Agile learning: living with the speed of change

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether HR leaders could prepare and train their workforce for tomorrow's skills demand.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was commissioned by Lumesse contact database and third party research house, Survey Shack, which ran from 6‐17 August 2012. Respondents were sourced from 24 different countries and worked in SMEs of less than 1,000 employees to enterprise‐sized organisations with more than 50,000 employees.

Findings

Over a third of HR leaders believe they cannot sufficiently prepare their workforce for tomorrow's skills demand, leaving one in three employees feeling insecure in their job as a result. Only 10 per cent worldwide believe HR is seen as an “extremely useful partner” by employees for skills development; over 70 per cent of HR leaders believe that employees see HR as providing little or no learning, or just the minimum skills for them to succeed; and 40 per cent of HR leaders believe that employees would not seek help from HR if they needed to develop new knowledge or skills quickly. The majority of employees see their colleagues as a more valuable resource for acquiring new skills or knowledge than their internal Learning Management Systems.

Practical implications

The paper will help HR leaders understand the benefits of adopting more agile tools and approaches to learning and development programmes in organisations

Originality/value

This paper is valuable to HR leaders and learning professionals needing to understand how best to implement valuable learning and skills for employees, to keep up with the speed of change.

Citation

Miles, A. (2013), "Agile learning: living with the speed of change", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 20-22. https://doi.org/10.1108/14777281311302058