Ah, the new year. When everyone resolves to do better, sleep better, exercise better, eat better, etc.
At the same time, headlines are warning of an impending recession, plummeting employee engagement, and “quiet quitting.”
U.S. employee engagement decreased during the second quarter of 2022, with the proportion of engaged workers remaining at 32% but the proportion of actively disengaged increasing to 18%.
Is it time for “new year, new training” to re-engage your workers? We expect to see a greater focus on company and learning culture in 2023. HR and L&D professionals must rethink how they reach employees and deliver training and development opportunities.
Here are the 3 L&D trends to watch for 2023.
1. Worker-focused Learning and Development
According to Gallup, the decline in worker engagement is predominantly tied to “clarity of expectations, opportunities to learn and grow, feeling cared about, and a connection to the organization's mission or purpose.”
In 2023, focus on making your workers feel seen and heard, and creating bonds amongst coworkers. Using a learning platform that allows for social learning and user-generated content can help with that.
Social Learning Opportunities - When you pair learning opportunities with a chance to bond with team members, workers become more engaged and creative. This is especially important for remote teams.
User-Generated Content - Peer-to-peer learning is highly engaging and workers are often more trusting of content that comes from their colleagues. Have your workers contribute directly through Q&A forums, short videos, case studies, and pinning their top content to boards they share with each other.
2. Repurposing and Outsourcing Content
Recession fears are tightening budgets and driving a need to repurpose existing content instead of creating new training materials. Experienced learning designers can help you transform one training presentation into short videos, bite-sized microlearning, and just-in-time reinforcement pieces.
Bringing on contracted talent is another option when you need to keep output high but costs down. Full-time employees require salary, benefits, additional taxes to the employer, insurance, training, equipment, and more. And that’s not even covering the recruitment costs and time onboarding takes. Outsourcing contractors can hit the ground running and help you get projects done without all the extra costs.
3. Upskilling and Reskilling
A recent LinkedIn Learning report shared that “Companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years, nearly twice as long as companies that struggle with it, where the average retention span is 2.9 years.”
Especially if you don’t have the budget for new hires, upskilling and reskilling internal employees to take on new roles is essential. In 2023, invest in opportunities to upskill and reskill for that internal movement.
Some of these top skills to upskill and reskill employees on in 2023, include:
- Customer experience management
- Business communication and non-verbal communication skills
- Salesforce expertise and management
- Project management
Will you be following any of these learning trends this year? What are your top L&D goals? Share in the comments below.
