Employers are seen as the new post-secondary colleges, but can they deliver?

Article10 min read

November 6, 2023

edX surveyed 1,600 executives and professionals about their expectations for learning and development on the job

The arrival of advanced generative AI, and now ChatGPT, has sent a clear message to workers in nearly every sector: The AI revolution is here. Employers are turning to automation to deliver on their business goals, with C-suite executives openly embracing AI as a tool that can enhance productivity and efficiency. But effectively leveraging the power of AI requires a workforce that is skilled in using these tools.

edX’s recently released whitepaper, Navigating the Workplace in the Age of AI, shares insights from a survey of 800 executives and 800 working professionals. The survey finds that, rather than turning to post-secondary institutions to upskill, professionals are expecting their employers to deliver the training they need to meet the future demands of the workplace.

With this shift in expectations, Learning and Development (L&D) teams will face new challenges and opportunities as they work to bridge the skills gaps that exist for professional learners. How will they achieve this considerable task? This blog reviews findings from the survey, which can offer guidance to organizations managing the learning needs of their employees.

Who is responsible for learning and development?

The need to upskill is high; C-suite executives surveyed estimated that about half of the skills that exist in the workforce today won’t be relevant in just a few years. Faced with a skills gap, many workers have previously sought out education and training from institutions of higher education. However, the edX survey revealed that this mindset has shifted recently, with more than 80% of employees stating that they now see companies as the new post-secondary colleges.

C-suite executives overwhelmingly agree (93%), and are tasking L&D teams with ensuring that employees have the training they need to perform in their current roles and to excel in the next two to five years. But are they succeeding?

That answer depends on who you ask. While about half of executives believe there is a strong culture of learning in their organizations and that employees are given the time to learn, only one in five employees strongly agree. If companies want to position individual contributors for success, business leaders and L&D teams need to work together to provide more opportunities for professional learners.

L&D teams are expected to address a number of critical business needs, including performance, recruitment, and retention

According to the survey, executives believe that L&D programs should be focused on upskilling at scale (53%) and driving employee performance (50%), but about half also see it as an important strategy to keep employees engaged.

And they are right to prioritize L&D for employee engagement. Nearly 60% of employees reported that they are primarily motivated to learn at work because they enjoy challenging themselves. Other popular reasons include improving job performance (55%) and working toward a promotion or raise (46%).

Employers shouldn’t be fearful that better trained workers might leave for green pastures. Only one in 10 respondents reported upskilling in order to get a job somewhere else, and almost 80% said they were more likely to stay with their company long term if it offered better training and development.

Learning options that are popular with employees include libraries of self-paced content, online cohort learning, and face-to-face sessions. The survey found that employees in the Tech, Advertising, and Engineering sectors particularly value high-quality online learning.

Offering a range of L&D options can also be an important recruitment strategy. The best and brightest are looking to join employers that are as invested in their continuous learning and development as they are. Results of the survey indicated that Gen Z places a particular importance on professional development when selecting employers, gravitating more toward coaching and apprenticeships. Millennials, meanwhile, prefer online learning, underscoring the need for a variety of scalable learning solutions.

The challenge of providing high-quality learning at scale

As noted, there is a discrepancy between how employers and employees view the culture of learning at their organizations. Unsurprisingly, the survey found that there is a similar discrepancy regarding the perception of employee satisfaction with L&D offerings. While the C-suite believes that a significant majority (65%) of employees are “very satisfied”, in reality only one in three employees agree. Employees are more likely to be only somewhat satisfied (48%) and one in six are actively dissatisfied.

To boost satisfaction rates, companies need to look closely at their offerings to determine whether they can meet the needs of employers in better ways. The survey revealed that the most commonly offered L&D benefit today is still in-person sessions; half of the business leaders said that they offer this type of training. However, self-paced courses and cohort-based online learning are becoming increasingly popular. Online learning options are more commonly offered in the fields of consulting, finance and tech, while a number of sectors, such as advertising and engineering, remain underserved when it comes to online learning.

Is online cohort learning the scaling solution for L&D?

To answer this question, it’s important to consider what drives employee satisfaction with learning options. According to the survey, the top three requirements that employees have for L&D trainings are:

The ability to put knowledge to use via practice exercises (27%).
Access to new or regularly updated content (19%).
A variety of teaching methods, with videos, readings, and more (17%).

If employees are expected to invest their time into learning, it needs to be practically relevant and as up to date as possible. These top needs can be met by quality online learning. In fact, satisfaction rates are already highest for online cohort-based courses, with 43% of the respondents saying they are “very satisfied” with this option.

With the array of online learning options available to employers, how can they find the right high-quality offering for their organizations? They must prioritize the needs of their workforces. When helping companies select the best L&D options for them, edX For Business breaks down the aims of L&D into three broad categories:

Supporting performance: On-demand microlearning can help with more tactical and task-related upskilling.
Building a skill: Longer-form learning that balances practical and theoretical experiences can help employees develop individual skills.
Building a capability: Learning from academic experts and industry leaders alongside a network of fellow professionals can offer a richer educational experience that builds the capabilities needed to achieve the most critical business goals.

Employees prioritize learning over saving and, sometimes, job security

It’s undeniable that individuals are very personally motivated to learn. About 70% of employees reported actively learning between 0.5-3 hours a week.

However, the survey also found that more than 60% are using content external to their company’s L&D program to learn. Moreover, in the last 12 months, the majority of employees (57%) and executives (89%) paid for external learning content out of pocket. In fact, executives who overwhelmingly believe their L&D programs are positively impacting employee performance would also rather pay for their own L&D than use their company’s resources.

Workers at every level are acutely aware of the fact that they need to upskill themselves, and that the cost of not doing so is higher than the price tag associated with education and training. About half of employees reported that they are willing to make some kind of sacrifice to access better L&D opportunities, whether it be taking a more stressful job or a job with less time off. It’s clear that employees are personally invested and prepared to go the extra mile. The question remains: Are companies willing to match their efforts and enthusiasm, and empower L&D leaders to make a difference?

L&D programs might be meeting needs now, but are struggling with future-proofing

There is room for improvement, but employees are generally positive that they are learning from their L&D programs. Approximately 80% of respondents say that they have more or less what they need to succeed in their current roles (although only about a quarter strongly agree). However, only a third of employees are “very confident” they’ll be able to improve their skillsets and advance their career using only their employer’s L&D programs. About the same number feel they lack the skills needed to perform their roles in the future when looking just one or two years ahead.

A significant portion of the workforce also needs direction. The survey found that about a quarter of employees “don’t know where to get started” when it comes to learning new skills. This is a particularly significant problem when it comes to AI skills. Employees are feeling pressure to adapt to these new tools, but are notably more apprehensive than leadership about embracing them. L&D teams should view this as an opportunity to step in and provide the much-needed clarity on where to start and what skills to prioritize. Leveraging the AI Academy at edX For Business can help teams familiarize themselves with the tools they need and the skills that will be required to transition into new phases of work.

Bringing it all together: What are the opportunities ahead?

The findings from the survey paint a helpful picture for business and L&D leaders as they consider how to tackle the upskilling challenge. As they plan ahead, leaders must consider:

Executives and employees see L&D as critical to business success, with many invested in lifelong learning.
While employees are personally motivated to learn, they do expect employers to provide all the necessary training to build the skills needed for current and future roles.
The quality of the professional development offered not only impacts performance, but can significantly influence retention, employee engagement, and recruitment efforts.
There is a sizeable gap in perception between leaders and employees as to how well the current L&D programs are working.
Leveraging high-quality online learning can address a number of today’s upskilling challenges, with online cohort learning yielding particularly high engagement and satisfaction rates.

L&D teams are under immense pressure to deliver results. It’s no longer sufficient for L&D to support only employees’ current performance. Professionals are apprehensive whether they have the skills needed for tomorrow’s workforce, so L&D must help them plan for the future and remain relevant in a fast-changing working world.

Although this presents a considerable challenge, it is also a huge opportunity. Businesses that recognize the importance of L&D for their organizations and invest appropriately in the right types of learning will be better positioned to navigate the obstacles of tomorrow and seize the moment with a workforce that has the right skills to do so.

Research findings are based on a survey conducted by edX and Workplace Intelligence between July 10 and July 24, 2023. In total, 1,600 full-time, U.S.-based employees completed the survey, including 800 C-suite executives and 800 knowledge workers. Respondents were invited to take part in the survey via email and were provided with a small monetary incentive for doing so.

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Article

DEI In The Workplace: 10 Ways L&D Managers Can Turn Insights Into Action

Article10 min read

September 4, 2023

The most critical social imperative for any business today is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Just ask any recruiter: 49% of those recently surveyed said that jobs seekers do inquire about DEI initiatives. What is more, 44% of all surveyed recruiters reported that some of the candidates they had been in contact with had either turned down an interview offer or a job offer — all of this because of a lack of diversity within the organization.¹

The key to enhancing DEI starts with improved hiring initiatives — it does, however, go beyond that, too. To embed DEI into your company’s culture, you need to weave DEI into the very organizational fabric of your business. Meaning, you need to get everyone on board, from new hires to the C-suite executives; staff at all levels must be able to recognize the importance of the DEI initiatives and to understand what strategies and initiatives are being developed.

