3 Takeaways for Recruiters from LinkedIn's Latest Workplace Learning Report

If you’ve been in recruiting or HR for a while, there’s a decent chance you know about LinkedIn’s annual Global Talent Trends report. But unless you’re already working closely with your colleagues in learning and development (L&D), you may have missed LinkedIn’s latest yearly report: the 2022 Workplace Learning Report. 

While aimed at L&D professionals, the report also contains insights that are particularly relevant to recruiters and their teams. 

Here are the three biggest takeaways to keep in mind:

• L&D’s stature is both rising and expanding: The function is becoming more important and increasingly cross-functional
• Employee retention is a key strategic objective for both L&D and recruiting professionals
• There’s still plenty of room to grow this partnership, as teams are only just starting to collaborate with each other

Read on to explore the data and see what it all may mean for your talent organization. 

1. Get ready to form a new partnership with the ascendent L&D function

The first few months of the pandemic hit recruiters particularly hard — and as companies faced hiring freezes, they doubled down on developing internal talent. While talent acquisition was temporarily stymied, L&D stepped up to help upskill and reskill existing employees — building, rather than buying, critically needed skills.

Demand for recruiters has since recovered and risen to new heights, but the highly competitive labor market has kept L&D center stage.

More than half (53%) of L&D professionals now agree that their function finally has a seat at the proverbial executive table. That’s more than double the number who thought so just two years ago, when less than a quarter of L&D professionals agreed.

As L&D’s star rises, its remit is also growing: Nearly three out of four learning leaders agree that L&D has become more cross-functional and more strategic. This may be due to the tight labor market and persistent skill gaps — challenges that recruiters are also looking to overcome.

Since the two functions ultimately share a common goal — equipping the company with the right talent and skills — it makes sense that both sides would benefit from working together. With L&D poised to take on a bigger role than ever, recruiting teams should foster cross-functional connections to ensure everyone’s on the same page. 

As we playfully put it last year, recruiting and L&D are the new power couple.

2. Recruiters and L&D pros share a key objective: employee retention

Though most people might think recruiters only care about bringing in talent, talent acquisition pros know that keeping talent is almost as important as finding it. 

In LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report, talent pros said “quality of hire” was the most valuable recruiting metric — and that the most effective way to measure quality of hire was by looking at employee retention. 

L&D teams also care about retention — and what’s more, they’re positioned to have a big impact on it. 

How? Well, L&D focuses on upskilling, reskilling, and helping employees make the most of their skills — that much is obvious. And workers whose skills are put to good use seem to be much, much less eager to leave.

As the 2022 Workplace Learning Report highlights, employees whose skills aren’t being well utilized are 10x more likely to be looking for a new job. 

With the skills required for any given job changing rapidly, even the most promising hires may feel like their skills are misaligned as their role evolves. A strong L&D function can help ensure employees’ skills are aligned to their roles, which in turn could help improve employee retention. 

In short: When L&D succeeds, recruiting also succeeds. 

3. Recruiting can help shape the future of L&D

Though L&D is enjoying more prominence than ever, it’s still early days — very few companies actually have working upskilling or reskilling programs, let alone the data to assess whether they’re actually effective.

Just 15% of L&D leaders say they’ve actually activated such a program, with 39% reporting they’re in earlier planning stages. Only 5% — that’s one in 20 L&D leaders — are at the furthest stage of actually measuring the program’s performance. 

What’s that mean for recruiters? It means that now is an especially opportune time to start partnering with L&D. Strike while the iron is hot, before these new programs have been fully molded and solidified. 

Recruiting teams should share what skills they’re being asked to hire for, what skills are particularly difficult to find among external candidates, and where internal candidates are falling short. In turn, this can help L&D create an internal talent pipeline equipped with the skills that hiring managers need. Furthermore, L&D teams may have the resources available to build more ambitious programs.

Roughly half (48%) of L&D teams expect their budgets to increase this year — an all-time high since we started asking the question annually. That’s almost twice the share who expected budget increases when we first asked in 2017. 

In other words, L&D is just getting started and has the funds to build robust learning programs — recruiting teams should look to be a part of this process while there’s still time.

Final thoughts

The Great Reshuffle has laid out the case for recruiting and L&D to work more closely together. When the pandemic hit, hiring freezes were counterbalanced by increased skill development; now that competition for external talent is tight, L&D teams can be crucial in developing homegrown talent. 

Maybe L&D and recruiting aren’t the new power couple at your company just yet — but to quote Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

Methodology: Download the full Workplace Learning Report 2022 for a detailed methodology on all the insights visualized in this story. 

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