Stats all learning managers need to know

As with any industry, it’s important for Learning Managers to stay in the loop with current trends and practices.

The eLearning environment is constantly growing and changing, so it’s vital to keep up-to-date with the learning landscape. Whether you’re an LMS Administrator, or Chief Learning Officer, you’ll want to know the best ways to engage with your learners to meet their training and development needs.

A 2016 report by Degreed surveyed more than five hundred workers, from a range of roles and functions, across multiple industries. This report resulted in plenty of interesting data on how employees are learning – both at work, and in their own spare time – and what steps they’re taking to fuel their careers.

Today, we’ll look at five statistics from the Degreed report that will provide Learning Managers and L&D professionals with an insight into how today's workers really learn:

67% of people learn on personal time

According to the report, modern workers are spending up to five times more learning on their own each week than from employers. This means many employees are taking the initiative to learn in their own time, away from the office or job site.

With so many industries moving at a rapid pace, particularly IT and the creative industries, employees feel the need to stay up-to-date with industry news and developments. And when faced with such a competitive job market, workers also know how important ongoing professional development is to their career.

75% of workers invested their own money in career development

Following on from that, we’re also seeing a huge amount of employees using their own money for professional development.

As the report shows, in 2015, three quarters of employees invested their own money in career development. What does this tell us? It tells us that employers aren’t providing sufficient professional development for their staff.

Employees are actively looking for learning and development opportunities to help them on their career path and need to feel that their employer is invested in their career development. There is a clear drive for employers to start investing more resources into employee training, which is important for Learning Managers to know. This will help you talk to senior leaders about the importance of investing in staff L&D.

77% of employees believe their own self-directed learning is more effective than their employer’s training

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of quality in the training programs being provided by employers, with a huge percentage of staff rating their own learning methods higher than those provided by their employer.

Take a hard look at your own training and development programs. One of the biggest barriers to employee learning is that it fails to be ongoing.

Professional development training needs to be continual – it’s not just something that you should tick off once a year to satisfy HR. It requires ongoing investment of your time, focus and energy, to get the best results.

 69% of workers ask a boss or mentor for direction to learn something new

This statistic shows us the importance of mentoring within organisations. Do you have an official mentoring program in place? Mentoring isn’t just beneficial for the staff being mentored – it has broader advantages for the whole organisation.

Through mentoring programs, employees have the opportunity to meet or talk regularly with their mentors to exchange ideas, discuss work progress and set goals for professional development, facilitating increased knowledge sharing across the organisation.

Staff involved in mentoring programs offer companies improved skill sets, real world knowledge and experience, and greater confidence and motivation to succeed. Which contributes to greater productivity and profits for the business.

70% of workers learn from sharing blogs and articles with their peers

With the ever-rising presence of technology and social media in our lives, communication and knowledge sharing has never been so easy, accessible and instant. In fact, over 70% of learning on the job occurs informally, so it’s important to make sure you’re using informal learning in conjunction with more formal modes of training.

Employees have more opportunity to learn from one another than ever before, and when harnessed effectively, this can help to build a more collaborative work culture.

If you’re in a management or leadership role, you have the exciting opportunity to drive collaboration in your organisation. Building a culture of collaboration has great benefits for your business, increasing cooperation and promoting teamwork and positive working relationships across the organisation.

The Take Away from these Stats and Figures

So what can Learning Managers take away from the statistics in this report?

While it’s great for employees to be sharing with peers and working on professional development in their own time, it’s imperative that this is in addition to the training programs provided by their employers.

How do you provide learning and development to staff that’s engaging, effective, continual and collaborative? Many organisations have found the answer to this question by turning to eLearning courses and online training. Online learning offers both employers and employees the perfect solution for their training needs, being flexible, engaging and cost-effective, while helping learners achieve their professional development and career goals.

Having up-to-date and relevant learning tools and technology solutions is important to workers. When your organisation shows a willingness to invest in the right learning technology for staff, you’re showing your commitment to their professional development. This will help attract good candidates to your company and encourage high performers to stay with your business, providing a win-win solution for both staff and employers.

Keen to check out eLearning and online training for your staff? Be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.