If You Want to Engage Employees with Learning, Tie It to Career Growth

Employees recognize the importance of career development. And according to the latest Employee Well-Being Report, employees say that opportunities to learn and grow are the No. 1 driver of a great work culture. 

Then why is it so difficult to get employees to actually commit to learning opportunities when they’re offered?

To find out, we gathered insights from the latest Employee Well-Being Report, Workplace Learning Report, and Global Talent Trends Report and developed “The Career Growth and Skills Connection,” a new infographic that summarizes key insights about career development, learner engagement, and motivating employees to learn at work.

We found that employees are actually hungrier than ever for opportunities to learn. However, those opportunities have to be tied to long-term skill development and career development to feel worth their while.

Workplace skills are changing — and employees are eager to keep up

The skills required to operate on a professional level in the workforce today are changing fast — possibly faster than ever before. According to the Future of Skills report, job skill sets have changed by around 25% between 2015 and today, and are on pace to change by 41% by 2025. 

Make no mistake: Employees across roles, industries, and seniority have noticed. Those who feel their skills are not delivering value in their current role are 10x more likely to be job hunting for a role that better fits them. 

The upside is that, regardless of whether they stay at the same company or change jobs, employees want to acquire the new skills they will need to succeed in their careers.

If your company can provide them with opportunities to learn these skills, it will be in their best interest to stay. The data echoes this trend: Companies that offer ongoing skill development to their employees are 7.2x more likely to engage and retain their employees than those that don’t.

Career development, above all else, drives learner motivation

According to the latest Workplace Learning Report, employees’ top three motivations to learn are:

1. To help them stay up-to-date in their field
2. To address their personal interests and career goals
3. To help them get another job internally, be promoted, or get closer to reaching their career goals

Notice a pattern? All three top motivations to learn are related to helping each employee achieve their career goals. Employees want to operate at the forefront of their evolving role — and they also want to continue to develop new skills that will help them advance even further down their chosen path.

LinkedIn’s latest Global Talent Trends report backs this up: Employees who have made an internal move in their first two years at a company have a 75% chance of still being there at the end of those two years. Employees who haven’t moved are only 56% likely to still be there. 

Employees are ambitious. They want to learn new skills that will help them advance, both within and outside of their current companies. They’re hungry to keep expanding their portfolio of skills above and beyond the function they’re in. 

As Linda Jingfang Cai, global head of learning and talent development at LinkedIn, says: “Give employees more ownership over their career paths at your company. Start the conversation with them about their possibilities for learning, growth, and — ultimately — internal career transformation on Day 1.”

If you empower your employees with the resources they need to take ownership over their career paths, then their place in your organization becomes more than just a role — it becomes a vehicle for them to take ownership of their careers.

Employees are looking for a stable place to build skills

LinkedIn recently conducted extensive internal research to understand why employees weren’t advancing in their careers the way they wanted to. The top three reasons our analysis uncovered were:

1. Lack of time to devote to skill development
2. Lack of access to a mentor who can help them develop the right skills
3. Lack of understanding of which skills to focus on 

Once again, many employees are not lacking in motivation to learn, they are simply lacking in direction. They want to learn how to continue to stay relevant and up-to-date in their role, industry, and profession, they just don’t have the necessary resources and guidance.

This is a notable opportunity for today’s organizations. By providing your employees with the resources, time, and direction they need to further develop their career skills, they’ll become more effective at what they’re doing right now and they’re more likely to stick around and grow their impact.

As LinkedIn Learning instructor Alisa Cohn says in her course on Promoting Internal Mobility as a Manager, “The more you invest in your coaching skills, the higher your people will perform. You’ll also create more loyalty, and you’ll build your reputation as a developer of people, which then makes you a talent magnet. Who doesn’t want that?”

The career development opportunity

The takeaways from these reports are clear: Employees are ready and eager to learn. But they want to learn skills that will help them advance and continue to be relevant, not just skills that will help them excel in their current roles. 

If you can offer career development opportunities to your employees, not only will they respond positively but they will use them to become ever more valuable — and loyal — employees. 

Check out “The Career Growth & Skills Connection” for even more insight into how you can align skill building with career growth to engage your learners and unlock their potential.

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