This is where learning and development (L&D) comes in — from offering more obvious interventions, like running DEI training programs, to putting in place less apparent actions, such as considering a range of voices, ideas, and needs when designing training programs. L&D plays a key role in starting and maintaining a culture that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion.

DEI in the workplace

Before discussing how your organization can promote DEI, and so that your company can go beyond treating these concepts simply as boxes to be ticked, let’s first define each one of them.

Diversity

Look around your workspace, be it a shared office space or a virtual one: Does every single one of your colleagues come from the same ethnic background? Do you all share the same gender identity? Do you all eat the same meal for lunch? Most probably not. And that’s a good thing, because the more different your life experiences, even the smallest ones, the more effective your team may be at collaborating and coming up with innovative ideas. And, perhaps even more importantly, the more understanding your business will be of the diverse realities and needs of your customers and clients.

Diversity as a concept is based on the understanding that each individual, because of how different they are from all other individuals, is uniquely valuable and has the means, and the required background, to bring a fresh and different perspective to the table. Diversity can be one of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as socioeconomic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies.²

Promoting diversity within the workplace is more than just tolerating each other’s differences — it requires us to challenge each other and to view everyone’s individual differences as enriching. It also offers everyone the chance to explore these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing way.

Equity

It’s tempting to think that in order to be fair, we should offer everyone exactly the same opportunities in terms of hiring, training, and promotions. But is it really equitable to offer the exact same opportunities for development, for example, to an employee from a privileged background — educational, social, financial — and who may have had an easier start in life, than to someone from a historically disadvantaged and underrepresented one, who may, for instance, have struggled to pay for their studies, or who may not have had the same support system growing up?

While equity is often referred to when discussing pay, it goes beyond compensation. It’s about ensuring fair treatment of all by providing each employee with proportional access to opportunities.³

Rather than asking leaders to treat everyone the same, organizations that promote equity and an equitable workplace should encourage and expect leaders to identify everyone’s specific professional needs and take these into account when making decisions.⁴

Inclusion

It’s one thing to have a diverse workforce, and another to give everyone a voice at the table and offer them a safe and accessible space to contribute ideas and raise concerns. And so, inclusion, in a way, is diversity in action.

When successfully applied, a culture of inclusion removes all barriers, discrimination, and intolerance, and promotes an environment in which everyone is made to feel included, heard, and supported.⁵ In the workplace, inclusion is often the result of efforts that encourage and respect the participation and contribution of all employees. Within an inclusive work environment, we don’t pretend that everyone is the same — rather, we celebrate our differences and allow them to enrich our work by giving everyone the opportunity to voice their ideas.⁶

10 ways L&D managers can boost DEI

It is one thing to understand what DEI is and to grasp its importance; it’s another to actually put those insights into action, because it means having to turn DEI into a business function.

Below is a list of 10 actions L&D professionals and their teams can take to help their organization make that transition.

Emphasize the business case for diversity and inclusion
When workplace teams reflect the social makeup of their target customers, they’re more than twice as likely to innovate effectively for their consumers.⁷ For this very reason, L&D managers must first and foremost emphasize this very business case to leadership, and later collaborate with other departments to develop cohesive plans that link DEI with metrics that matter to business outcomes. Once everyone is on board with these plans, L&D will then help set up appropriate initiatives and programs to follow through.⁸
Work with a chief diversity officer
In recent years, many organizations have hired chief diversity officers (CDOs) — in other words, DEI specialists — to oversee DEI initiatives, and to support L&D teams in their efforts. Alternatively, CDOs are also well equipped in helping L&D managers ensure that their DEI goals, strategies, and practical interventions are aligned.Alternatively, some organizations prefer to hire DEI consultants instead. DEI consultants can assist L&D teams in identifying DEI issues at a micro and macro level, and help create training content that addresses these.⁹
Ensure support across the organization
To create a sustainable DEI culture, everyone within an organization must be on board. The process starts with the leadership team, who will need to model goals and outcomes — and align them with business goals — and demonstrate active support for them.¹⁰The L&D team can then align their training goals to those of the leadership team’s. This will allow L&D to identify learning gaps in DEI for both the leadership team and the company employees.
Provide inclusive leadership and bias training
Bias occurs in the workplace either consciously or subconsciously through choices or assumptions made when hiring staff, delegating tasks, or comparing employees in other ways.¹¹ In order to embed DEI across the organization, executives need adequate DEI training to better understand what inclusive and unbiased leadership looks like. At the same time, HR leaders and their teams should also undergo training so that they too can become aware of any potential bias when working with job applicants and employees, at both onboarding and reviewing stages.¹²
Conduct DEI training across the company
Once the L&D team has aligned their DEI needs and goals with the company goals and the CDO or DEI consultant, they’re finally ready to conduct focused and relevant training programs that work toward achieving their unique DEI goals.For DEI training to be most effective, it shouldn’t be sporadic or responsive — rather, it should be proactive and embedded in all learning content and experiences, even when not specifically discussing DEI topics.¹³Bear in mind that learning about diversity, while sitting with a group of homogeneous colleagues, is understandably less effective than interacting with people from diverse backgrounds. For this reason, it’s important to create diverse training groups across the board, promoting inclusivity regardless of the learning topic.¹⁴
Rethink your learning formats and make learning accessible
It’s not just the content of your training programs that fosters inclusion; format has a role to play here, too. Traditional in-person or virtual classroom settings can be very useful, but make sure to consider also whether peer exchanges, roundtables, collaboration hubs, or fireside chats might suit the subject matter better and create more effective learning opportunities.¹⁵Moreover, bear in mind the specific circumstances of your employees and how training formats, and the environment in which they take place, can ensure that all individuals and their accessibility needs are included. It means ensuring that venues are accessible to all, but also, and not exclusively, offering the flexibility of online training to remote or hybrid staff.
Diversify your candidate training pool
Diverse training groups require a diverse workforce, which first and foremost starts with having access to a diverse pool of hiring candidates. In other words, your organization will need to improve their hiring initiatives, and to do so they will need to take steps to remove unconscious bias when hiring new employees and nurturing existing ones.¹⁶It may be that candidates in your industry tend to be from one particular group. If that’s the case, your best option could be to set up a train-to-hire program. Such programs have proved to be very useful in imparting vital, job-ready skills to people from different fields and backgrounds, and in helping organizations attract and hire a more diverse workforce. Note that an effective train-to-hire program considers candidates’ experience, learning preferences, mentorship, and the need for constant improvement moving forward.¹⁷
Use tech to remove unconscious bias from the hiring process
Business leaders are increasingly using new technologies to create safe, open, and inclusive workspaces. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) could help your organization to eliminate bias during the hiring process by removing subjective judgment from the initial application-review process. For example, an AI program could be asked to extract from application documents job-relevant data only, thus avoiding human bias based on background or gender identity.¹⁸
Train and collaborate with mentors
All professionals can benefit from a mentorship program. This is especially true of those individuals who come from historically underrepresented and underserved communities, and who may not have had the same social and professional support their colleagues may have received. Mentors must, therefore, give more than advice; they should also advocate for their mentees’ advocacy from the mentor.¹⁹ Similarly, L&D’s work can go beyond merely matching mentors to staff, and instead can also consist of providing guidance to both the employee and the mentor around accountability and growth.
Track impact and report results
Progress in DEI will bring positive impact and necessary transformation to organizations, but constant advocacy and accountability will be vital to the initiatives maintaining momentum. L&D managers can boost support and investment for these initiatives by drawing up KPIs, monitoring progress, and reporting on the positive results to leaders – making sure that DEI is more than a box-ticking exercise.

Ready to start your organization on the DEI journey?

Learn how edX For Business can help you turn DEI dialogue into action through innovative L&D solutions.

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Enterprise Article

Your Talent Strategy For Closing Skills Gaps

Article9 min read

August 21, 2023

Today’s businesses are experiencing tremendous pressure to keep up with human, social, and technological changes. For one, we don’t work the way we used to. We work through digital tools, remotely or in hybrid arrangements, for longer careers and more employers, at full-time jobs and side hustles. Then, there’s our ever-changing world of technology where nothing ever really stays the same.

It’s no wonder that skills gaps are growing across several industries, making it often difficult for organizations, and the professionals who work for them, to adapt to the dynamic demands of their market. McKinsey research shows that even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 59% of leaders already felt that skills building was essential to long-term growth.¹ That figure has since risen to 78%.²

While technology and digitalization present opportunities for positive change, these can’t be utilized without appropriately skilled professionals — learning and development (L&D) managers — to guide their organization through appropriate developmental programs, and help professionals apply their newly learned skills.³ Nor can such programs be easily set up without a strategy in place, and often without outside expert support.

The age of disruption

We live in an age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, all of which lead to rapid change within businesses. These are the 10 biggest factors causing disruption across organizations:⁴

It’s no surprise COVID-19 sits atop the list, having accelerated and amplified the impact of other factors, such as digital transformation in businesses.⁵

Regardless, all the disruptors above are shifting the skills requirements for a host of industries, most notably financial services, advanced technology, and telecommunications. The business areas most affected, meaning those experiencing the greatest skills gap, are data analytics, followed by IT management, executive management, HR and talent management, and sales and marketing operations.⁶

How professionals and companies are responding

A recent GetSmarter survey of nearly 6,000 people across 128 countries found that 58% of respondents anticipated needing to learn new skills for the current job within the next six months.⁷

Currently, C-suite professionals are learning more than anyone else, with 57% engaged in reskilling. That’s good news, because it indicates that a majority of business leaders recognize the need to address and close the skills development gap — an understanding that may lead to more learning opportunities across all professional levels.

