A top challenge facing talent development professionals is ensuring that employees can make time for learning and development. To cultivate a learning environment, it is important to focus on a few key areas within an organization to support talent development and growth.

1. Train for Soft Skills

A current focus for many learning and development leaders is closing the skills gap. A significant number of CEOs believe a lack of highly important skills is one of the primary threats to growth for an employee and an organization. Soft skills are often overlooked and the gap for soft skills is continuing to expand. How can employees grow, advance, and become leaders if they lack some of the most important and fundamental skills they need to thrive in the workplace? As an L&D professional, it is important to provide opportunities for your employees to build their confidence, communication, creative thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills and abilities.

2. Track Skill Development

Without the proper monitoring of an employee’s skill development, it is hard to determine what works well for them, how their learning experience is progressing, and if the learning environment and opportunities are as effective as they can be. Many talent managers and executives believe the rates of retention and team metrics on performance are some of the most effective ways to measure the effectiveness of a learning program or infrastructure. Oftentimes, the use of learning programs increases the rates of retention, employee experience, and the ability to apply that learning at work. It has been shown that employees who are given a greater opportunity to learn, grow, and develop their skills and abilities are more likely to stay loyal to the organization that provided them with those opportunities and experiences.

3. Have Options for Employee Learning Preferences

With the growth of technology and a new focus on employee experience and learning, there are a plethora of options to choose from to help professional development—and all at a rate with methods that are ideal for them and their situation. Most employees prefer to learn at their workplace and at their own pace, with many employees opting to take on their learning at the point of need. Because of this, many talent development managers are becoming more dependent on the use of online learning for their solutions. Advancements such as microlearning can make it easy and convenient for employees to develop their skills and knowledge concisely at any time and from any location through tools such as webcasts, blogs, and podcasts.

4. Learning Is Essential for Managers Too

It is crucial not to forget that not only is learning important for managers, but that it can also increase employee engagement. Many employees will participate in a learning course and are more willing to devote time and effort to enhance or develop more skills if it were recommended and encouraged by a manager. It is important for executives and managers to participate in learning and development events themselves and discuss talent development resources and be open about promoting a culture of learning. Learning may be another huge task to add to a manager’s workload, but by keeping it simple and making it easy for them to encourage learning opportunities, successful employee learning can save management time and improve overall business development.

5. People Analytics Are Important

It's the age of data and analytics. People analytics brings a human side to data and many talent development professionals are using it to create a learning experience in their organization and in aiding their employees' growth and development. Talent development professionals use assessment tools to identify skills gaps and measure employees' performance to determine what new skills they may need to develop so they can perform to the best of their abilities.