure that culture and vision are retained until younger leaders can transition to a more futuristic vision. Meanwhile, Millennials have said they want more mentoring as a key learning tool, as we can see in the survey by Deloitte.

Mentoring, when done right, provides ample opportunities for them to learn key leadership skills and to be given more opportunities to demonstrate their abilities as leaders. But when mentoring is done wrong—meaning either the mentor or the mentee doesn’t understand what’s required to make this a productive experience—it can lead to tension and resentment.

Mentoring is a learned skill—both for mentors and mentees. Boomers and Gen Xers can benefit from learning more about effective coaching and mentoring—skills that will serve them well in the workplace and help transmit their valuable knowledge and experience to upcoming generations. Millennials need to learn how to seek and respond to mentoring in order to reap the benefits.

Both sides need stronger skills in communication, interpersonal relationships and generational understanding. Training can make the difference to shift perspectives in ways that will benefit both your employees and your organization.


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ONE TRAIT ALL EMPLOYEES SHARE REGARDLESS OF GENERATIONWhile there are clearly distinct differences between the generations in terms of what they expect from work and how willing (and able) they are to change jobs to find it, in the end, there is one thing that unites them:

Everyone wants to find meaning and feel valued in his or her work.

Any employee in today’s workplace—of any generation—will leave a dead-end job if he or she has the means to do so and doesn’t feel valued, respected and engaged. In addition, the ones who will find it easiest to leave are those workers with higher-level skills, education and initiative—the very workers that you do not want to lose.

In the end, it all comes down to making sure employees feel engaged and valued—and learning and development programs play a major role. When you invest in your workforce, they are more prepared to invest their future with you.

“ … employees who derive meaning from their work are more than three times as likely to stay with their organizations—the highest single impact of any other survey variable they tested. … And the employees who have meaning don’t just stick around longer. They also report 1.7 times higher job satisfaction, and are 1.4 times more engaged at work.”

Jessica Amortegui“Why Finding Meaning At Work Is More

Important Than Feeling Happy,” Fast Company magazine

“What workers really need, to feel engaged in and satisfied by their jobs, is an inner sense of purpose. As Deloitte found in a 2016 study, people feel loyal to companies that support their own career and life ambitions — in other words, what’s meaningful to them. And, although that research focused on millennials, in the decade I’ve spent coaching seasoned executives, I’ve found that it’s a common attitude across generations. No matter one’s level, industry or career, we all need to find a personal sense of meaning in what we do.”

Kristi Hedges“5 Questions to Help Your Employees Find Their Inner Purpose,” Harvard Business Review


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Learning in the Workplace: Trends for 2018 and BeyondCompanies need talent that can easily adapt and take on new tasks with ease. Today, employees are beginning to realize that the one specialized skill that got them in the door may limit their future career path—unless they can diversify their skills and learn a new way of working.

The focus today is on building a workforce that is agile, empowered and engaged. Adapting your learning and development program to this new paradigm may seem like a daunting challenge—but this evolution of an organization’s workforce keeps companies competitive and ahead of the innovation curve. In the end, our learning and development programs must become just as agile as we are asking our employees to be.

So what do learning and development programs need to be focusing on in order to be relevant and engaging—and to meet the expectations of today’s employees?

Five trends driving today’s L&DHere are the top five trends we see emerging for 2018 and beyond that are affecting how we design and deliver training today and tomorrow.

• Continuous learning

• Employee-driven learning

• The new learning priority: Soft skills

• Personalized learning

• Learning as part of the total employee experience

“ ‘The workplace moves rapidly,’ says Julie Friedman Steele, board chair and CEO at World Future Society, a membership group for people who study changes across various industries. ‘Employers need workers who stay current.’ ”

https://www.monster.com/career-advice/ article/work-skills-2018-1217


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CONTINUOUS LEARNING It used to be that training (learning and development) was on a set schedule, limited to a once-a-year event, or even something that only happened when you changed positions or moved up to a more responsible role. That’s not enough today. The world is changing constantly, which means organizations and individuals have to change with it to stay competitive. Knowledge needs to be constantly refreshed and refined.

“The Rise of the Holistic Learning Experience,” a white paper by Cornerstone, states that “Continuous learning ensures organizations thrive, not just survive. Learning organizations continually outperform their peers.” These gains equate to a 37 percent increase in employee productivity and a 17 percent advantage in the ability to lead market share.

