In the past it was normal to work at one company for the duration of your professional career. Nowadays people are changing from employer every five years on average. Careers last longer than in the past, due to higher life expectancy and falling birth rates. The pressure on the “traditional” working class (aged 20 to 55) becomes higher and this will result in more people working past the normal retirement age. In addition to all this, the average skills of the workforce are not able to keep up with the technological development we experience nowadays.
The shorter average tenure in a job, longer duration of the careers and the technological development is causing a considerable shift in the world of corporate learning and development. Where formerly corporate learning and development* was a form of transferring some corporate skills through boring classroom sessions. Learning has become one of the most important things employees look for. People want to continuously develop themselves during their career to be able to align with evolving professions and industries. However the learning and development must fit into the busy living and working schedule of employees.It is safe to say that a lot of challenges have occurred in the corporate L&D industry during this turbulent time: People want relevant information to develop themselves in an easy to consume way, fitting in their day to day schedule.
The quest that has started in the corporate L&D industry to find the perfect mix between on- and offline learning, in order to meet all the aforementioned needs. It is necessary to develop smart learning solutions that will help people develop throughout their career in an efficient way. There is no doubt that exciting times have arrived when it comes to corporate learning and development.
Your career has become a learning journey in order to move from role to role throughout your career in a constantly changing environment due to technological development.
* Will be abbreviated to L&D in the remainder of the blog
Sources:
BBC News. (2018). How long should you stay in one job?. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38828581 [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Deloitte Insights. (2018). Careers and learning: Real time, all the time. Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/learning-in-the-digital-age.html [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Josh Bersin. (2018). The Disruption of Digital Learning: Ten Things We Have Learned – Josh Bersin. [online] Available at: https://joshbersin.com/2017/03/the-disruption-of-digital-learning-ten-things-we-have-learned/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Hi Eric, I agree that, in contrast to the past, people don’t will to stay in the same company for the whole career. I would say that even companies do not need to keep the same employees for twenty or thirty years. I think, about fifty years ago success of the company was highly dependent on the performance and accumulated knowledge (in this company) of the specific employees. Nevertheless, today entrepreneurs build business model driven companies where employees do not need years to collect knowledge about the company and become part of workforce, as companies in the same industry are becoming analogous, so the knowledge gained in one company becomes very useful in the whole industry. Moreover, after working in the same company for years productivity of the employee declines and management tries to inherit new blood.
Very interesting and relevant! People are increasingly looking for companies that are willing to invest in them, so the company that offers the best learning journey will attract the most competent workforce. However, because churning might prove to be a big problem, companies could become afraid to invest in providing good Personal Development tools. It will be interesting to see how this will develop in the future, where people may even have the possibility to transfer their own Development ‘package’ when transferring companies.