Learning and development post-coronavirus

Pre-COVID – the need for digitalisation

Our survey revealed that 40% of respondents spent the most time managing the learning and development of their employees. The results also revealed that after managing employee wellbeing, their training and development was the next biggest challenge.

Fifty-five per cent also agreed that to devote more time to employees’ training and development, the HR function would need to experience some form of digital transformation.

In recent years, the generational changes in the workforce have forced many HR departments to realign their priorities to meet the expectations of prospective employees entering the job market.

Employee learning and development has always been a priority and significant challenge for HR professionals; however, the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation and encouraged HR teams to explore new and more innovative procedures.

Post-COVID – learning and development: a national problem 

Government initiatives

Within the context of coronavirus, learning and development has become a national issue. 

Since the virus forced the vast majority of people into lockdown in mid-March, hundreds of thousands of people have lost jobs and been left facing uncertain futures. 

The situation has been a concerning one and has led to the UK government pumping vast amounts of money into various schemes designed to preserve jobs or retrain and upskill people facing long-term unemployment.

One such scheme is the Kickstart Scheme. 

This £2 billion initiative launched at the beginning of September designed to create hundreds of thousands of high-quality six-month jobs for young people aged 16–24 at risk of long-term unemployment.

Employers have also benefited, with money made available to cover 100% of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for 25 hours a week, as well as the associated employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) and minimum employer pension contributions.

The Kickstart Scheme differs from preexisting schemes, such as the Apprenticeship Levy. Companies are required to create new roles that weren’t in place before the pandemic and have to prove that the jobs are of good quality, that there are progression opportunities and, crucially, that the jobs wouldn’t have existed without the introduction of the Kickstart Scheme. 

Delivering employee learning and development

Historically, employee learning and development has been delivered in two different ways: regulated or classroom-based learning and social learning.

Regulated learning

In regulated or classroom-based learning, employees follow a specific learning and development plan or are taught skills relevant to their roles. 

Since the coronavirus outbreak and the implementation of remote work, delivering this has become more complicated. However, many organisations have looked to mitigate this problem by providing access to online seminars and sessions. 

Even before coronavirus, there was evidence to suggest that learning and development was becoming increasingly digitised as organisations looked to invest in more modern learning technologies. 

This was reflected in the results of our original survey, with 55% of HR managers indicating that the growing digital transformation of HR functions allowed them to devote more time to employee development.

Interest in eLearning also increased according to a study conducted by the Open University. 

With the pandemic leaving people uncertain about the future, many decided to enrol in courses that might boost their prospects of long-term employment.

This trend has been particularly noticeable among younger employees keen to avoid seeing their skills become outdated in the future. Over a third suggested that they would be happy to put their own money towards development opportunities that would improve their employability.

The study also revealed that almost a quarter of employees said they wanted more direction from their employers when it came to learning new skills, while 38% of recently hired employees indicated that they would be keen to receive advice from management and leadership teams on how to stay employable post-pandemic. 

Social learning

Social or osmosis learning refers to learning on the job and is entirely dependent on people being able to work and operate in the same physical space. Unfortunately, the pandemic sadly put a stop to this.

Since organisations were forced to work away from offices, teams have tended to become more insular and communication and collaboration between them has suffered as a result. 

This is an inevitable consequence of remote working. Without the spontaneous interactions of office life—the quick chats when walking past someone in the office or an unscheduled meet by the coffee machine—contact between different team members has been lost. 

Remote working has also widened the gap between junior and senior employees. While their paths might have crossed on rare occasions in the office, occupying the same physical space enabled mutual observation and was beneficial to all parties. Remote work has made this contact even less frequent and the opportunity for collaboration between junior and senior colleagues has become a real issue for many organisations.

The result of this is that a significant amount of knowledge and expertise is being lost and, as has often been the case throughout this pandemic, young and more inexperienced employees are the ones being most affected. 

Without access to guidance and advice in the workplace, there is a risk that they will be left unprepared to deal with many aspects of professional life. 

However, to counteract the knowledge gap and avert loss of expertise, many organisations have implemented strategies to enable virtual social learning, for example:

• collaborative discussions, usually involving four people or fewer, have been introduced. These have been designed as a forum for people to share ideas and opinions, as well as gain insights into different aspects of a business; 

• “office hours” schemes have also been added. These short sessions, in which senior management or more experienced workers hold informal meetings and discussions with junior colleagues, have helped bridge the gap between team members.

While these strategies may not replace workplace-based learning, they do enable information to be disseminated and allow for the gap between junior and senior employees to be better managed.

Employee learning and development in the future

The schemes introduced reflect the general government concern about employment opportunities in the future. 

This anxiety has transferred itself to people already in jobs but conscious that a post-coronavirus world might require new skills to ensure the prospect of long-term employment.

In response, many businesses have already introduced, or are in the process of planning to provide, individual learning and development budgets so that employees can upskill or add new skills to their repertoire. 

While these budgets may be limited, they do help to reassure employees that their employers are looking to invest in them and their future development. 

However, the jury remains out on whether this is a feasible and sustainable solution.