And while many professionals may still feel that they are solely responsible for their career development, it doesn’t necessarily have to be so — in fact, more and more L&D managers are being tasked with setting up upskilling and reskilling programs.⁸ In fact, L&D managers have never been so valued, nor under such pressure. Without them, and without an enterprise development team, businesses that want to help their employees upskill run several risks, such as:

A disconnect between upskilling choices and the organization’s needs and goals
Haphazardly designed programs with minimal impact, or impact limited only to certain teams
Lengthy launches of skills development programs
Low retention levels, due to a lack of real career-partnerships meant to help employees on their professional journey

How to close the skills gaps

To address these issues, leadership, talent, and L&D managers typically focus on three strategies: hire, reskill, and upskill.

Hire:

Talent and recruitment teams face a shortage of applicants, let alone highly skilled ones, which forces them to look at hiring differently.⁹ Here are a few steps you may want to take if your organization faces similar challenges:

Change recruitment mindsets to focus on the desired skills rather than personalities, and welcome a broader diversity of backgrounds.
Review hiring procedures to ensure promising candidates are not rejected by traditional screening methods.
Look beyond traditional labor pools to include older workers, those with disabilities, foreign talent, and veterans.

Hiring is also timely and expensive — in the U.S., it takes an average of 36 to 42 days, and costs $1,633, to fill a position.¹⁰ Moreover, when unemployment stands near historic lows, as it currently does in the U.S., it also leaves very little available talent to pick from.¹¹ To top it, the “great resignation” spurred by the pandemic has seen record numbers of people leaving their jobs, creating significant issues for hiring teams. Case in point, of all hiring managers surveyed by Prudential Financial:¹²

58% don’t receive enough applications to fill their vacancies.
71% say the applications they receive don’t match the skills required.
82% are willing to hire someone who requires initial training.

That last statistic is particularly telling: New-hire training may be a solution for many employers, and could be for your organization, too. For instance, Netflix recently employed this tactic to improve workforce diversity, by partnering with edX and establishing the Netflix Pathways Boot Camps to teach industry-relevant tech skills to under-represented populations. By doing so, Netflix, in partnership with edX, grew a more diversified, and qualified, talent pool.

Reskill:

You don’t always have to look to the external talent pool to bridge skills gaps — you could focus instead on reskilling your current staff. A World Economic Forum survey found that 50% of workers would need reskilling by 2025, and 40% of respondents expected that to take six months or less.¹³

From a financial perspective, reskilling makes sense. A report by the Financial Services Skills Commission in the UK found that reskilling a financial services employee costs an average of £31,850, compared with a redundancy and rehire cost of £80,875 — a saving of £49,025.¹⁴ It’s therefore not surprising that 53% of business leaders prefer reskilling over engaging freelancers or contractors, or even hiring new talent.¹⁵

Reskilling is also a key way to retain talent — it not only offers learning opportunities, which leads to an increase in job satisfaction, but it also promotes internal mobility. A recent Gallup survey found, for example, that 57% of workers in the U.S. want to update their skills, and so much so, that 48% would even consider moving jobs to improve skills. But, here’s the good news: According to the same Gallup survey, not only do 71% of workers in the U.S. report an increase in job satisfaction through training and development, 61% of workers consider learning opportunities a good reason to stay at their job.¹⁶

In other words, the opportunity to retrain at work could be a big retention incentive for employees at your organization, especially those who may want to pivot careers.

Upskill:

Reskilling gives employees the chance to develop new skills. Upskilling, on the other hand, helps them augment their existing skills on a continual basis so that they can adapt more easily to the evolving requirements of their jobs and careers.

Upskilling can prevent skill gaps and develop better resilience against accelerating change.¹⁷ Though not always, it’s also often done within hybrid roles — these are jobs that include both technical expertise (hard skills) and traditional (soft) skills such as leadership.¹⁸ For example, an employee who learns to automate everyday tasks, and applies their learning to their work, can soon free up more time for strategic thinking and collaboration.

What skills you need to prioritize

Many of the skills required to keep pace with modern businesses and industries are naturally aligned with digital capabilities. However, as digital capabilities become assumed for most professional jobs, the key differentiators among candidates are increasingly more human-centric: analytical and critical reasoning, interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities.¹⁹

There are also many advantages to focusing on human-centric development. Skills specific to particular jobs — such as software proficiency, programming languages, coding, or digital marketing capabilities — will require more frequent upskilling. On the other hand, analytical skills, human-centric skills, and the fundamental capabilities required to leverage digital tools have much greater longevity.²⁰

What’s also clear is that digital transformation in organizations is majorly influencing what we should be learning, when, and how. Ultimately, you and your L&D team will need to balance both types of skills: the ones needed now, and those your organization will need later.

Your guide to digital transformation skills

GetSmarter’s Digital Transformation Skills Framework lists the key capabilities your employees should have to stay on top of current and future digital skills and technologies. It also provides a foundation on which to build your L&D programs.

This framework places interpersonal skills (such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creativity, and adaptability) at the center of four other categories of skills that organizations may want to develop now and for the future.²¹ It also speaks to many of the skills gaps that organizations currently face, yet those skills are the most valuable capabilities to have if you’re aiming for a successful digital transformation.

The future of skills development

Skills development is no longer simply a business augmentation; it’s an essential component of survival, both for organizations and for individual professionals. Companies with a view to the future continue growing because they understand that to learn is to innovate.²²

There may be no one-size-fits-all approach to skills development — each organization, team, and professional being unique — yet two aspects of it are a must for all:

In the age of disruption, skills development should be conducted on an ongoing basis as part of any organization’s strategy for closing continually evolving skills gaps.
Skills development should take place across an organization, rather than in silos; if technical teams are getting upskilled, for example, then leadership should be learning how to better support the new needs and goals of those employees.

Owing to time, budgetary, and remote-working pressures, training programs will also likely have to be delivered through digital channels, which have the advantage of being easily scalable — but the digital aspect is no surprise: Learning, in the era of digital transformation, has already gone digital. What is more, remote learning has the potential to deliver essential skills quickly and prompt employees to exercise them immediately on the job, improving engagement and performance.²³

With this in mind, edX For Business can help you curate a holistic skills development strategy, across a range of disciplines and learning styles. From closing technical skills with boot camps, to leadership development with executive education courses or company wide upskilling with open courses — edX For Business can help you future-proof your workforce.

Are you keeping pace with today’s fast-changing skills requirements? Learn how edX For Business can help future-proof your people and your business, by helping you close skill gaps.

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Enterprise Article

Six strategies to help you implement leadership development

Article8 min read

December 1, 2022

As companies emerge into a post-pandemic regime with all the new expectations, challenges and opportunities that it brings, they face a number of trends that are upending conventional management philosophies. The pace and volume of information is rising and bypassing existing hierarchies, leading to information overload. Increased automation is eroding traditional notions of predictability and control, and employees’ career expectations are changing.¹

Management practices are being challenged and leaders must rise to the occasion — and they know it. Sixty percent of executives worldwide see effective leadership as a critical skill needed to prepare for changes the future will no doubt bring.² At the same time, the understanding of what leadership means is changing: rather than a destination, it is a journey of continual learning, development, and reflection. ³

Leadership is like a muscle: it needs to be exercised all the time.⁴ And just as professional athletes don’t start training when they’re drafted for the national team, leaders can’t wait until a promotion comes to start exercising that muscle; they need to start much earlier, in whatever position they may occupy in an organization. This is important for more than just effective succession planning; it also lets employees feel their work has greater impact.⁵ For this reason, companies must empower their staff to make decisions: it’s essential for developing the necessary organizational agility to cope with rapid and constant change.⁶

Employees with leadership skills are in high demand, and training them to one day become leaders has a tangible and positive impact on staff retention. Case in point: during the Great Resignation when millions of professionals quit their jobs, more than half of US workers cited a lack of appreciation from their managers as the cause.⁷ Had organizations invested in helping their talented employees to develop leadership and other skills, they may not have been impacted as greatly.

While much has been made of younger employees’ emphasis on learning skills at work, leadership development is a good way to keep employees engaged across the generations. Management and leadership skills are the number one learning priority not only for Millennials and Gen X, but also for the Baby Boomer generation still active.⁸ Focused and personalized leadership development also presents an opportunity to improve diversity in management, and ensures that underrepresented groups advance at the same pace as their colleagues.⁹

Learning and development (L&D) managers are best positioned within an organization to effectively plan the development of leadership skills in both entry-level and experienced employees. The following six strategies will guide you in implementing leadership development from the ground up:

1. Identify your company’s leadership skills gap

While it’s important to provide every employee with the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills, one cost-effective strategy could be to identify which leadership positions need to be filled immediately, so you can start providing training for those as soon as possible. There are a number of ways to approach this, such as:¹⁰

Using leadership assessment tools coupled with one-on-one interviews for context to find gaps and strengths.
Identifying measurable business performance deficiencies, and speaking with the leaders associated with these to find out what they need.
Looking out for regular complaints, and for departments with higher-than-average absenteeism or resignation rates.
Reviewing your company’s strategy to see if you have the necessary leadership skills to execute it.
Imagining losing your top executives — do you have people who could fill their shoes?