How do you deliver continuous learning? It can take many forms, and strategies vary depending on your industry, your organization and the role of the individual employee. But there are a few key attributes of continuous learning to keep in mind.

Continuous learning and development systems focus on:

• Pull rather than push, making learning tools and content accessible when employees need or want it

• A culture where learning is valued as much as work and productivity

• A blended delivery approach that makes more use of many formats, including more technology

• The value of social learning through interaction with peers, subject experts and in-house mentors

“While many organizations are struggling to adapt to these challenges, high-performing companies … are fundamentally rethinking what ‘learning’ and ‘development’ mean in the context of their business. They place the employee at the center of a new vision that treats learning as a continuous process, not an episodic event, and as a company-wide responsibility, not one confined to HR.”

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/finance/articles/cfo-insights-continuous-learning-environment.html


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EMPLOYEE-DRIVEN LEARNING Learning used to be defined by the employer, particularly by the HR department. Today, it’s a challenge to ensure that employees are getting the precise skills they need, when they need them and in the most accessible/meaningful form.

Employee learning takes three basic forms:

1. Knowledge/skills needed immediately to fulfill a task or a project

2. Knowledge/skills needed in the near future to grow in their current position

3. Knowledge/skills needed for career development and the organization’s long-term goals

Today, it’s recognized that most employees know what they need to learn to do better, to stretch further and to be seen as more valuable in the workplace. By allowing them the opportunity to define much of their own training, we give them what they need most— and also create an environment in which they feel engaged, respected and in control of their own development. This is what most younger workers are asking for.

Rather than telling them what courses to take and in what order, organizations should give them the tools to access what they need and want, within a framework that fits the needs of the organization as well. This is directly linked to the continuous learning approach.

Not only is the learning experience available continuously, but the path of learning is more open, rather than following a set/rote approach that can be frustrating for both the accelerated learner and the one who needs more time. Rote learning also often frustrates supervisors because employees are drawn off work to fulfill training requirements that aren’t directly linked to their work productivity.

“ … employees at all levels now recognize that ‘the learning curve is the earning curve,’ and they are demanding access to dynamic learning opportunities that fit their individual needs and schedules. Millennials and other young employees have grown up in this self-directed learning environment. They expect it as part of their working lives and careers—and they will move elsewhere if employers fail to provide it.”



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“Employees can now take a course on nearly any subject online, search for an expert video or podcast to learn a quickly needed skill, and even earn a college degree without leaving their desk—or a couch or coffee shop. This new world of consumer-centric learning puts employees, not L&D departments, in charge. … In the global survey, respondents cited a wide range of external learning opportunities that could impact internal development, including external certificates (32 percent), massive open on-line courses (18 percent), and external, self-directed learning powered by social media (14 percent). Still, despite this robust array of choices, 61 percent of executives report challenges in moving their organizations toward external self-directed learning.”


A NEW LEARNING PRIORITY: SOFT SKILLSAccording to Human Resources Online, as we approach the fourth industrial revolution (the age of technology disruption and new skill immersion), the key skill sets the modern worker requires in 2018 and beyond are based around soft skills that emphasize critical thinking, interpersonal skills and communication skills.

While many people have traditionally considered soft skills of less value than technical or professional skills, soft skills are now the ones most in demand. They are some of the most difficult to learn on your own, because they require insights into how and why people act the way they do—including ourselves. They also require us to learn how to shape our own behavior in order to shape the behavior of others. That can be much more difficult than learning how to plot a Pareto chart or perform another concrete skill.

Notice that critical thinking is the second skill listed. While we may traditionally think that critical thinking applies mostly to problem solving, in reality, it applies to all the skill sets listed above—and it’s a foundation for a “leaders at all levels” approach in modern organizations. You can’t be a good negotiator, an emotionally intelligent manager or a thoughtful decision maker without critical thinking. Whether it’s making judgments about the best way to work with other people, the best way to handle a challenge or the best way to solve a problem, critical thinking is the core soft skill needed.

If you are inclined to sell soft skills short, think carefully—and critically—about the real impact of this list on your organization’s long-term, overall success.

