How Upskilling L&D Professionals Boosts Employee Skill Development

As a senior L&D professional, you put in efforts to get the learning and development budget approved for your learning team. But at the end of the year, do you have growth metrics to show the return on the investment?

Most CLOs and CHROs struggle to show a positive ROI as the L&D team fails to meet skill development goals. 

The irony is that the team that focuses on upskilling the entire organization does not get learning and development opportunities to expand their skills. 

In a market where the skills gap is widening, L&D professionals cannot merely focus on obsolete learning techniques. The L&D team needs the right skills to rethink their strategies for future-proofing the organization by making the employees more agile and future-ready. 

As per the survey conducted by Disprz and ETHR World, 52% of organizations say that reinventing the L&D teams with the skills to drive business value is one of the top challenges in the L&D space. 

Every skill has a shelf-life – L&D professionals need skill development opportunities

Skills are changing at a fast pace due to digital acceleration and various advancements in the market. New technologies have even emerged in the learning space. Unfortunately, the L&D team isn’t leveraging the technologies to empower employees due to skill shortages. Most L&D professionals encourage employees to invest hours in learning but do not dedicate time themselves to skill development. 

As per a report, compared to their HR colleagues, L&D learners spent 35% less time learning in 2021 

Learning and development shouldn’t be confined to the employees. It should be accessible to all. It is pivotal to create a skilling path through on-the-job training for the L&D professionals and motivate them to grow in their careers. 

Best practices for upskilling L&D professionals to enhance the employee skill-development process

The roots need to be strong for the flower to blossom; similarly, the L&D professionals need to be skilled to ensure that employee development is phenomenal. Here are the best practices for upskilling L&D professionals. 

1. Reflect on the learning ROI and the performance 

Before commencing the skill development process, take a step back and find out how the professionals have used the learning and development budget. If they’ve failed to provide the best returns, then it’s crucial to delve deeper into the reasons. 

Below are the metrics you should consider tracking to determine if the L&D’s efforts translate into results.

• Course adoption metric
• Course completion metric
• Learning dropout metric 
• Assessment metric
• Assessment score

Once you collect the above metrics, have a one-to-one conversation with the L&D professionals to understand what’s holding them back from achieving the ideal number for each metric. 

2. Analyze and find out the trending skills in the L&D space 

Skills decay at an exponential rate in the L&D space. Hence it is crucial to keep an eye on the top trending skills that L&D requires to speed up skill development for employees at different levels. Conduct market research and create a catalog of skills that can be used as a base to drive effective skilling at scale for the L&D professionals. 

Below are the key skills trending in the L&D space:

• Instructional design skills
• Analytical thinking skills
• Technical skills  
• Conflict resolution skills
• Change readiness skills
• KPI management skills
• Researching skill 

These are some common trending skills; based on your industry; you can research and make a list of the top skills. Or, instead of doing the hard work, you can leverage an advanced Learning Experience Platform (LXP) that keeps you on top of all the trending skills. 

3. Blend learning and application for complete skill development 

Create a perfect blend of in-person and online training to develop trending skills for making the L&D sessions more impactful and driving the best learning ROI.

Set up a skilling process that enables your L&D professional to learn on the job while focusing on employee development. However, even conduct in-person sessions. Assess their knowledge by putting them in challenging situations to understand how they will manage them to drive effective skill development in the organization.

Role of LXP in upskilling your L&D professionals

A modern AI-powered skilling tool like disprz LXP enables you to manage the entire skilling cycle, from identifying the right skills to building them for the L&D professionals. 

• Effortlessly identify and benchmark the trending skills for L&D professionals at different levels.
• Measure the proficiency level for each skill with skill assessment.
• Enhance L&D professionals’ capabilities by creating a skilling journey.  

disprz LXP is a modern tool that helps in amplifying learning experiences. This powerful AI-based solution provides personalized learning recommendations based on the skills, interests, and L&D professionals’ learning preferences.

 disprz LXP provides the perfect platform that empowers you to make a host of digital content, in-house content, and micro-gigs available to make skilling more holistic. The best part is that the L&D professional can leverage the same tool to identify the employees’ skill gaps and create personalized skilling journeys. Through periodic assessments and feedback, L&D professionals can assess current skill levels and guide the employees on the right path.  

As the adage goes, you can free two birds with one key. Book a demo to find out how the Disprz LXP can help in future-proofing your organization with end-to-end skilling for L&D professionals and employee skill development.