2. Identify leadership potential

Building a sustainable leadership pipeline requires a commitment to nurturing and developing high-potential employees throughout the organization. Take the time to understand their career goals and personalize their training, which will make them feel that they’re on a clear developmental path, and will in turn increase their engagement in the business.¹¹

The first step to doing so is to identify the employees with leadership potential. Look out for emergent leaders, meaning employees who, rather than being formally assigned a leadership position, naturally assume leadership roles in their teams through their interactions with others. These employees are typically influential, reliable, inspiring, and encourage collaboration.¹²

And so, when you foster emergent leadership in your organization, you not only enable leaders to rise naturally, but also encourage autonomy, because emergent leadership flows from the capacity to think for yourself, rather than expecting others to tell you what to do. Be careful, however, not to mistake raw charisma for leadership. Not all emergent leaders are extroverts — some may be much less outspoken than others, and L&D managers should be mindful of acknowledging and supporting them too.¹³

Once you’ve identified high-potential leaders, unlock their talent through appropriate, focused training programs. Executive education courses are valuable for even non-executive employees, and impart valuable business and leadership skills quickly and with a focus on practical application to accelerate their growth within your business.

3. Invest in underrepresented leaders

Diversity in leadership development is a societal issue that requires initiatives targeting groups that have historically been underrepresented on the basis of race, disability, gender, and so forth. Such initiatives can help create a more representative management team, which will in turn attract a more diverse workforce. But developing diverse leaders will require more than HR initiatives or hiring allocations; it will require a reassessment of your organizational culture. Consider these steps:¹⁴

4. Develop your managers into leaders

The impact that managers have on employees’, and thus the company’s, performance can’t be overstated. In fact, Gallup found that 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement is due to the quality of their manager.¹⁵ However, not all managers have strong, inherent leadership skills, or have been given training to develop these. When you take into account the effect of managers on workforce performance, it makes sense to overinvest in their development — and even more so when you consider that managers offer a pool of potential executive talent by virtue of already being in a leadership position.

A study of hundreds of job roles and competencies established that high-performing managers usually have these leadership capabilities:¹⁶

The capacity to build relationships and trust in sharing ideas and getting things done
The ability to develop others through clear expectations, encouragement, and coaching
Aptness at driving change by setting goals and adapting work to align with those goals
Talent at inspiring and motivating people through vision, confidence, positivity, and recognition
Critical-thinking skills and the ability to solve problems
Effective, efficient, and open communication skills
The capability to hold others and themselves accountable for performance

Providing formal training to develop these skills in your managers is important, but so is mentorship by senior leaders, especially in the early stages of handling new management responsibilities. L&D should create opportunities for collaborative and feedback-based learning by asking managers to provide feedback on challenges and successes in an environment geared toward knowledge sharing and improvement. Such review sessions can be a great learning opportunity for both them and, ultimately, the company at large. It can also be an opportunity for managers to further develop empathy and listening skills, deepen their emotional intelligence, and explore different conflict resolution tactics.¹⁷

5. Nurture current leadership with continuous development

In order to guide businesses through an evolving and uncertain business world, leaders need to understand and have the skills to engage with the technological trends driving change, including automation, big data, AI, and machine learning, alongside social ones like sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion. But if we expect leaders to adapt continuously to these trends, then it stands to reason that even those currently in leadership roles should engage in continuous personal and professional development.

Slowly but surely, the mindset is shifting away from employee learning as an event, to learning in the flow of work. Increasingly, learning is becoming digital and is happening at work, rather than outside of it.¹⁸

One of the key challenges facing leadership development is that there isn’t enough time for leaders to learn and practice the necessary skills, because it takes them away from their responsibilities. Embedding learning in the flow of work is one step towards solving this, but certain competencies are still best taught through courses. Regardless, it’s crucial to give leaders sufficient opportunity for reflection and self-development. This means time for thinking about their behaviors and how these can be changed, and for practicing new skills, which should ideally occur in a sandbox or simulation environment, to build confidence and avoid any costly mistakes.¹⁹

6. Lifelong leadership development

An ever-changing technology landscape necessitates constant reskilling and upskilling, which in turn requires a constant focus on learning. The same goes for leadership skills, which leaders – both incumbent and emergent – need to sharpen continuously to keep pace with shifting social trends and workforce expectations.

Successful, long-serving leaders tend to be agile learners, which is why learning agility is a quality business should seek. Hiring managers can identify agile learners by asking questions about how they’ve dealt with challenges and learned from their mistakes, while L&D managers should foster a culture of curiosity and openness, providing on-the-job learning opportunities and stretch assignments that give employees the opportunity to rise to new challenges.²⁰

Developing skills at every level is a priority for all organizations. edX For Business offers a wealth of solutions to help businesses on their journey to growing the leaders that tomorrow’s world requires.

Ready to foster leadership and innovation in every sphere of your business? Learn how edX For Business’ innovative learning solutions can help you develop crucial leadership skills at all levels of your organization.

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7 Ways to Achieve Enterprise Agility Through Training and Development

Article9 min read

November 9, 2022

In an age of business disruption, the only thing we can be sure of is that things are going to change. Whether dealing with the realities of a pandemic, or shifting expectations around remote and hybrid work, or of emerging demands of sustainability and transparent operations,¹ organizations must equip themselves to adapt to disruption in business changes by cultivating enterprise agility.

What is enterprise agility?

Up to 90% of CEOs believe their company is facing disruptive change, and 70% say their organization does not have the skills to adapt.² Meaning, only 30% of organizations qualify as agile and are able to quickly adapt their processes, structures, technology use, and team makeup in response to change.³

Business agility calls for systems and approaches that enable workers to adapt swiftly, make ongoing improvements, and prioritize responsiveness and efficiency over robust planning and documentation.⁴

So, how do you help your organization grow business agility? Learning and development (L&D) managers can help organizations make this shift by building solutions to fill emerging skills gaps, bolster key competencies, and create an environment that empowers, encourages collaboration, and inspires teams to keep on improving.

7 ways L&D leaders can contribute to enterprise agility

1. Empower employees to learn in the flow of work

In order to iterate and improve quickly, teams need to expand their skill sets and keep their knowledge up-to-date. In fact, nearly 60% of the workforce needs new skills to better perform in their roles.⁵ And yet, as they go about their busy work day filled with competing priorities, most people who could benefit from upskilling simply don’t have the time they need to commit to it. This is where learning in the flow of work becomes a powerful tool.

When teams and individuals learn in the flow of work, they’re seeking out answers, skills, and insights at the point of need.⁶ That means that when an organization opts to shift away from JavaScript, their developers might enroll in an online course to upskill in Python. Because they’re filling a tangible and urgent need, they also take ownership of their learning and integrate it into their daily work the moment they acquire it.

Learning can be approached individually, within teams, or on a project-by-project basis.⁷ By creating an environment where teams, for instance, can learn and change their approach on a day-to-day basis, businesses equip themselves for the disruptive changes of tomorrow. But learning in the flow of work goes beyond enabling learning — it’s about creating a culture of learning where employees are actively looking out for opportunities to learn and improve.

2. Invest in self-paced, self-directed learning

To facilitate this kind of need-based learning, leaders should ensure that employees have access to self-paced and self-directed learning opportunities. This empowers employees to take a more active role in their professional development: be it through self-directed learning exercises or initiatives driven by L&D managers.

This type of learning environment is what differentiates agile organizations from others; in an agile work environment, employees take direction amid ambiguity, and take charge of what and when to acquire new skills.⁸ That means a Google update won’t grind SEO team operations to a halt. The team will have the resources and support they need to seek out up-to-date knowledge, and get started on tweaking their strategy in real time.

As the number of agile work environments has grown in recent years, so has the number offerings that support self-paced and self-directed learning at the point of need. Amongst these are online learning subscriptions that enable employees to address any skill gaps, and take the next skill in their career development pathway themselves.

This translates into new opportunities to embed learning into everyday work activities, such as microlearning exercises that are easily integrated into a busy schedule.⁹

3. Empower managers

Navigating change isn’t easy. Agile organizations already know that, have accepted it, and have equipped themselves with the required tools and culture to function amidst the change. To set its teams up for success, an agile organization invests first and foremost in training its managers, who can then provide support for their teams to adapt a growth mindset at work — believing they have the capacity to improve, adapt, and gain new skills — and learn to implement agile practices, like working quickly and iteratively instead of striving for perfection.¹⁰

Aside from helping to bolster a commitment to learning at all levels, management buy-in and participation also helps L&D managers to provide training that’s more relevant and connected to the daily needs of every specific team. Team managers, after all, know the realities their teams face and their very needs, and can easily communicate those to L&D managers.

Moreover, research reveals that 85% of employees are already aware of the skill gaps they need to address.¹¹ What they need now — to feel empowered to adapt their learning journey based on these insights, and pivot swiftly and effectively in their day-to-day work — is their direct managers’ support.¹²

4. Encourage collaboration across teams

When leaders encourage collaborative environments, they open up myriad possibilities for growth and development.

