The No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is the “inability to learn and grow,” according to respondents of the Deloitte report. It follows, then, that the No. 1 trend in 2019 is for organizations to change the way people learn, with 86 percent of respondents rating this issue important or very important.
Jaime Fall, director of The Aspen Institute’s UpSkill America,confirmsthat “lots of surveys show that if millennials and Gen Z workers don’t feel their employers are investing in their education, training, or development, they’re not going to stay.”
There’s another business reason to support prioritizing continuous learning. As Workday Chief People OfficerAshley Goldsmith says,“Advances in technology will continue to change the way we view talent and organize our workforces. In the face of this, it will be HR’s responsibility to provide the leadership necessary to ensure workers have the new skills required for our organizations to remain agile, efficient, and prepared for whatever disruptions the future brings.”
Building up the right skills is critical. In fact, Deloitte cites a recent World Economic Forum report that found 54 percent of all employees “will require significant reskilling and upskilling in just three years.” So how are HR leaders addressing these challenges? Deloitte’s survey revealed the following:
- Eighty-four percent of organizations surveyed are increasing their investment in reskilling programs, with 53 percent saying that they would increase this budget by 6 percent or more.
- 百分之七十七的组织nizations surveyed are increasing their learning team’s headcount, elevating learning to the second-fastest-growing role in HR.
Organizations that invest in an always-learning, agile workforce will be more prepared to adapt to change and achieve their growth objectives, yet companies can do more than they’re currently doing. Other research bears out the importance of upskilling. Our global study,“Organizational Agility at Scale: The Key to Driving Digital Growth,”found that leading organizations—in terms of digital revenue growth and five identified attributes of organizational agility—are four times more likely than their less agile peers to plan to upskill more than 75 percent of their workforce.
Smart leaders understand that these numbers are important. Feon Ang, vice president for talent and learning solutions, Asia Pacific, LinkedIn, noted in a MarketWatch article that organizations must embrace a culture of learning to remain resilient in a rapidly changing workforce.