Learning and Development: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Started

Most employees (83%) say that improving their skills is one of their top priorities and 88% are already putting a significant amount of time and effort toward this endeavor. 

Employees say they’d spend more time learning in 2024 if it would help them progress toward their career goals and stay up to date in their field. They’d also spend more time on their own development if learning was personalized for their interests and goals.

A formal learning and development (L&D) program can help support your team members in their professional growth journey, while helping your organization build a high-performing team.

What is learning and development?

Learning and development is an HR strategy that supports professional growth by building your employees’ skills, growing their knowledge, and increasing their competency.

This is accomplished through various learning formats, including:

• Online learning: Structured learning experiences delivered over the internet, which may include multimedia content, interactive exercises, assessments, and discussion forums
• Stretch assignments: A task or project that lies outside an employee’s current job description or comfort zone
• Formal education: Supporting employees to pursue learning at a college, university, or vocational school
• Mentoring: A long-term professional relationship in which a more experienced or knowledgeable individual provides guidance, support, and advice to a less experienced or junior individual
• Career coaching: One-on-one career guidance that helps employees set and achieve their professional goals
• Job shadowing: Following another professional in their day-to-day work activities, learning about the responsibilities, tasks, and challenges associated with their role
• Simulations and virtual reality (VR): Immersive learning environments that replicate real-world scenarios, giving employees hands-on learning experience in a controlled setting
• Membership in a professional organization: Participating in an association that represents individuals within a specific profession or industry

The importance of training and development in the workplace

Investing in L&D programs can help your organization and team members enjoy the many benefits of employee development.

1. Attract skilled job candidates

The skilled talent shortage continues, with 75% of companies reporting difficulty filling open positions. 

Offering career growth opportunities can help you attract talent in a tight labor market: Nearly nine out of 10 job seekers want to see a skills development program, clear career paths, and career advancement opportunities when they’re considering a new job. 

2. Build a more effective employee onboarding process

Only 29% of new hires feel fully prepared and supported to excel in their role after their employee onboarding experience. This means that most of your new employees could be underperforming, disengaged, hesitant to recommend working at your company, and at high risk of leaving.

But employees who have a clear plan for their professional development are 3.5x more likely to agree that their onboarding process was exceptional. Early learning is an effective way to set your employees up for success at your company.

3. Close skills gaps and future-proof your organization

Skill sets for jobs have changed by 25% since 2015 and this number is expected to grow to 65% by 2030, effectively widening the current skills gap.

Professional development helps your team members learn the in-demand skills they need to succeed in their current role — and the emerging skills they’ll need to have in the future. Most L&D pros (89%) agree that proactively building employee skills will help navigate the evolving future of work.

4. Enhance employee performance

Learning opportunities enable your team members to acquire new skills and knowledge so they can perform their roles more effectively and efficiently. Whether they’re learning a new technology, refining their leadership skills, or staying current with industry trends, your employees can move toward their full potential by leaning into development opportunities.

5. Boost employee engagement 

Investing in your team members’ development demonstrates your organization’s commitment to their growth and success, motivating them to go above and beyond in their work. Gallup found that development is a top driver of employee engagement.

In turn, higher employee engagement can lead to higher productivity and profitability.

6. Increase employee retention

Two out of three workers have considered leaving their job due to a lack of career growth opportunities.

It’s no surprise that providing learning opportunities is the top way organizations are working to improve retention; investing in your team members’ development can encourage them to stay. Companies with a strong learning culture see 57% higher retention compared to those with smaller levels of commitment.

7. Cultivate a more appealing company culture 

Learning and development contribute to a positive company culture where your team members feel supported and valued. In fact, having opportunities to learn and grow is the top driver of a great work culture. 

A positive work environment comes with benefits of its own: Employees are 31% more likely to recommend working for their organization and 25% more likely to report being happy at work. 

8. Maintain compliance and mitigate risk

A comprehensive employee development program may include compliance and risk management training. These trainings can serve any number of purposes — such as safeguarding the public or building a safe work environment — and can be crucial for maintaining legal compliance and mitigating risk.

9. Improve business performance

With so many benefits of employee learning, companies often see this type of program improve their business performance. Companies that facilitate career development are 2.6x more likely to exceed their financial targets.

Building an effective employee training program

An effective employee training program will look different in each organization. Crafting yours will require prioritization, strategic thinking, and an analytical mind to ensure it meets your team’s needs.

1. Assess your business needs and set clear objectives

Learning and development is a vast practice, with many different learning formats and potential outcomes from each. Focus your efforts by prioritizing business needs and setting core focus areas.  

Get started by gathering input from company stakeholders to better understand your business’s goals, needs, and growth trajectory. Learn about your business objectives and growth goals, your most challenging roles to fill right now and emerging roles you’ll need to fill in the future, as well as your skills gaps and other challenges that are inhibiting goals. Use this input to prioritize learning objectives that will address your key business needs.

Globally, the top L&D focus areas for 2024 are:

• Aligning learning programs to business goals 
• Upskilling employees
• Creating a culture of learning
• Helping employees develop their careers
• Improving employee retention

2. Develop training programs around your goals

Employee training needs differ by organization and may include onboarding, sales training, compliance training, upskilling, and leadership development. Focus on the programs that are most aligned with your learning objectives and company goals so you can properly allocate your limited resources and maximize your chances of success.