2 http://www.humanresourcesonline.net/10-skills-workers-will-need-in-2020/

KEY SKILL SETS FOR 2018: 2

• Complex problem solving

• Critical thinking

• Creativity

• People management

• Coordinating with others

• Emotional intelligence

• Judgment and decision making

• Service orientation

• Negotiation

• Cognitive flexibility


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“In corporate training, we must realize that each employee is unique, and these differences will influence outcomes. As an example, consider one department at your organization where multiple people perform the same job. Now, think about the backgrounds of these individuals (e.g., education, experience, age, etc.). Then, consider their weaknesses and strengths. And finally, consider their interests and long-term goals. While these individuals may perform the same job, they are dynamically different people who will progress at different speeds and interpret information differently. In this context, we can see why a one-size-fits-all training program would fail to meet the needs of all the employees.”

https://trainingindustry.com/magazine/jan-feb-2018/learning-is-a-personal-experience/

PERSONALIZED LEARNING Personalized learning is a big part of learning for the future. It’s also linked closely with employee-driven learning. People are unique, which means their learning journey is—and should be—unique as well.

At first glance, we may be tempted to think “This is too hard; I can’t be providing ‘personalized’ training to everyone!” There are economies of scale in offering standardized, scheduled training on across-the-board topics, and often, it’s worth using that kind of training to provide a foundation for a key skill set.

But even in standardized training, there are still levels of experience, job responsibilities and length of tenure with the organization that affect how you teach the same basic topic to different groups within your organization. An emerging leader at the team or supervisor level requires a different set of communication skills from a senior manager, an executive or someone in marketing, PR or a specialized communication field.

Sooner or later, every employee needs to move into the personalized training that fills in the individual gaps they are dealing with. It’s also the kind of learning that gets people excited and keeps them engaged—and those are important factors when it comes to workforce retention.


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LEARNING AS PART OF THE TOTAL EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCEWhen organizations don’t recognize the expanding connection between job experience, meaningful work and organizational culture, they risk an unmotivated and cynical workforce. In other words, employees have seen the disconnect between “talking the talk” and “walking the walk” too often.

In Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report 3, authors Josh Bersin, Jason Flynn, Art Mazor and Veronica Melian argue that there are five critical areas in which many organizations are falling short in recognizing the power of employee experience—and in thinking that learning is solely the responsibility of the HR department.

First, many companies have not yet made employee experience a priority for HR leaders, often delegating this problem to an annual engagement survey.

Second, while some companies have created the C-suite role of employee experience officer, most companies have not assigned responsibility to a senior executive or team to design and deliver the employee experience.

Third, siloed HR departments often find it difficult to obtain the resources needed to address an integrated set of priorities, which range from management practices to the workplace to benefits and, often, the work culture itself.

Fourth, companies need to update their tools to engage employees on an ongoing basis (with pulse surveys at least) to help HR teams and line leaders understand more fully what the talent they employ expects and values. An employee net promoter score is another important tool in this effort.

Fifth, many companies remain focused on “point-in-time engagement” and have not yet pulled together the disciplines of performance management, goal setting, diversity, inclusion, wellness, workplace design and leadership into an integrated framework.

“EX [employee experience] is sum of everything an employee experiences throughout his or her connection to the organization—every employee interaction, from the first contact as a potential recruit to the last interaction after the end of employment. … Just as customers pick and choose from a plethora of brands based on reviews they access digitally, many people seem to use online resources to ‘shop’ among potential employers—and decide to proceed with those companies that offer the kind of EX they’re looking for.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniselyohn/2018/01/02/2018-will-be-the-year-of-employee-experience/#6abbd20c1c8f

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Employees have made it clear in survey after survey: They want learning and development, they want to be seen as individuals with potential to do more, to be entrusted with more and to have their natural potential for becoming “leaders at all levels” developed.

In essence, this focus on employee experience is the capstone of continuous learning, employee- driven learning and customizable learning. Organizations that are serious about employee engagement and learning will ensure that their “employee experience” efforts are truly tactical and not just theoretical.

3 https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/improving-the-employee-experience-culture-engagement.html


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SkillPath: What Our L&D Data Tells UsSince 1989, SkillPath has seen the evolution of training and development firsthand. We help organizations harness the broad learning trends and shape them to their own unique needs. In doing so, we see real-world patterns of learning and development emerge.