Think about your colleagues. What individual skills and interests do they have? How do they approach problems? Chances are, there’s a diversity of perspectives and approaches in that group. That means they’ll each bring different competencies and perspectives to the table. When they are excited to voice their ideas, share their expertise, and divide and conquer on project needs, teams are primed to innovate and improve.

Setting the standard for a culture of collaboration and creativity, Google has cultivated work environments that bring great minds together. Between temporary pop-up office spaces for team collaboration, a volunteer teaching network called Googlers-to-Googlers, g2g, (where staff dedicate time to help each other learn and grow), and town hall ‘TGIF’ meetings that have become a standard of transparency and open communication for the rest of Silicon Valley, Google exemplifies the innovation that collaborative environments make possible.¹³

Instead of siloed working that reduces communication, and erodes trust and autonomy, teams in agile organizations are free to throw their collective knowledge at a challenge and find new and innovative approaches.¹⁴ And when individuals engage in upskilling, they can share training insights and lessons learned with the group, saving time and effort for all.

5. Focus on soft skills development at all levels

A staggering 50% of leaders are said to fail in achieving what they were hired to do. So says Warner Burke, professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Burke, who is an expert in leadership and organizational change, argues that this failure is due to a lack of learning agility.¹⁵

Learning agility is an individual’s ability to learn new things, adapt their understanding, and relearn knowledge if necessary. It requires an openness to new knowledge and skills, and involves a number of soft skills that equip individuals to make their way through ambiguous circumstances. Soft skills — interpersonal skills like communication, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, giving and receiving feedback, problem-solving, and decision-making — can be learned just like any other skill. L&D leaders should invest in soft skill training for team members at all levels to support and grow enterprise agility.

But learning agility isn’t limited to individuals alone — it can also be part of an organization’s identity. Just as in the case of individuals who show learning agility, organizations who share this trait show flexibility — the ability to move on from old methods or thinking when they aren’t working — and speed — how quickly they can make a new plan of action when new information surfaces.¹⁶ That means, when a digital marketing campaign fails to meet its targets, agile marketers will investigate what went wrong and move on to new tools or new approaches to existing tools, instead of throwing time and money at a strategy that’s just not working.

By first focusing on developing soft skills at all levels of an organization, L&D leaders can equip teams to work decisively and confidently in the face of uncertainty.¹⁷

6. Create metrics to track the success of L&D agility initiatives

L&D is an iterative process that evolves alongside business demands; it’s therefore important to track its progress and measure these against key business metrics. Since speed and efficiency are part and parcel of enterprise agility, it’s also very useful to include time as a key metric to measure success.¹⁸

For example, you could track the time it takes to develop and deploy a new training intervention. Alternatively, you could also measure how quickly employees are able to gain and implement targeted skills. With insights such as these, L&D managers can get closer to training that meets business needs as efficiently and effectively as possible.

7. Foster a culture of lifelong learning

As much as 50% of the global workforce will need to upskill or reskill by 2025.¹⁹ That means continued education is no longer optional; it’s key to continued employability. It’s this same state of affairs that lends credence to agile methodologies, which prepare organizations to meet global transformation head-on.

Agility and a culture of learning go hand in hand. Organizations that embrace a culture of learning create agile learners who move quickly, and embrace innovation and change. As a result, these organizations are 30% more likely to be trailblazers in their industry.²⁰

For an organization to truly embed learning within its culture, it needs to promote and support learning at all levels, from entry level to middle management, and all the way to the C-suite. Aside from providing access to relevant learning materials to all, this also means setting time aside for development, for celebrating new ideas, and for emphasizing individual links to organizational goals.²¹

An agile working environment calls for empowered employees who can pivot, unlearn, and seek out new solutions. A culture of learning offers employees opportunities to upskill and grow their careers, and to place value on seeking out new insights and solutions; it also provides employees with intrinsic motivation.²²

To find out more about creating a culture of lifelong learning, read our blog, How a Learning Culture Primes Your Organization for Agility.

To discover more about the power of enterprise agility, get in touch to discuss edX For Business online learning opportunities.

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How a learning culture primes your organization for agility

Article11 min read

November 1, 2022

If your organization struggles to keep up with the ever-changing realities of your industry — and of the world of business at large — your organization is not alone. For one, the current and ongoing digital transformation, the emerging skill gaps that follow in its wake, and the pressure to innovate and adapt to continuing change can all make for challenging terrain to navigate for any organization, big or small.

The solution? A higher adaptability and enterprise agility through education. In other words, to keep up with the ever-changing realities and demands of your industry, your organization will need to first and foremost build a culture of learning within its ranks — and become what thought leader Peter Senge dubbed a “learning organization.” ¹

Learning organization meets a transformative world head-on. That’s because these organizations help to create agile learners, and agile learners move quickly, adjust skillfully, and drive innovation. It’s no wonder then that the organizations that get this right are 46% more likely to be first to market, 37% to be more productive, and 92% to be more likely to innovate.²

Read on to find out how learning and development (L&D) managers can use Senge’s framework as a guide to develop a learning culture that inspires agility within their business.

What is a learning organization?

To put it simply, a learning organization is one that promotes the learning and professional development of all its members. A learning organization does not fight change — instead, it continuously develops itself to adapt to new needs and demands.³

The characteristics of a learning organization includes systems and processes to support experimentation, new modes of thinking, and a culture of inquiry.

How to create a learning organization

Pause for a moment and look at your colleagues. Note the wide experience and expertise each of them could bring to the table if given the chance and motivation. Is it possible that one of them has the very solution to one of your organization’s problems, but may never have had the opportunity or drive to share it?

When you create a learning culture, you send the following message to everyone: The knowledge and skills you have matter, and your professional development is our priority.

This is where the L&D team comes in. In an evolving business landscape where upskilling and reskilling are more important than ever, L&D managers and their teams must be able to provide impactful learning solutions that meet the individual needs of diverse teams within their organization, and inject key skills that have a direct impact on business success and growth. Combined, the drive to learn and continuous upskilling help organizations to pivot in the face of rampant change.⁴

Senge’s framework, which he describes in his seminal work The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, uses the following five “disciplines” or areas that together make up a roadmap to creating a learning organization:⁵

Systems thinking
Personal mastery
Mental models
Shared vision
Team learning

These disciplines prepare individuals, teams, and organizations with the skills and practices needed to make a learning organization work. They also help pinpoint areas of improvement that can be targeted by L&D teams. Let’s have a look at each one of them below.

1. Systems thinking

Systems thinking demands that one views their organization as a complex system that’s made up of numerous smaller structures. It’s much like a spider’s web, where it’s the small strands that ultimately make the whole strong — meaning that individual decisions are understood to have a broader impact.

To reach systems thinking — or the ability to see one’s organization as a system of interconnected structures — you will have to understand your organization as a whole, from the bigger-picture structures to the architecture of departments and teams. You then need to identify — and this is key to systems thinking — the small cogs (short-term objectives) that keep the big machine (long-term goals) working.⁶

For example, take a set of skills a marketing team has. Perhaps their strength as a team are insights into digital marketing essentials. Now identify the processes that help put these skills to use, and the technologies that enable collaboration within and between this team and other teams within the organization.

Such an exercise might look like weekly campaign meetings where contributors can track progress, share data and learnings, and monitor how campaign KPIs link to higher-level business goals like overall sales. Observe how synchronous communications tools like Slack, for instance, and increased autonomy allow the team to optimize campaigns in real time.

By pinpointing how such skills, processes, and technologies affect each other, your organization can now identify barriers and suggest improvements and opportunities to fill emerging skills gaps — both of which are foundational to building enterprise agility and a culture of learning.

In our example, that might be eliminating management sign-off on campaign tweaks, scheduling more regular check-ins, or even evaluating if teams should be training in a new digital marketing specialization to boost campaign ROI further.

2. Personal mastery

The second pillar of a learning organization is an investment in personal mastery — in other words, a commitment to ongoing growth and development through deeper insights into personal beliefs, purpose, and vision. Personal mastery is achieved through a set of repeatable strategies and tools that equip individuals to perform at their best.⁷

Contrary to what its name suggests, personal mastery is not only concerned with individual opportunities to grow new skills and expertise. It’s also about the way in which an organization supports such opportunities and helps team members link their efforts to the broader mission of the organization.

By doing so, and as Senge puts it, “Learning in this context does not mean acquiring more information, but expanding the ability to produce results.”⁸ This means that a digital marketer is not just gaining a new accreditation; they’re also acquiring knowledge that’ll enable more targeted campaigns and higher conversion rates in their day-to-day.

And with online learning providing new opportunities for performance-based learning (otherwise known as learning in the flow of work),⁹ teams will have the chance to put their learning into action directly.

The benefits of putting newly learned skills into practice are twofold. First, when individual team members are given the opportunity to grow their careers, they stay motivated in their roles and remain happy with their current organization. According to Gallup insights, skills development programs increased job satisfaction for 71% of workers in the U.S.¹⁰

And when these employees focus on upskilling, and gain new and in-demand skills that are needed to cope with industry shifts, they also become part of increasing organizational agility.

3. Mental models

It is no secret that our assumptions and preconceptions about ourselves, about others, and about the world at large affect our emotions and behavior. What is more, we are often unaware of these thinking patterns and constructs. This, in turn, can affect how we show up at work. If we hold on to an unconscious belief that we’re not capable of doing something, we might not jump at a promising opportunity, either — or underperform.

