Stop Training Employees in Skills They’ll Never Use | Gartner

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations would likely agree that the pace at which skills continue to change has drastically accelerated. In fact, in the LinkedIn 2020 Learning Report (conducted prior to the pandemic), 51 percent and 43 percent of Learning and Development (L&D) practitioners had planned to launch upskilling and reskilling programs, respectively, in 2020 (page 31 of the report). These trends will continue to accelerate in a post-pandemic world. Although HR and learning leaders may have plans in place to close skill gaps, according to this article, “HR is often wasting time and effort on irrelevant learning that won’t ever be used to further the business or the career of the employee. Instead, HR leaders need a dynamic skills strategy that enables employees to learn and apply desirable new skills quickly and effectively.” The article provides three suggestions that enable organizations to apply a dynamic approach to skill development that delivers a better ROI. They include: 1) Sense shifting skills in real-time. Anticipate skill shifts as they are occurring — rather than trying to predict the future. 2) Develop skills at the time of need by going beyond traditional L&D tactics like classroom training and e-learning libraries, and employ existing resources (e.g., content, people, etc.) to develop new skills solutions at speed. 3) Enable employees to make skills decisions dynamically by developing two-way skills transparency between the organization (e.g., what skills it needs, no longer needs, etc.) and the employee (e.g., current skills and interests). Gartner indicates that such a dynamic approach can result in workers applying 75 percent of what they learned compared to 37 percent from traditional and predictive techniques. If you have interest in the topic of upskilling, you can check out Shelley Osborne’s new book, The Upskilling Imperative: 5 Ways to Make Learning Core to the Way We Work