While it’s vital to know what employees want and what cutting-edge ideas are arising in L&D, in the end, it comes down to what organizations are willing to invest in—and how well those investments are working for them.

Our experience as one of the nation’s leading training firms provides a snapshot of what our clients are doing in terms of learning and development. We can see where their choices are changing, or coalescing, and what the future may hold in terms of learning and development topic areas.

THE MOST REQUESTED COURSES IN 2017An analysis of trends for the last five years across our own expansive customer database shows that when it comes to tailored learning, leadership development reigns supreme. That topic is followed closely by project management. Rounding out the top five are customer service skills, emotional intelligence and communicating with diplomacy, tact and professionalism.

OUR TOP FIVE “OFF-THE-SHELF” MOST REQUESTED COURSES

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

❷ ❶ ❶ ❶ ❶ Excelling as a Manager or Supervisor

❶ ❷ ❷ ❷ ❷ Managing Multiple Projects, Objectives and Deadlines

❹ ❺ ❸ ❸ The Essentials of Excellent Customer Service

❹ Building Your Emotional Intelligence

❸ ❸ ❸ ❺ Communicating With Diplomacy, Tact and Professionalism

❹ How to Become a Better Communicator

❹ ❹ Advanced Microsoft® Excel® Techniques

❺ ❺ ❺ Getting the Most From Microsoft® Excel®


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We can see from this data that the focus is on leadership/tactical execution skills, with a strong emphasis on soft skills and an overall bent toward agility and adaptability. This data is on target with industry predictions that the most desired skill sets of the next decade will be in the ability to adapt to changing demands and challenges and the ability to communicate and connect with people both internally (organizational teams, stakeholders and other departments) and externally (customers, clients and business partners).

THE TOP CUSTOMIZED TOPIC AREAS When organizations are really serious about learning and development that is targeted to their own specific needs and those of their unique workforce, they turn to our custom training services. SkillPath Enterprise Solutions delivers materials that are uniquely shaped to fit the needs of a specific set of learners, focused on a selected set of skills and/or concepts, delivered in a variety of formats, including instructor-led in the classroom, Webinar, eLearning and on-demand.

The number one focus of our clients has been performance management.

Since performance management is directly linked to productivity, and thus to organizational success, it’s almost no surprise that this is a priority for so many organizations. The cost of not managing talent effectively is measurable and expensive: It includes loss of productivity, cost of replacement talent, increased labor costs and innovation stagnation. But today’s performance management is not the same as performance reviews of yesterday.

The modern worker needs and wants performance management that is individualized, ongoing and interactive and uses design thinking and solution-focused mapping.

In short, this broad topic area includes coaching skills, teambuilding, performance reviews, giving and receiving feedback and much more. There is a lot hidden under this broad concept, and that makes it a topic that any supervisor or manager might need or want to return to time and time again to gain personalized skills and to access continuous learning in this area.

The top five custom topic areas that our clients ask for:

1. Performance Management

2. Embracing Change

3. Generational Management

4. Manager as Leader

5. The Essentials of Excellent Customer Service

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LOOKING BEYOND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENTThe remaining four topic areas indicate an emphasis on:

• Flexibility and confidence in the face of change

• Interpersonal relationships and teambuilding

• Informed and engaged leaders who can motivate and guide a highly diverse workforce

• Strong customer service skills, not just for external customers, but also for internal co-workers

Again, we see that these are primarily soft skills. These topic areas focus on working effectively with other people, because people are what drives the modern workplace—and will do so even more in the future.

In the past, technological advances, processes and equipment drove the rise in productivity—things like the assembly line, mass production, the introduction of the computer or the Internet. Now it’s all about how we work together.

The most vital soft skill: Working with customers externally and internallyNick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute, after interviewing industry leaders, states that the often dismissed soft skills are an imperative, not just a nice idea.

“Applicants were often so underqualified, [respondents] said, that simply finding someone who could properly answer the telephone was sometimes a challenge.”

In the end, while technical skills and a wave of technology disruption is coming, it’s the ability to accept and adapt to the needs of people that is more important in today’s customer-

driven marketplace than something like app programming.

