The Growing Importance of Learning and Development in the Future of Work

Why Learning and Development Is the Future of Work

During the last two years, much has changed in the business world, forcing businesses to learn many new things quickly except in one critical area that significantly impacts their capabilities—employee training.

With significant improvements in technology, several jobs will be lost. According to the “Future of Jobs Report” released in 2020 by the World Economic Forum, by 2025, 85 million jobs will be lost due to automation.¹ For this precise reason, employees will have to be reskilled and upskilled to stay relevant, which will allow organizations to retain employees and realize long-term business strategies. In a recent study, PwC found that 79% of CEOs regularly worry about their workforce’s existing skills and ability to meet their workplace needs.²

Can Learning and Development Respond to Changes in the Workplace?

More than just training, upskilling, or reskilling employees, learning and development (L&D) are about building a culture that promotes continuous learning and emphasizes leadership and ownership. However, establishing a robust continuous learning culture takes time and calls for significant adjustments to both procedures and mindsets. Considering the many of the issues we face today, organizations and L&D teams should keep this in mind when modernizing their L&D function.

According to a Deloitte insight, the future of work isn’t just one thing. It’s “a result of many forces of change affecting three deeply connected dimensions of an organization: work (the what), the workforce (the who), and the workplace (the where).”³

Prepare Employees

Employee preparation is one of the first steps businesses can take to prepare themselves for the future of work. When employees don’t receive the training, they need to adapt to changing circumstances, particularly given how challenging it is to find employees with new abilities in today’s competitive labor market, organizations risk falling behind.

What do these new abilities look like? While each organization is different, employees across all industries now need more sophisticated analytical and digital skills.

According to American insurer Prudential, its October 2021 survey indicates that a gap exists between the skills American workers have and the skills they need for future jobs: “Eight in 10 believe technology skills will be increasingly important for those jobs, and 3 out of 4 say knowing how to analyze data will be critical.”⁴

However, not only is technology changing business, but the way customers interact with customers is also, meaning employees will have to engage with customers in new ways, such as learning to use new platforms, advancing their knowledge of technologies, and improving their interpersonal skills.

Why L&D Is Important Now

The main intention of L&D, a broad term relating to all efforts that encourage professional development, is aligning employees’ goals and performance with the organizations. Depending on its size, an organization can utilize several tactics, from training courses to development activities. Here are four key reasons why L&D is important.

• Improved Business Performance

Improving business performance by training employees to perform at higher standards is often the first and most important objective of an L&D program. When employee performance improves, it naturally leads to improved business performance.

An investment in employees, effective L&D training provides long-lasting and helpful knowledge that leads to a stronger bonding, connection, and alignment with company values and an informed, knowledgeable workforce confidently carrying out tasks, which increases productivity.

• Employee Satisfaction

A happy business equals happy employees. Nobody likes stagnation or believing that change is unimportant to the bigger picture. Employees who are disheartened or stressed about work are more likely to have subpar performances.

Because L&D is an investment in employees, they feel respected and that their growth is appreciated. Training produces a more functional work environment by filling skill and knowledge gaps, and employees who receive appropriate training feel at ease and satisfied with their daily tasks.

Engaging, high-quality L&D is also likely to arouse a desire to learn more. We’ve all sat through dull required training sessions while paying more attention to the time than the material. A high-quality program gets the learning process going.

• Retention

L&D opportunities have a meaningful impact on employees’ career decisions, which is why several organizations emphasize their training and development programs in job descriptions. Because people cherish opportunities to advance their careers and develop new abilities, a corporation providing access to courses and learning management systems is significantly more attractive than one that does not.

Training tailored to each person’s needs and individual goals aids employee retention and makes an organization stand out as the ideal setting for their professional advancement, which could also help save quite a bit of money in the long run. According to this blog, hiring a new employee is usually more expensive than training.⁵ As a result, better training can alleviate expensive staffing costs.

• Top Talent Acquisition

An organization’s reputation is essential in a cutthroat work environment. Having an effective L&D plan helps retain current staff and improves an organization’s brand and appeal to potential new hires—this is why the titans of business are so vocal about their development programs. By building a solid reputation for investing in employee development, you may dominate industry rivals and draw in top personnel.

The Future of L&D Training

Today’s L&D strategies have evolved from an earlier economic vision based on traditional training methods. However, learning methods evolve with changing times, and the future of L&D will be in micro-learning (eLearning), gamification, and virtual reality (VR).

VR and gamification are taking the L&D industry by storm, leaving instructional designers worldwide in awe and delighted by the possibilities of both learning methods.

Gamification has several neuroscience-backed benefits: engaging learners far more with their progress by using game elements and producing meaningful benefits such as immersing learners in training, teaching skills through simulation, and assisting learners to acquire knowledge through interaction. Training can alter behaviors and create empathy.

How Straive Can Help You-

For more than 35 years, Straive has been the pioneer in providing L&D training materials and expertise to publishers, information providers, and corporate firms. Our range of L&D products and services, backed by an unmatchable combination of technology platforms, subject-matter expertise, and the untiring pursuit of innovation and delivery excellence, helps firms remain ahead.

Our L&D programs can be produced in various modalities such as virtual instructor-led training, eLearning, or a blended approach and are available in several options and emerging technology solutions like gamification and VR.

¹ World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Report 2020,” October 2022,
² https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2020/trends/talent.html
³ Jeff Schwartz, Steve Hatfield, Robin Jones, and Siri Anderson, “What Is the Future of Work? Redefining Work, Workforces, and Workplaces,” Deloitte, 2019,
⁴ Prudential, “Building the Future of Work Requires Skills Training, Flexibility,” October 11, 2021,
⁵ https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2020/trends/talent.html