CIPD

LATEST TRENDS IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT: HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CIPD LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT SURVEY 2007

Victoria Winkler, Learning, Training and Development Adviser, CIPD

As the UK's economy becomes increasingly service-led, organisations cannot afford to be complacent about addressing their employees' learning and development needs. Learning and development activities are vital to ensure that the workforce is kept up to date with fast-changing skills demands.

The relationship between skills and business performance has interested organisations, government and researchers for longer than most of us wish to remember. It is often said that an organisation’s most important resource is its people, but does this mean that the necessary investment in people is made? Each year the CIPD’s learning and development survey provides data on current and emerging trends and issues in learning and development, including the economic influences on learning and development spend.

This year's survey tackles a number of important issues facing the learning and development profession. One such issue is the role of line managers in learning and development. Seventy-four per cent of the 663 respondents report that their line managers have taken on greater responsibility for learning and development activities in the past few years, and there is overwhelming recognition of their importance in supporting learning and development. Developing these management capabilities, therefore, will be critical to ensuring that a learning and development culture is established.

However, there is concern that line managers don't take learning and development seriously and that they're not as effective in supporting learning as they might be. Given that increasing numbers of line managers are being asked to take an active role in the learning and development that takes place in their organisations, it’s clear that they’re going to need assistance and development to support these activities effectively. As well as providing a possible explanation for the perceived ineffectiveness of line managers, the lack of development that respondents report is given to line managers could go some way to explaining why some line managers don’t take learning and development as seriously as they might.

Despite a high proportion (72 per cent) of organisations having a dedicated training budget, over half of the line managers have limited or no involvement in the allocation of funds. The responsibility for allocating this budget lies mostly with senior managers, HR and learning and development specialists.

In a repeat of last year, the economic outlook in the public sector is particularly gloomy. Only 5 per cent of respondents in the public sector report better economic circumstances in the past 12 months, while almost two-thirds report worsening economic times. This has impacted on the funding available, with over half reporting a decrease in training spend in the past 12 months. Further cuts are also expected in the next 12 months.

Economic circumstances have been better for respondents in the private and voluntary sector. Perhaps surprisingly, and for the second year running, proportionally more respondents in the voluntary sector than in either the private of public sector report an increase in funding for training. However, the average number of training days (five per employee) remains largely stable across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

Once again, there are marked differences between the training spend of the different sizes of organisation in the survey. The smallest companies tend to have smaller budgets, but spend more per employee. By far the smallest spend per employee in the survey was among the very large companies (those employing more than 10,000 people). This is likely to reflect the savings that large organisations can gain from economies of scale in providing training and may indicate more in-house resources for learning and development.

Previous CIPD research has shown that there is a shift in focus from training to learning taking place. Learning is the process by which a person constructs new knowledge, skills and capabilities, whereas training is one of several responses an organisation can undertake to promote learning. Informal learning, put simply, is becoming increasingly important. What people choose to learn is likely to be more important to the business than what they are trained to do.

This is reflected in activity within organisations. According to respondents, on-the-job training leads in terms of the most effective way for people to learn. This is mirrored by the most frequently used activities, with on-the-job training and in-house development programmes topping the list. Despite this shift from training to learning, however, and continued efforts to develop a learning and development culture, the use of action learning sets, job rotations and secondments and internal knowledge-sharing events remains relatively low. That said, their use is predicted to increase considerably in the next few years.

The use of competency frameworks is now well-embedded in the majority of organisations, and on average these frameworks cover more than three-quarters of employees. Despite the focus on so-called 'generic' skills within these frameworks (for example, communication and team skills), the majority are developed in-house, with occasional support from consultants. They are used to achieve a variety of objectives but remain centred on greater employee and organisational effectiveness.

Developments in technology have also had a significant impact on the use of competencies in organisations. A high proportion of organisations now make their competency frameworks available electronically to individual employees.

These findings indicate that in pursuing its skills policy agenda, as influenced by the Leitch Review, government will need to be increasingly responsive to employer needs and preferences for learning and development activities. This will require a generally flexible ‘light touch’ approach mixed with some appropriate financial incentives. A lack of flexibility would lead to poor allocation and targeting of training resources.

One of the surprise findings in this year's survey is that the use of coaching has dropped from 79 per cent to 64 per cent. However, it would be premature to read too much into this decline, particularly as nearly three-quarters of respondents expect coaching by line managers to increase in the next few years. The role of line managers emerges strongly again. The majority of coaching activity in organisations is being carried out either by internal coaches (coaching those who don't report to them) or by line managers (coaching those who report to them). As would be expected, both internal coaches and line manager coaches are often selected for their understanding of the business. Yet only a minority of line managers are being trained to coach — a worrying finding given the important role they play.

Coaching activities are closely linked to business goals in 44 per cent of organisations. Overall, two-thirds of organisations report that their learning and development strategy is driven completely, or to a great extent, by organisational objectives. These organisations are more likely to have a written learning and development strategy and a regular process for reviewing the delivery of learning and development, and they are more likely to feel sufficiently involved in formulating overall organisational strategy. The survey results identify two main reasons for learning and development professionals not feeling involved enough in the development of organisational strategy: not being considered a key stakeholder, and the training and development implications not being properly thought through. This presents a significant challenge for learning and development professionals in terms of improving their standing and influence.

In 2008 the tenth annual CIPD learning and development survey will take place. So what do learning and development professionals predict will be the key trends?

Main change in approach to learning and training delivery in the last year

	%
Efforts to develop a learning and development culture	21
New programmes to develop the role of line managers	17
No significant changes	16
Change in the structure of the learning, training and development team	13
New approaches to identifying individual training needs	11
Introduction/extension of e-learning	10
Introduction/extension of coaching programmes	6
New approaches to monitor training spend	4
Other	2

Base: 642 respondents

The table shows the main changes in learning and training delivery in the past year. No one change significantly dominates the others but, taken together, efforts to develop a learning and development culture and new programmes to develop the role of line managers confirm that organisations now accept that learning and development cannot be successful if it is purely an HR, top-down, training-focused activity.

For a free copy of CIPD’s learning and development survey 2007 and the accompanying Reflections publications, please visit www.cipd.co.uk/surveys.

Biography of Victoria Winkler

Victoria Winkler joined the CIPD in February 2003. She is one of the CIPD's experts on learning, training and development and has joint responsibility for the CIPD’s flagship research into talent management, leadership development and succession planning. Victoria co-authored the CIPD publication Reflections on talent management. Other areas of interest include the role of the line manager in workforce development and trends in learning and development. Victoria is a national judge for the National Training Awards and represents the CIPD on a wide number of committees and steering groups. Prior to joining the institute Victoria worked in a variety of roles for organisations, including the Publishing National Training Organisation, the Basic Skills Agency and Open University Press.