Common challenges that L&D professionals face

Learning and development professionals have a pretty significant role to play in organizations. Good employee training doesn’t just develop the workforce and make them efficient but, it also makes the employees feel valued, as they can clearly see their own personal and professional growth while working, which in turn increases their loyalty towards the organization in the long run and decreases the employee turnover. 

However, like every other department in an organization, there are certain challenges that these L&D professionals face and these challenges pretty much have the potential to hinder the development of the workforce. So, what are the top challenges and concerns that the L&D professionals are facing right now? Let’s find out. 

1. Digital Transformation 

Learning has been pretty traditional all this while with instructor-led classes and various workshops, lectures, and seminars. But, now as the world is on the path of complete digital transformation, the newer generation of the workforce that is more comfortable with the digital mode of operations demands a digital transformation of the learning processes too. 

L&D professionals are seen to be struggling with this change. They are under the pressure of adaptation without compromising on the ROI. 

The best way to really solve this issue is to implement a learning management system or LMS like Adobe Captivate for all your training needs. The tools and features that these systems provide can help L&D professionals greatly in making transformational changes in their organization. 

2. Strategy Development 

For better development of the workforce, L&D professionals need to formulate great development strategies. They need to work through the intricate details about what works and what doesn’t, map out the gaps in the programs, and then formulate even better solutions. Doing all this manually without any digitization or automation of operations is humanly impossible. Thus, the best way to actually do it is to take the help of generated data and analytical tools. 

The data generated from various department operations can be used to formulate strategies that are tailor-made to be the most effective for the specific department’s development. Analytics tools can be integrated into the implemented Learning Management Systems so that the L&D professionals can quantify the progress and understand where the learners are lacking. 

3. Employee Engagement 

No matter how good your training program and how perfect your L&D strategy is, without the actual engagement from the learners, the whole program is going to fail miserably with zero to little ROI on the learning and development program. 

L&D professionals need to make the learners realize that the learning program is actually relevant to their job and thus quite important to grow and develop as a professional as the biggest catch about adult learning is that the learners won’t take it seriously unless they feel that it is important for their career and it will only help them grow as a professional. 

L&D department can also make their course material engaging and interesting by using a more modern approach to learning by adding elements like gamification and technologies like AR and VR to the course to increase employee engagement. 

4. Balancing learning with work 

This can be easily deemed as one of the most frequent dilemmas that L&D professionals face. Learning is important as a long-term goal but that doesn’t mean that it should affect the daily operational work. But too much learning and work at the same time can be overwhelming for the employees and they might start performing poorly in both things. 

Thus, the L&D professionals need to formulate courses that balance the work-learning flow. Making the courses relevant to the job role can be helpful for the employees to finish their daily job targets more efficiently. 

Conclusion

L&D professionals are a crucial part of any organization as they take care of the fact that people working in the organization need to grow and develop in order to succeed in their own careers and contribute better to the organization’s future. And in doing so, they face many challenges. However, with the right tools and strategy, these challenges can be handled well and can be used as an opportunity to level up. 

Source: Glusea