The bottom line is this: If you can’t talk to the customer effectively, it may not matter what your technical skills are.

But we need to go one step further. We need to define customer service differently than we have in the past. What people still call customer service is actually about customer relationships—both externally and internally.

Blair Forlaw, in her article for Huffington Post titled “Four Reasons Why Customer Service Skills Are as Important as STEM,” says that “… a positive service climate isn’t just about pleasant customer service representatives. It requires a culture that values employee engagement and positive interaction up, down, and around the organizational chart.” Forlaw also emphasizes that customer service skills “… are not just the behaviors needed for entry-level occupations. They are increasingly important across the spectrum, as information and computer technologies allow repetitive and technical tasks to be automated, and the work available for us mortals will be, according to Daniel Jelski’s analysis of the future of employment, ‘in non-tradable skills that can’t be computerized. At their most valuable these jobs depend on human-human interaction—empathy.’” 4

If you can’t talk to the customer effectively, it may not matter what your technical skills are.

4 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/blair-forlaw/four-reasons-why-customer_b_4782878.html


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WHICH INDUSTRIES ARE INVESTING IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT?We work with clients from numerous industries from nonprofit to Fortune 500 organizations, from health care to U.S. government agencies, from school districts to universities. While we work with organizations in every field, here is a ranking of the top 12 industries that utilize our skills, services and experience.

Comparative Volume of L&D Partnerships With SkillPath

Manufacturin

g

Services

Government

Education

Health

Professional

Wholesale

Engineering

Retail

Insurance

Finance

Transporta

tion


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SkillPath: Creating Tomorrow’s Agile, Empowered and Engaged WorkforceDeciding what all these trends mean to you and what your organization needs to achieve its goals may seem like an overwhelming task. But it’s one that you don’t need to undertake alone.

DEFINING TOMORROW’S TRAINING TODAYAs one of the nation’s largest training and talent development firms, we aren’t on the outside looking in at the challenge. We are in the midst of it.

SkillPath Enterprise Solutions provides clients with customized training solutions necessary to meet their unique and ever-changing needs. We provide outcome-based training that delivers both immediate and long-term results. To do that, we stay abreast of industry topics and training trends in order to provide highly targeted training tools and materials and customized guidance to help our clients make the right strategic decisions about their training investments.

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Our focus is on quality content that is targeted, customizable, interactive and experiential, delivered in a variety of formats and platforms including instructor-led, Webinar, online, on-demand and eLearning.

Our training facilitators deliver courses, coaching and interactive learning all over the world and tailor materials to the exact requirements of the client.

Our committed instructional design teams work closely with clients and account managers to ensure that our training products deliver learning that is immediately applicable in real-world settings.

As a result of this level of experience, we are well positioned to meet the changing needs of organizations in eLearning and development. We are also well positioned to help define your organization’s unique needs and the best way to meet them. Part of that comes from our own in-depth experience directly in the learning field and the trends we have observed based on trends in our own business.

While SkillPath has a large number of developed courses that clients can quickly access for immediate training needs, we are recognized for our customized learning materials that maximize your investment and deliver training that is targeted to your audience, your organization and your learning environment.


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CUSTOMIZED LEARNING: HOW WE WORK WITH YOU Customized training includes consultation with our in-house instructional design team to assist with identifying an organization’s goals and objectives. In fact, customized learning solutions account for over 25 percent of our total Enterprise Solutions business—and translate into hundreds of customized solutions provided annually to clients across all industries.

We develop these specialized learning tools through a partnership model and rapid instructional design best practices that have been proven effective time and again.

Step 1 Analysis of Needs

Step 3 Development of Custom Content

Step 4 Facilitator Preparation

Step 7 Coaching

Step 6 Follow-up

Step 5 Delivery

CustomLearning

Step 2ProgramDesign

This process relies on highly focused instructional development that is designed to deliver engaging training, solid retention and specific results. Moreover, it allows you to design learning opportunities that are targeted to specific needs and to specific audiences—meeting the need for customized learning today.


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DESIGN THINKING— AND WHY IT MATTERS TO INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNThe diagram above says that Step 3 is “development of custom content”—but it does not fully describe what happens when our instructional design team works with clients.

Design thinking is a natural part of our approach to meeting client needs and allows us to deliver unexpected quality and powerful results.