This could even affect broader business outcomes. For example, if a leadership team is convinced that they’re already using the best technology, they could close themselves off to a new solution that could boost team efficiency and even save on licensing fees.

By working through what Senge coined “mental models”, an organization examines its shared and individual thinking, and its blind spots. This can be done at a high level, through annual and quarterly reviews across the company. Alternatively, this kind of reflection can be built into routine activities, including project review and debriefing sessions or into training initiatives that help teams to interrogate any areas of assumption.

One such assumption, for example, could be that a business thinks that they already understand their product’s user base, and how the organization fits into their clients’ lives. In other words, by interrogating assumptions, organizations shed light on the knowledge they should be questioning and the skills they should focus on building. In our example, L&D teams could lead the practice of reflective thinking, or other development opportunities that help individuals to gain insight into personal, or team-wide mental models.

When they work through this step of self-inquiry, teams learn to identify weak points, and by doing so they make room for new ideas, new and in-demand knowledge, and ultimately more informed decision-making.¹¹

4. Shared vision

Workers who share and support their organization’s vision, and what their organization stands for, perform better and tend to remain longer within their organization.¹² Take an employee who works for a company that’s committed to promoting gender equality in real terms — through transparency around pay, equal parental leave, childcare services, and programs that support women’s advancement in the workplace.

If this particular employee supports their organization’s commitment to gender equality, and shares in the organization’s mission of promoting equitable practices, they’ll be intrinsically motivated to make sure the organization meets its vision and mission, and may feel more driven to perform for the good of the company. Case in point: Researchers have established a clear link between employee satisfaction and wellness at work, and individual links to the broader outcomes of their organization.¹³

Which leads us back to team buy-in: When an organization involves its employees in discussing the company’s mission and goals, and seeks their input on an ongoing basis, it also equips and empowers them to take part in organizational growth and learning. Once originally owned by leadership, the organization’s vision and mission are now owned and shared by all, sparking dialogue and bringing more diverse perspectives to the table.¹⁴

And as L&D leaders know, for learning initiatives to really pack a punch, it should have clear links to company-wide strategic goals, as well as individual and team level goals. So it’s essential that L&D teams are involved in this process of engagement on vision and mission.¹⁵

5. Team learning

Senge believed that the role of teams within a learning organization is significant. According to him, teams have an “extraordinary capacity for positive change.”¹⁶ That’s because people can achieve more together.

A focus on team-level learning — where teams think together, engage in dialogue and cooperative problem-solving, and share collective insights — is a powerful vehicle for innovation and agility. If one developer is struggling to integrate the latest of a string of product updates, they may make better headway when partnered up with a product manager who understands the business need behind a change, and with a software engineer who’s been working with the platform since it was first built.

Such a learning collaboration fosters conversations within and between departments. It also primes teams to work with a shared vision, an understanding of how organizational systems impact each other, and a grasp of how individual and team activities feed into the whole.¹⁷ But before team learning can take place, a team and its organization have to address one major barrier to success: silo mentality.

Silo mentality translates into departmental isolation: Departments or groups may be unwilling to share knowledge or information, and may even lack trust in other departments or groups. Organizational silos affect communication, erode trust, restrict innovation, and make it harder to pivot operations.¹⁸ Such a situation could be exacerbated even further by existing procedures or organizational cultures that preclude this more open and collaborative approach to learning and working, such as unspoken but real competition between departments, which results in departments safeguarding information and not sharing it with any other group. Fortunately, the work of L&D teams — in educating and fostering collaboration — helps to break down silos and set the stage for team learning to prosper.

Ready to build agility? Turn your organization into one of learning.

With a firm foundation for new skill development, an increased knowledge base, and robust modes of thought, organizations can build the internal resources they need to respond to frequent industry shifts. When enterprises invest in these competencies through L&D initiatives, they can meet change with agility and navigate disruptions more effectively.

For more insights on how you, too, can harness the power of online education to boost learning on the job, take a look at our white paper, ‘Three Key Steps Towards a Transformational Culture of Learning.’

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Redefine Recruiting: How To Grow A Pipeline Of Diverse Technical Talent

Article8 min read

September 21, 2022

Struggling to fill your critical roles? You’re not alone. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation that followed has seen record numbers of employees leave their jobs in order to seek more fulfilling work, or a better work-life balance, all of which in turn shifted the balance of power in favor of employees.¹

One sector where employees are in the driving seat is tech. Unsurprisingly, given the widespread impact of digital transformation, tech skills are highly sought-after — a report by ManPower Group indicated that the most in-demand skills for 2022 are, in fact, in IT, technology, telecoms, communications, and media.² To gain these skills, organizations often resort to poaching top tech talent with lucrative offers, which results in a smaller, less diverse talent pool for others.³ And as only 26% of computing-related jobs are held by women,⁴ this shrinking pool means a shrinking diversity, too, which is concerning for a field struggling to transform socially.

Rapid digital transformation, combined with the impacts of the pandemic, has also resulted in skills becoming obsolete, and by consequence growing skills gaps. According to a study, the latter are an issue for 43% of companies globally.⁵

The combination of shrinking talent pools, growing skills gaps, and a lack of diversity is creating a perfect storm for hiring managers, particularly those hiring for tech skills. But in the midst of this lies an opportunity for companies to rethink their hiring initiatives in a way that actually grows the amount of talent available to them. It starts by relooking your recruiting model.

The problem with traditional recruiting

Vacant positions have a financial cost, which varies depending on the industry, position, and business circumstances, as well as a relevance cost. The longer it takes to fill a position, the more likely the skills required for that position will have evolved by the time you find a qualified candidate.

Businesses urgently need to examine and reform their recruitment and selection processes. The traditional talent process or funnel, which starts with a business need and leads to hiring, onboarding, and development, is slow to fill vacancies and bring workers up to operational speed.

The SHRM calculates the average cost per hire to be $4,683 in the U.S.,⁶ and these costs grow every day the position remains unfulfilled. When you consider that the median time to hire (from application submission to first day on the job) is 44 days for IT and 49 days for an engineering position, for instance, it’s clear that the longer the hiring process is, the more expensive it becomes.⁷

Thankfully, there is an alternative to the existing talent funnel framework, one that follows the same fundamentals but is more efficient and effective.

A new approach to recruitment

Businesses need to expand their talent pipeline and cut down on the time they take to hire. This can be achieved by building your talent pools, rather than competing with other companies for the same people. Doing so will enable you to train potential candidates according to your specific requirements, so they’ll join your company with job-ready skills.

So, how do you go about creating your own talent pools? We have two solutions for you.

Solution 1: Your next great hire may already work for you

Internal recruitment has the potential to address both the issue of a shrinking talent pipeline and increased employee turnover. Hiring from within the company preserves culture and knowledge, expedites onboarding, and aids in retention — one study shows that if employees understand that there are broader internal mobility opportunities available, they’re more likely to stay.⁸

The internal-recruitment method requires strategies and programs that enable workforce development and on-the-job skills transfers.⁹ In order to anticipate the skills required and plan workforce development programs effectively, you should start by developing a succession plan strategy. This involves assessing the skills you need your employees to have, gauging employee engagement, and determining how quickly you can replace key employees should they depart.¹⁰ Consider these four tips for succession planning:¹¹

Identify internal talent regardless of current vacancies.
Create an inclusive, transparent culture of progression throughout the organization.
Engage in continuous performance management and career pathing.
Move toward a data-driven view of skills by using succession planning software to identify employees who might leave; track high-potential staff to fill vacancies; and improve internal hiring through access to a robust database of available skills.

By partnering with employees and trying to understand their career goals and aspirations more, you can co-create learning paths that align to company goals and employees goals. A coordinated, collaborative approach to ongoing skills development sends a message to employees that if they want to make a career pivot, they don’t need to look outside the organization.

Furthermore, equipping staff with transferable skills that enable them to move into other positions should not be seen as a liability, but rather a future-facing competitive advantage.¹² Richard Branson wasn’t wrong when he said: “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”¹³

Alongside increasing your staff’s confidence, pride in their work, and earning potential, ongoing training equips employees to respond to shifting organizational and market conditions.¹⁴ It also reduces costs: In the U.S., average training expenditure per learner is $1,111,¹⁵ less than a quarter of the average $4,683 cost of hiring a new employee.¹⁶

Solution 2: Hire for potential, train for skills

Rather than competing for scarce tech talent, the train-to-hire model allows you to focus on creating your own pool of technical talent.

New hire training widens the top of your talent funnel by welcoming a broader swathe of candidates who are screened based on their potential to learn and grow, rather than merely on their experience and skills. It also enables you to tailor employee skills to the exact requirements of your business at that time. This has an immediate and positive effect on employee engagement, because more than simply providing employment, you’re facilitating a growth opportunity for new hires from the get-go.¹⁷

It’s also now assumed that every new hire will have basic digital capabilities and literacy, and that job-specific skills can be imparted as part of the hiring process. However, as artificial intelligence and automation become more prevalent, they may furthermore take over some of the tasks previously done by tech staff. This will free these employees up to perform higher-level functions, meaning that critical and analytical thinking, strategy, communication, and leadership will grow in importance.¹⁸ These skills can be more difficult to train in employees, and may necessitate a different and more guided approach to recruiting and training.

