Hiring for Learning & Development professionals soars by 94%

As millions left the workforce as part of the ‘Great Resignation‘, many companies looked internally to solve their growing skill gaps.

Naturally, this led to investments in learning and development (L&D) and has resulted in an incredible increase in upskilling programs.

LinkedIn looked into this phenomenon by speaking to 10,154 workers across Europe as well as 542 European L&D professionals in the region.

The research uncovered correlations between retention and L&D with more than half (59%) of workers across Europe are looking to move jobs this year but one in four employees claiming that they would stay with their current employer if they were given the opportunity to develop their skills.

Spending on L&D

Investing in L&D could result in companies saving money as 73% of leaders claimed that it is less expensive to reskill a current employee than to hire a new one.

Fortunately, 42% of companies that were surveyed are planning to deploy large-scale upskilling or reskilling programs this year to help. This appears to be timely as 47% of those surveyed said that skill gaps within their organization have widened over the last year.

In response, 40% of L&D teams are expecting their budgets to increase this year, with 51% claiming that providing employees with the opportunity to find new roles within the business is a top priority.

On top of that, the study found that priority areas for organizations in skills training in 2022 included leadership and management (71%), digital upskilling (46%), and diversity, equity and inclusion (41%).

Improving L&D

Discussing the findings, Olivier Sabella, vice president of LinkedIn Talent Solutions EMEA & LATAM, said: “It’s clear that people are eager to develop their skills further, and if they can’t do so with their current employer then they will look for the opportunity elsewhere.

“Companies can avoid this skills drain by bolstering their L&D programs and ensuring they are highly visible and accessible to employees, regardless of their location.

“This can go a long way to helping improve retention while also boosting employee engagement.”

However businesses intend to address L&D, it is clear that employees want to grow and alongside that they want their careers to develop with them.

The first step to improving the development of staff is looking inwardly at the opportunities that you offer and how accessible they are.

Once you’ve done this, and realized where the problems are, the next stage is investing in the right L&D technology that can facilitate the training that employees want.