This will require you to carefully consider which learning formats are best suited to your goals. For example, global consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that digital learning is the most suitable format for skill building and that a multichannel approach increases the development program’s success. Companies that use eight or more learning formats cite a 70% success rate at helping employees adapt to their roles’ changing skill requirements or move into a new role. Companies that use fewer than four learning formats cite a 50% success rate. 

3. Build individual employee development plans

Employees’ top motivation to learn is progress toward career goals. Finding the intersection between those goals and your organization’s needs will keep your team members engaged in your learning and development program.

Managers should have regular conversations with their team members to learn about each person’s career goals and the skills they’d like to master. Use that feedback to build individual employee development plans that align with your organization’s needs and goals. Include both hard and soft skills, and take individual learning preferences into consideration. For example, a visual learner may retain more information via online learning, while a kinesthetic learner may prefer a stretch assignment.

4. Track key performance indicators for training and development

Analyzing the impact of talent development initiatives is crucial to ensure alignment with organizational goals, identify areas for improvement, and quantify return on investment. But too many L&D teams measure their success by tracking vanity metrics, such as employee satisfaction or the number of trainings delivered.

The top L&D focus area in 2024 is to align learning programs to business goals — requiring L&D professionals to reconsider key performance indicators (KPIs).

The most widely used KPIs to measure L&D’s impact on business improvement are:

• Performance reviews (36%)
• Employee productivity (34%)
• Employee retention (31%)
• Business impacts, like deals closed and customer satisfaction (30%)
• Closing workforce skill gaps (27%)
• New skills per learner (16%)

Run small experiments to gauge progress. For example, track your 90-day turnover rate before and after implementing a new employee onboarding training so you can measure its impact on retention. 

Make adjustments to your employee development program as needed and reevaluate your learning objectives at least annually.

Learning and development best practices

Implementing some best practices can help you build an effective L&D program that supports employee growth, enhances performance, and drives organizational success. 

Build a culture of learning

The most successful L&D teams cultivate a learning culture where employees know development isn’t just encouraged, it’s prioritized. Allow your team members to learn during normal working hours, recognize them for their efforts, and hold regular discussions around their development to encourage continuous learning. 

Everyone — from company executives to individual contributors — should openly participate in professional development to hone their craft and learn new skills.

Make L&D equitable

Building and maintaining an equitable L&D program gives each of your team members a fair chance to learn the skills they need to succeed in their role and grow in their career. 

This includes:

• Offering a diverse range of learning formats to accommodate different learning styles, preferences, and accessibility needs
• Offering more inclusive content by paying attention to instructor diversity
• Incorporating assistive technology to help ensure accessibility for people with disabilities and diverse learning needs
• Covering the up-front costs for professional development opportunities to remove financial barriers to learning
• Tracking L&D metrics by demographic
• Actively seeking employee feedback to identify areas for improvement and tailor your L&D initiatives to better meet your team’s needs

Reward team members

Rewarding your team members for learning new skills can help improve employee morale and motivation.

Provide your team members with encouragement, recognition, and incentives as they learn new skills and competencies. For example, a simple acknowledgement from the employee’s manager can demonstrate the value your organization places on employee development and encourage your team members to keep learning.

You may also award raises, lateral moves, and promotions as appropriate. This is an important part of retaining the talent you’ve helped develop.

Offer personalized learning

The number of formats and learning options may feel overwhelming to your team members, who may not know where to begin. That’s probably why 78% of learners expressed the need for course recommendations based on their individual career goals and skill gaps. Doing so can yield enormous benefits, as companies that recommend courses on LinkedIn Learning see 69% more hours watched per learner.

Provide specific professional development recommendations to each of your team members to help them reach their career goals. Personalized learning is more meaningful and engaging, helping your employees stay motivated so you have better learning outcomes. 

Build hard and soft skills

A well-rounded L&D strategy includes training for both hard and soft skills.

Hard skills development helps your team members learn specialized knowledge and build technical abilities that enable them to perform their work. Soft skills development helps your team members learn new behaviors that impact the way they go about their work. 

Both hard and soft skills are listed among the 2024 most in-demand skills:

• Communication
• Customer service
• Leadership
• Project management
• Management
• Analytics
• Teamwork
• Sales
• Problem-solving
• Research 

Consider the needs of a multigenerational workforce

Each generation has unique collective experiences and characteristics that shape their learning preferences. Modern L&D strategies take these preferences into account to offer a variety of learning opportunities that appeal to each generational group.

For example:

• Gen Z turns to TikTok and YouTube to learn, but enjoys in-person learning opportunities too
• Millennials are social learners and like to solve problems as a team and receive feedback from a teacher, making peer-led training a great format
• Gen X prefers a self-directed learning plan that’s easy and accessible
• Boomers prefer in-person courses, though they’ve become accustomed to online learning

Embrace new technology

The right technology enables L&D teams to become more effective and efficient, maximizing their chances of success. 

For example, generative AI has a variety of L&D applications including content creation, skills gap analysis, and employee development planning. Automating some of these tasks can free up your time to create more strategic, engaging learning experiences that produce better business outcomes.

Final thoughts: Learning and development is more important than ever

Employee development has always been a useful business strategy, though it’s becoming increasingly important to help companies build the teams they need to take them into the future. Company leaders recognize this, with 9 out of 10 global executives planning to either increase or keep steady their investment in L&D, including upskilling and reskilling. 

Learning and development teams have the opportunity to make a tremendous business impact in the coming years. Leverage your expertise to position yourself as a strategic partner in driving organizational success.