Because train-to-hire casts a wider recruitment net, it’s a good way to diversify your talent pool, too. Hiring tech talent from other major tech companies will likely bring you candidates from a non-diverse pool, whereas opening your hiring practices to professionals from other backgrounds, such as those from marketing and sales, might attract diverse candidates with the right attitudes and aptitude to learn.¹⁹

IT services and consulting company Cognizant, for example, found that it needed to boost its ability to hire local technical talent for clients in particular regions. To achieve this, the company partnered with edX For Business to recruit talent from regionally recognised technical boot camps, such as the UConn Coding Boot Camp in Connecticut. This gave the company access to a broader pool of college graduates, who could be trained in practical, technical, job-relevant skills so they could hit the ground running the moment they joined the organization. It also drew in workers from other sectors for whom the boot camps facilitated a career change; this in turn brought a diversity of industry experience and perspectives to Cognizant. Ultimately, Cognizant was able to deliver contemporary skills in the shortest time to a more diverse pool of candidates.

Beyond traditional hiring initiatives

Many companies have responded to the talent crunch by approaching recruiting as a zero-sum game. But savvy organizations recognize that, whether enabling employee mobility or train-to-hire models, continuous learning is key to growing and maintaining a sustainable talent pipeline.

By taking a step back from the traditional method of recruiting and building instead a culture of development — from before a candidate joins your business to the day they depart — you can position your organization as one that values and nurtures talent. And that, in the long run, turns your organization into one for which people will want to work.

Do you want to improve your company’s hiring initiatives? edX For Business offers a broad skills development portfolio to help you develop and nurture the potential of your current and future staff.

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7 Steps To Creating A Professional Skills Development Plan

Article8 min read

September 1, 2022

Despite efforts by organizations to address widening skills gaps, just 51% of employees surveyed consider training from employers to be useful.¹ This may in great part be due to a disconnect between the learning opportunities available to employees, and the training they need to both excel in their roles and grow in their careers.

Given that 96% of employees are nevertheless interested in cultivating new skills², there’s an opportunity for learning and development (L&D) managers to leverage this interest, while simultaneously advancing company goals.

To do this, they need to create skills development pathways focused on building critical competencies that match organizational objectives and the goals of individual employees.³ This in turn will address existing skills gaps, and lay the groundwork for employees, and organizations, to survive the shifting world of work.

Step 1: Conduct a training needs analysis

An effective skills development plan must begin with a training needs analysis (TNA). TNAs help organizations address the gap between where a team may be, and where it needs to be. It’s a proactive, cost-effective tool that helps L&D managers to outline training and development needs, address potential issues, and ensure that training is, in fact, the best way to address business problems.⁴

Training-needs analysis levels

L&D managers need to work through three levels of analysis, starting with individual analysis, and ending with the analysis of competencies needed to perform specific tasks.

Individual analysis

The individual analysis should outline the skills present within a team and identify any barriers to success their absence may cause.⁵ To identify the training needs of each employee, L&D managers should:

Analyze performance reviews, appraisals and other available data to gauge opportunities for individual development.
Engage with employees one-on-one, in focus groups, or through surveys to take stock of their daily challenges.
Connect with team leaders and managers on where they think skills are lacking.
Identify workers who are at risk of redundancy due to automation or skills gaps, and note transferable skills that can be redeployed as part of individual employee development plans.⁶

Company analysis

Once you’ve assessed needs on an individual level, it’s time to plot out business goals so you can identify any overlaps, and prioritize areas for intervention.⁷

Look out for issues present on an organizational level that can be addressed through training, i.e. issues caused by a lack of certain skills and competencies. Consider how technology, legislation, or even business growth might shift needs.

During this step, identify the kinds of support that management can offer employee development and gauge whether additional resources are needed to meet the company goals.

Operational tasks analysis

Finally, drill down into the details of each task and role. This will involve a deep dive into employee job descriptions.⁸ Map this information against what you already know about the skills that exist within any given team. At the end of the TNA process, you should have identified any potential or upcoming skills gaps.

Step 2: Identify skill development focus areas and goals

With these insights, you have the beginnings of a learning roadmap. Your next task is to consider short- and long-term training needs so you can identify priority areas, and build critical skills pathways.

You can use the Skills Hierarchy to help you identify what skills are most needed.⁹ This framework helps to differentiate between assumed, foundational skills like digital literacy, and transferable, human-centered skills like leadership that prepare individuals for a shifting work landscape.¹⁰

As you prepare to craft learning pathways, focus on prioritizing these human-centred skills, as well as other competencies that are resistant to change, such as analysis, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

At the end of this process, you should be clear on both present and future training needs, and have L&D goals that will meet them.

Step 3: Identify learning solutions and tech to support L&D goals

Once you know what you’d like to achieve, you need a clear plan to get it done. Your professional development plan must factor in the expectations of your employees, too, and what’s needed to help them learn effectively.¹¹

Source or create a learning pathway that acknowledges the interests, skills, and learning styles of your staff, and is designed to support them in their development.¹² Gauge if existing training resources can be used or repurposed, or if new instructional materials need to be created. Depending on what you have available to you, this could result in a custom course made up of rich educational media like video, animation, and interactive content. Alternatively, it could be a curated learning journey that pulls from industry leaders and existing free resources.

You’ll need furthermore to consider the broader goals of your training, and how it will be broken down into individual modules and lessons.¹³ To get the best results, include a mix of materials and sources to bring in diverse perspectives and to cater to different learning styles. For top learning outcomes, you can look into models like the 2U Learning Experience Framework for guidance.

Targeted approaches, with hand picked, curated learning experiences have proven more impactful than one-size-fits-all learning solutions. For example, to cater to staff who need leadership development, you could explore learning that’s focused on making an individual and team impact, as well as strategy. Other staff members might need to cultivate technical skills, which would call for more intensive learning solutions that have longer study times and are highly practical.

Finally, consider what kind of technology you’ll use to deploy your learning solution, be it a company learning management system (LMS) or learning experience platform (LXP), as well as any additional learning tools or integrations. The right technology will enhance your learning material, provide a smooth user experience, and ensure your learning solution is delivered effectively.

Step 4: Gain stakeholder support

Without stakeholder backing, even the most comprehensive learning pathway can fall flat. With leadership buy-in — from middle management all the way to the C-suite — you’ll not only create a culture of learning, but also ensure there is shared purpose in the learning experience.

For learning to be supported at all levels, L&D managers must be able to outline the short- and long-term strategic benefits of training interventions. Just on the global level, for instance, the World Economic Forum anticipates a boost of up to $6.5 trillion to the global GDP if we innovate and address emerging skills gaps.¹⁴ To secure leadership buy-in from your organization, however, communicate the impact of the learning and of its alignment with business goals such as revenue or staff retention.¹⁵ This will help you secure a budget for learning, and time allowances for individuals participating in learning initiatives.

Step 5: Co-create learning pathways with employees

Beyond the C-suite, it’s absolutely essential to have employee support in skills development. While you conduct in-depth checks at the analysis stage, make sure you circle back with individuals to ensure your new learning pathways align with their goals, too.

Where immediate skills gaps aren’t addressed, you can collaborate with individuals to craft personalized learning pathways that prioritize these. Later, you’ll continue working together on a plan for ongoing development that balances employee career goals, emerging skill gaps, and changing business needs.

Step 6: Track and measure progress

A deployed employee development plan doesn’t mean the end of your efforts. With the future of work in flux, you’ll need to keep monitoring your learning success metrics — new gaps may, after all, emerge, and employees may not be meeting their training goals, which will call for a strategy reevaluation. Learning success metrics will equip you to continuously assess the effectiveness of your development plan, and find ways to improve alignment with business goals.

Step 7: Ongoing repetition

Learning and development are part of an ongoing process that evolves and builds on itself. To keep making gains and establish a system where learning, growing, and skills development are encouraged at all levels, you should work to establish a culture of learning.

An emphasis on learning helps teams to feel motivated, valued, and excited to progress within the organization — and within their career. For insights into building a culture of learning, take a look at our white paper, here.

A roadmap for learning success

With this roadmap that takes you from analysis all the way to implementation and iteration, you have everything you need to establish a learning strategy that’s customized to the evolving needs of organizations and individuals, and primed to close skills gaps.

Need help getting started? We get it. In a shifting learning landscape, it helps to have a guide. Contact an edX learning and development consultant to discuss the learning solutions your team needs.

Accelerate the workforce of the future, with edX

Learn more

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Article

Enterprise Article

Your Talent Strategy For Closing Skills Gaps

Article9 min read

August 19, 2022

The age of disruption

It’s no surprise COVID-19 sits atop the list, having accelerated and amplified the impact of other factors, such as digital transformation in businesses.⁵

How professionals and companies are responding

A recent GetSmarter survey of nearly 6,000 people across 128 countries found that 58% of respondents anticipated needing to learn new skills for the current job within the next six months.⁷

A disconnect between upskilling choices and the organization’s needs and goals
Haphazardly designed programs with minimal impact, or impact limited only to certain teams
Lengthy launches of skills development programs
Low retention levels, due to a lack of real career-partnerships meant to help employees on their professional journey

How to close the skills gaps

To address these issues, leadership, talent, and L&D managers typically focus on three strategies: hire, reskill, and upskill.