Design thinking is a way of focusing on solutions rather than on problems. Essentially, when you focus on the problem, you are looking simply for a way to solve it. You will tend to choose the first solution that meets the need within the boundaries of cost, time and effectiveness. When you focus on solutions rather than simply the problem, you have more room to explore possibilities that you may not have considered before.

Design thinking employs both divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to offer different, unique or variant ideas adherent to one theme while convergent thinking is the ability to find the preferred solution to the given problem.

“Historically designers were only introduced in the last steps of the product development process, focusing their attention on improving the look and functionality of products, instead of looking for a high impact on the world and the society. … Design thinking, as the perfect balance between desirability, technical feasibility and economic viability, helps organizations to be more innovative, better differentiate their brands, and bring their products and services to market faster.” 5

Our design teams often identify possibilities—and challenges—that our clients have not yet thought of. They then produce learning tools and materials that are creative, innovative and highly interactive, yet also highly focused and designed to develop learner understanding and skill application.

“Design thinking is not just a buzzword—it brings HR back to basics to focus on employees as humans, and to support their needs and development better, says Betty Lau, global learning director, Unilever. On that note, she added: ‘L&D professionals should focus on learning that helps to solve “pain points,” drive business results and foster a lifelong learning culture.’ ” 6

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking6 http://www.humanresourcesonline.net/exclusive-top-ld-trends-in-2018-from-maxis-unilever-and-more


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SkillPath: Our View of the Future State of LearningWhat is the future for learning and development in 2018 and beyond? Obviously no one can predict the future with certainty, but we suggest the following trends are likely to be around long beyond 2018:

1. Leadership development will remain strong through 2018 and well into the future, but the way we define leadership and leadership development will change and grow as we move away from a traditional hierarchical leadership model to every employee being a “leader” in one way or another.

2. Learning what empowers employees will be vital. Employees are in the moment, dealing with situations as they occur. Thus, putting the emphasis on empowerment forces us to look at the essential skills that support them—things like critical thinking and decision-making skills, as well as interpersonal and communication skills. Think of it this way: When we tell someone to be more “agile,” we are setting an expectation on ourselves in terms of what we need to deliver in learning and development to help them achieve what the organization needs.

3. Soft skills will continue to grow in importance, but also in sophistication. It will not be enough to train employees in basic customer service skills; we need to focus on building real customer relationships both inside and outside of the organization. To do that, we need to have a deeper understanding of why people (including ourselves) react the way they do—and how our behavior determines the response we get from them.

4. A greater ability to deal with change, both as an organization and as individuals. Change is a fact of the modern world, and it’s going to come faster as we move forward. It’s also an underlying factor of an agile workforce. Agile employees live in a world of change and embrace it as a creative process. But that’s not an easy transition for most people, so there needs to be a greater emphasis on expanding our ideas about what “embracing change” really means. Is it just adjusting to external change, or taking control of change as an internal process related to innovation and creativity?

5. A stronger focus on creativity and innovation and how each employee develops these critical skills for an evolving future. These two skills are partners with critical thinking and go hand in hand with empowered, agile and engaged employees. Often, creativity training is offered as an afterthought to employees and managers in general, partly because organizations aren’t sure how to harness it for concrete outcomes and because we tend to relegate “creativity” to certain job titles or functions. But in a world where we expect each employee to be a leader and a problem solver, we have to expand the way people think at a foundational level.

6. A greater emphasis on personalized learning, varied delivery methods and blended learning platforms to meet learners where they are and to deliver training with speed and agility. By using more design thinking to expand our approach to training, we can create more powerful and focused content and deliver it in a way that has the biggest impact on the individual learner.


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Let’s Explore the Future of Learning and Development TogetherAt SkillPath, we are already helping our clients deal with these emerging trends every day, as well as helping them meet more traditional training needs. Our experience and expertise are resources that our clients trust to help them invest wisely in learning programs that are immediately applicable and meet both their strategic and logistical needs.

We are already thinking about changes in learning and development and working on solutions to address them. Let us put our ideas to work for you.

Discover the difference that comes from working with a learning and development partner that is already agile, engaged and empowered to help you achieve your learning and development goals now and for the future.

For more information on providing training opportunities in your workplace, visit us at www.skillpath.com.


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