Dive Brief:

• There's an upskilling and reskilling revolution coming in the next three to five years, according to LinkedIn Learning's 2020 Workplace Learning Report released March 3. LinkedIn Learning found that 51% of learning and development (L&D) professionals surveyed plan to launch upskilling programs in 2020, and in the next decade, digital transformation and automation are expected to have a greater impact on the global workforce.
• More than a third of L&D professionals expect their budgets to grow year over year. While funding for instructor-led training is decreasing for some, 57% of talent developers plan to spend more on their online learning programs, the report states. L&D professionals will become key to growth and innovation at businesses; 83% of those surveyed said executive buy-in is not a challenge. However, only 27% said that their CEOs are active champions of learning, despite CEOs spending 20% more time learning soft skills than their employees.
• LinkedIn stated in the report that it hosted a week-long, company-wide learning challenge and found that executive championship effectively drove engagement, and recommends building an internal marketing campaign around a big prize. Talent developers will focus on ways to drive engagement, activate managers and measure the impact of learning on the business, but they will also need to know which skills to learn themselves in light of digital transformation. "The good news is that we found that both managers and employees are inspired to learn for the same reason — career growth," the report stated.

Dive Insight:

Organizations are moving forward with more funding for L&D programs but the decision-makers want data-driven evidence of how they affect the bottom line, according to research.

A January 2020 report by Axonify found that, on average, 29% of client business outcomes could be attributed back to training programs delivered on its microlearning platform. The training was shown to have a 33% impact on sales and revenue, a frequent key performance indicator (KPI) measured by companies on the platform, the report said. Certain methods, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), are gaining momentum as more employers seek out ways to ensure return on investment.

A Genesys report released in October 2019 found that employers will begin to increase training budgets to invest in AR and VR. While costly, both methods have major benefits, such as the unprecedented speed of training on highly complex topics, Ravin Jesuthasan, managing director of talent management at Willis Towers Watson, recently told HR Dive in an email.

"VR and AR have gotten increasingly popular for training people on scenarios that don't occur often and for training people on things that require significant practice," Jesuthasan said.

Though technical skills will have high importance, talent developers will also focus on soft skills, according to the LinkedIn Learning report. "It's creating a sense of urgency for L&D pros in every industry — and in every geography — to ensure that their workforce is not only digitally fluent, but also elevating their people skills that robots can't replicate," the report states.

Jobs that require a blend of technical and soft skills in the workplace are being referred to as hybrid jobs, which are evolving into "super jobs" that require skill sets that cross multiple domains.