Most leaders, managers, and team members agree that learning and development are vital to employee experience. A LinkedIn survey from 2018 revealed that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company that provides development opportunities. Likewise, employees who have development opportunities on their jobs are 15% more engaged and have a 34% higher retention rate.
However, despite broad agreement about the value of training and development, a Society of Human Resource Management report found that 26% of HR managers feel they lack buy-in for their L&D efforts from leadership. Employees also reported that they quickly forgot training material (25%), lack time to complete training (25%), and felt that training was irrelevant (24%).
As a senior leader or member of upper management, you don’t need to micromanage every training and development opportunity. However, you can show support for learning and development across the organization in significant ways. Here are seven ways to start showing your support for learning and development.
Learning and development should not be an extra task heaped onto an already-overflowing “to do” list. Rather, learning and development need to be embedded into every role in the organization. One excellent way to embed development is through cross-functional assignments and special projects. In these assignments and projects, employees can learn and develop practical skills without adding to their workloads.
As a senior leader or upper-level manager, be transparent about your own learning and development. But don’t just participate in learning opportunities; share your takeaways and development outcomes with colleagues and direct reports. You can use your own learning and development experiences to demonstrate humility and transparency.
Be open about the areas where you need to improve, and share how development opportunities have helped you hone existing skills or develop new ones. Foster an environment of psychological safety, and don’t hide failures—including your own. Use failure as an opportunity to improve, and be transparent about the process.
If someone wants to participate in a learning program, encouragethe distribution of some of that person’s duties to other team members who have availability. Free up as much mental space and work time as possible to allow the learner to be fully present in the development opportunity. Communicate that learning and development are as important as daily tasks.
Talk to your team members about what kind of development would be most helpful. For instance, a brand-new manager might benefit far more from a class in business finance or project management than a cross-functional role the manager isn’t ready for. By involving people in the process of choosing training opportunities, you’ll improve the chances they’ll succeed.
Some leaders may be concerned that offering training and development to employees will cause them to leave for other opportunities. However, the opposite is true—employees are more likely to stay at a company when they feel supported in long-term goals. Ask team members if the current training and development opportunities fit into their career goals. If not, what kind of development would they prefer?
A growth mindset suggests that brains and talent are just a starting point, and that both can be developed; a fixed mindset says that intelligence and talent are fixed and can’t be improved upon. As a leader, you can promote the curiosity, effort, and future focus that gives your team members permission to develop their talents and skills for long-term growth. Promote healthy feedback processes and methods, encourage inclusive experiences, and talk about growth and development as if they are inevitable.
Learning and development of all employees across the organization can be the key to remaining competitive in a global marketplace through whatever disruption comes next. By pursuing robust training and development—everything from reskilling to leadership development—you’ll help ensure that your team is ready to embrace new challenges.
The experts at Stewart Leadership can help design the right development program for your team. To learn more, contact us.