Hire:

Change recruitment mindsets to focus on the desired skills rather than personalities, and welcome a broader diversity of backgrounds.
Review hiring procedures to ensure promising candidates are not rejected by traditional screening methods.
Look beyond traditional labor pools to include older workers, those with disabilities, foreign talent, and veterans.

58% don’t receive enough applications to fill their vacancies.
71% say the applications they receive don’t match the skills required.
82% are willing to hire someone who requires initial training.

Reskill:

In other words, the opportunity to retrain at work could be a big retention incentive for employees at your organization, especially those who may want to pivot careers.

Upskill:

What skills you need to prioritize

Your guide to digital transformation skills

The future of skills development

There may be no one-size-fits-all approach to skills development — each organization, team, and professional being unique — yet two aspects of it are a must for all:

In the age of disruption, skills development should be conducted on an ongoing basis as part of any organization’s strategy for closing continually evolving skills gaps.
Skills development should take place across an organization, rather than in silos; if technical teams are getting upskilled, for example, then leadership should be learning how to better support the new needs and goals of those employees.

Are you keeping pace with today’s fast-changing skills requirements? Learn how edX For Business can help future-proof your people and your business, by helping you close skill gaps.

Accelerate the workforce of the future, with edX

Learn more

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Article

Enterprise Article

Four tips to improve staff retention

Article7 min read

July 12, 2022

Organizations are being pressed to do more to keep teams together and win the battle against workforce churn. Employee retention is the key.

We’re in the midst of the ‘great resignation’, a period where 3.4% of workers in the U.S. are leaving their jobs each month. Employees are in search of better benefits, a closer connection to corporate values, and corporate commitment to career progression.¹With as many as four million Americans expected to resign from their roles during the course of 2022, the need to improve workforce retention isn’t showing signs of slowing down.²

Major economies are witnessing historically low rates of unemployment. The U.S. unemployment rate is 3.9%,³ and the U.K. unemployment rate is 3.7% — the lowest in over 48 years.⁴ While organizations are competing for an even smaller pool of applicants, digital transformation and emerging technologies have created burgeoning industries and many new jobs that now need to be filled. Calculations from EMSI Burning Glass and Eightfold point to almost 17 million vacant roles in the U.S.: that’s one in nine roles.⁵ It takes an estimated 36–42 days and now costs $1,633 to fill a vacant role.⁶ Whichever way you slice it, employees are demanding more, hiring is expensive, and the market is tight.

Since an organization’s most valuable resource is its people, it pays to focus on their retention and development. By creating pathways for team members to develop existing skills, reskill to address emerging gaps and grow their careers, learning and development managers are investing in strategies to retain their current workforce.

How to meet employee expectations in the current market

In this competitive market, new recruitment can’t stem the tide alone. Organizations need to respond to existing employee concerns.

They can do this by finding ways to:

Create a culture of learning.
Prioritize employee wellness.
Align brand values with employee expectations.
Foster paths for employees to grow internally.

Tip 1: Create a culture of learning

The benefits of a learning culture are well-established. Learning and development opportunities help motivate teams, engage individuals, and provide opportunities to build clear career pathways so employees can grow within organizations instead of needing to move externally.

But ongoing learning isn’t just a requirement for career growth, it’s now essential for business agility. Driven by emerging tech and business models, skills gaps are widening. Upskilling and reskilling employees is not only important for corporate culture, but it is a necessary method of narrowing the skills gap caused by the evolving world of work.

One way to build learning into your organizational culture is to offer learning as a benefit. Traditionally, this would comprise tuition reimbursement for undergraduate or postgraduate degree programs. But, increasingly, enterprises are extending this to online learning opportunities for traditional degrees and also alternate credentials offered via an Open Courses Marketplace like edX.

edX For Business enables online learning opportunities with elite academic institutions and corporate curriculum partners from across the globe. Employees are able to fit self-paced learning into their schedules and practically apply their learnings in real-time at work.

This means employees are empowered to plot and pursue steps in their career paths. Or they can reskill and ensure they remain relevant in a market where 85 million jobs are expected to be automated by 2025.⁷

Applied Materials is one organization that was able to offer education as an employee benefit, at scale. They partnered with edX to provide targeted training to their team of over 27,000 individuals who work in nearly 115 countries worldwide. Training is designed to help staff advance along their career paths, grow the organization, and benefit the industry more broadly.

Applied Materials selected training opportunities in key areas, including data analysis, critical thinking, communications, and Python. This helps them to remain at the cutting edge of innovation in materials engineering solutions, and equips employees to pivot into new areas and fill emerging skills gaps. Since the program’s inception in 2017, employees have completed:

1,500+ professional education courses
14,000 learning hours
55 distinct course offerings

Along the way, Applied Materials has built up a culture of learning that makes sure the company is always improving and teams are happy.

With a transformational culture of learning infused into your organization, your teams will feel valued, motivated to make a positive impact, and excited to grow with the business. Learn how to embed a culture of learning into your organization, here.

Tip 2: Prioritize employee wellness

It’s no secret that many employees are struggling with mental health in the wake of the pandemic. And this impacts how employees feel about their lives, their purpose at work, and their confidence in themselves.

But there are factors that can turn this around. When employees have strong relationships at work, believe in the value of what they’re doing, and feel they’re meeting their potential, they’re likely to feel good about their work. And in this scenario of employee well-being, staff retention rates could triple.⁸

Learning and development plays an important role in employee well-being. Great Place to Work®, a leading workplace culture consultancy, advises organizations to create an environment where ongoing learning and development thrives. It’s one of six key mandates for creating a company culture that promotes employee well-being.

Great Place to Work® advises organizations to:⁹

Track feedback on employee well-being on an ongoing basis.
Walk the talk when it comes to well-being at all levels of leadership, and be honest about tough times.
Give access to personalized and professional care and support.
Enable and encourage all levels of employees to champion well-being.
Create a culture where ongoing learning and development thrives.
Facilitate autonomy at work and clarify links between individual roles and the outcomes of the organization.

Tip 3: Align your brand values to employee expectations

Organizations need to show that they can deliver what employees need to grow and thrive in the workplace. Where there’s alignment between public-facing values and the day-to-day operations of an organization, and the development opportunities on offer, trust grows and employee buy-in improves. Not only will this help attract top talent, but it also supports employee well-being and motivation.

Through a job that’s aligned with their values, employees find greater meaning at work, as well as an intrinsic motivation. This, in turn, leads to improved productivity and staff retention. It’s a win-win and a strong motivator for prioritizing human-centered leadership.

Tip 4: Foster paths for employees to grow internally

With millions of jobs on a path to automation, many employees need to upskill or reskill to maintain employability.¹⁰

What happens to the workers whose jobs become obsolete? Around 77% of workers report that they’re willing to upskill or retrain to stay relevant in the job market. This is promising, given that 74% of CEOs report concern with the availability of certain key skills.¹¹

By investing in your teams, and upskilling and reskilling staff, organizations can match talent to fill in skills gaps and retain quality employees. When you do this, many other areas receive a boost too. Data from LinkedIn Learning demonstrates that engaged learners are far more likely to participate in internal mobility programs.¹²

What happens when organizations have strong internal mobility programs? Employee retention doubles.¹³

To set up an environment that fosters internal mobility and opportunities for reskilling, organizations can look at Boot Camps, which provide a learning solution where employees can be reskilled on technical topics through high-touch, intensive training.

Invest in your best asset

In a complex talent market that’s adapting to waves of change, focusing on the needs and development of your team is the best way to improve staff retention. It makes teams happier, more effective, and helps prepare organizations to plug skills gaps.

With these tips on employee retention you’ll be equipped to create an environment where people can thrive. And with a happier team in place, your employees will find greater meaning in their day-to-day, and are far more likely to stick with your organization in the long run.

Contact an edX learning and development consultant to begin building learning solutions for your teams today.

Accelerate the workforce of the future, with edX

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Related Topics:

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Who is responsible for learning and development?

L&D teams are expected to address a number of critical business needs, including performance, recruitment, and retention

The challenge of providing high-quality learning at scale

Is online cohort learning the scaling solution for L&D?

Employees prioritize learning over saving and, sometimes, job security

L&D programs might be meeting needs now, but are struggling with future-proofing

Bringing it all together: What are the opportunities ahead?

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Diversity

Equity

Inclusion

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Your Talent Strategy For Closing Skills Gaps

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How to close the skills gaps

Hire:

Reskill:

Upskill:

What skills you need to prioritize

The future of skills development

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DEI In The Workplace: 10 Ways L&D Managers Can Turn Insights Into Action

Six strategies to help you implement leadership development

1. Identify your company’s leadership skills gap

2. Identify leadership potential

3. Invest in underrepresented leaders

4. Develop your managers into leaders

5. Nurture current leadership with continuous development

6. Lifelong leadership development

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What is enterprise agility?

7 ways L&D leaders can contribute to enterprise agility

1. Empower employees to learn in the flow of work

2. Invest in self-paced, self-directed learning

3. Empower managers

4. Encourage collaboration across teams

5. Focus on soft skills development at all levels

6. Create metrics to track the success of L&D agility initiatives

7. Foster a culture of lifelong learning

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1. Systems thinking

2. Personal mastery

3. Mental models

4. Shared vision

5. Team learning

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Solution 1: Your next great hire may already work for you

Solution 2: Hire for potential, train for skills

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