Due to the current “war on talent” that will be driving business decisions and global economic growth over the next decade, L&D will become the most important and innovative department for the most profitable organizations. Continue reading to learn more about why.
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L&D Will Embody Organizational Culture
In the past, there really hasn’t been much to the L&D arm of an organization. They typically just handled training managers and onboarding new employees. But that has all changed with newer advances in technology. Especially when it comes to more sophisticated learning management systems and mobile apps, L&D is now everywhere at all hours of the day. And it is becoming more and more central to an organization’s culture.
Because employees have access to more relevant learning content and company policies and information 24/7 and can interact with their peers as they learn and develop 24/7, L&D is becoming more pivotal in defining an organization’s identity, operations, and overall brand. How employees interact and engage with learning content will determine the success of an organization’s culture and bottom line.
L&D Holds the Keys to Upskilling and Retaining Employees
As the average shelf life of a skill in the increasingly automated and tech-driven workplace gets shorter and shorter, expect to see L&D’s importance grow with the success of a business. L&D departments will no longer be a “nice to have” component of a profitable and competitive organization—they will be essential to it.
If an organization doesn’t have a viable plan to upskill its current employees on a rolling basis, in tandem with innovations in new technology that keep emerging every few weeks or months, it will lose its existing employees or will have to continue to hire new employees. And this will cost a business a lot of money.
It is becoming more financially sound for an organization to have a growing and robust L&D department that is fully equipped to upskill existing employees than it is to continually hire and terminate employees based on their existing skill sets.
L&D Will Utilize and Implement New Tech
Think about how quickly systems, platforms, and apps that utilize data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence came about and transformed the workplace and global economy.
As new technology continues to emerge in every marketplace, L&D teams will have to know how to utilize it to remain competitive and will have to learn how to train existing employees how to use new technologies relevant to their roles, too. For an organization to remain profitable, its employees must know how to access, develop, and implement new technologies as they emerge or risk falling way behind their competition.
As you continue to develop your L&D department and its programs and gain executive buy-in, remember why L&D will be so critical to the success and overall profitability of your organization.