What is the importance of learning and development?

Learning and development benefits both employers and employees alike. By enrolling employees in L&D opportunities, businesses can keep their employees’ skills relevant. They can also provide employees the opportunity to grow in their understanding of the role. It also helps them to learn the skills they need to progress in their career, as well as adapt to new systems.

The importance of learning and development is growing thanks to digital transformation. It may also be useful for businesses to train their employees in new skills in order to close digital skills gaps that may emerge as a result of digital transformation.

Learning and development may not just be a simple matter of enrolling employees on training courses. In Indeed’s guide to upskilling strategy, we found that upskilling requires fostering a culture of learning, clear communication about skills training and aligning knowledge requirements with business outcomes. 

With UK workers less willing to learn new skills than employees in other countries, providing a strong explanation and justification for learning opportunities as well as their benefits can help to get them engaged in the first place. 

Related Article: Tips for continuous learning strategies (With examples)

The connection between learning and development and wellbeing

While businesses might consider perks such as flexible working or unlimited holiday pay as having an association with employee wellbeing, learning and development may also have a connection with it too. 

This may be because skills development can help employees to feel more connected with their workplace. They see a future within it long-term and opportunities to progress in terms of career.

Not only that, learning and development opportunities can keep employees’ minds sharp. It can help them to feel a part of major changes within a business as well as ready for any new challenges or transformations. According to a future of work report by Indeed, 69% of UK employees feel ready for changes in their organisation in the next five years.

While this means that most employees are ready for change, this is lower than the global average (74%). Learning and development opportunities therefore may help their employees to feel more confident about the future, as well as happier. As we also found, employers should think about whether teambuilding or company-wide training is needed to breed confidence beyond the individual.

According to our guide on prioritising employee wellbeing, we discovered that 96% of businesses said a happier workplace makes it easier to retain talent and an additional 94% said it made retaining talent easier. Employee wellbeing initiatives are still new and so this means that employers are still discovering new ways to create a happier workforce. While the connection between learning and development and wellbeing may not be obvious, it may be worth considering. 

Ways to boost wellbeing with L&D

In this next section, employers can find some ideas for boosting wellbeing using L&D:

Learn how to inspire rather than discourage

One of the first steps to making L&D align with wellbeing is to look at how employees work best. This may vary from employee-to-employee, or team-to-team. Some employees might be more apprehensive than others about learning new skills or having their skills tested. Therefore, employers can look at ways to help them feel more happy and motivated during testing. 

Work out what might be putting employees off L&D

Having scoreboards for learning and development schemes may put employees under pressure and could make more anxious employees perform less well as a result. While some employees may rise to the challenge and find the added pressure helps them to learn, it can be important to reflect on what works best for the whole team. 

Find out where there is untapped potential

Consider providing a wide range of different learning tools such as seminars, workshops, quizzes and presentations. This allows employees across teams to showcase their own unique talents and preferences for learning. It can help employees find out more about their strengths, as well as show employers where they might be missing out on untapped potential. It can surprise employers which employee makes a great public speaker, or who has a stellar memory for facts and details. 

Harnessing the potential of employees with a neurodiversity

Some employees might be more inspired when employers learn how to tap into their unique skill profiles as well as learning styles. Neurodiverse employees can benefit strongly from employers listening to and providing them with the right accommodations to boost their preferred learning style. This could be as simple as adjusting lighting, providing quiet zones to study in, or providing assistive technology such as text-to-speech software.

Learning outside or going for walks during mentoring sessions

Employers who have access to outdoor space – particularly green space – could use this to hold mentoring or coaching sessions. Going for a short walk could be a more relaxed way for employees to check in with their line managers, perhaps going for a coffee as well. While this approach may not work for more serious conversations, it could take the pressure off catching up on progress on a project.

For remote workers, virtual walking meetings are also a possibility. Employees could bring a headset with them to ensure conversations are private, as well as a bottle of water to stop dehydration. Employees could also bring their pets for a walk with them, as long as they are kept on a leash and are not a distraction.

Emotional quotient (EQ) and mindfulness training

Learning and development does not just have to relate to hard skills. It can also be an opportunity to train employees in soft skills such as emotional intelligence or mindfulness – as well as resilience or conflict resolution which can benefit from emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence means being able to solve problems relating to interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict. This means being able to listen effectively and empathise with others, as well as understand your own thoughts and feelings, and handle stress constructively.

EQ and mindfulness training can therefore be useful to employers looking to create more harmonious teams, as well as improve their employees’ customer service skills. However, it can have huge benefits to employees on a day-to-day basis too. This is as it gives them the tools to better handle stress throughout the day and can show them how to have stronger relationships with their colleagues. 

L&D and wellbeing may be closely linked. This provides employers with a great new opportunity to test how far this connection goes. They can explore ideas like EQ training, harnessing a range of different learning styles, utilising green space and looking for untapped potential. Being able to work well with a diverse team of employees with different skill profiles can lead to happiness, confidence and higher retention rates.