Top 5 L&D Mistakes that Companies Make

Organizational learning and development is a process of creating, transferring, and retaining knowledge within the organization. Every business acquires experience with time, which is then transformed into knowledge to be shared with the workforce. Having said that, not every organization achieves the same level of productivity even with learning and development (L&D). 

Flawed employee L&D activities may adversely affect the workforce and the business as a whole. Therefore, it is important to understand what such organizations are not doing right. Here are the top 5 L&D mistakes that businesses make while planning learning and development for employees. 

 

Mistake 1: L&D at the Wrong Time 

Usually, companies schedule training monthly, quarterly, or annually, without considering that every employee has a unique learning need. 

Moreover, some L&D programs or topics may not be fitting for a few employees. While such topics could be important for their past or future roles, it might be irrelevant to them with respect to their current roles, causing them to lose interest in the topics.  

Solution: Conduct training with a corporate training platform only when your employees want or need to learn. The training time must coincide with the chance to apply the newly gained knowledge in their day-to-day work immediately. 

Learning during the workflow is a superb way to enhance the employee’s understanding of key concepts and expertise. Just-in-time learning facilitates skill and competency development, enabling employees to learn while working. 

 

Mistake 2: Inappropriate Skill Mapping 

The HR department is responsible for guiding the employees to move in the right direction while assisting them to meet their career-specific goals. This is often done with skill mapping, which is one excellent tool for team building. Companies usually do skill mapping to define the skills of individual team members. 

Every employee has their own share of weaknesses and strengths. For example, a person with strong technical expertise may not have excellent communication skills. Organizations should determine such strengths and weaknesses through skill mapping.  

Sadly, in the absence of effective strategies, companies often fail to identify those strengths and weaknesses, which eventually affects the training plan developed for the employees. 

Solution: To make your skill mapping process flawless, you may be required to follow some steps.  

First, figure out why you need skill mapping. There might be a couple of reasons, so you must pick the most appropriate one. 

Second, consider the distinct roles of your employees and accordingly, try developing the required skills in them. Focus on the roles that directly impact the process efficiency and subsequently design key skills for the roles while assessing the employee’s weaknesses and strengths based on those skills. 

Reviewing the skills and sharing feedback helps enhance the employees’ strengths while lowering down their weaknesses, which is supposedly the ultimate corporate training goal. 

Third, develop a skill matrix and use the competency model. This involves assessing the needs of the company as well as assessing the employees’ current skills and figuring out the missing ones. The competency model allows companies to plan relevant employee training activities that can enhance the competencies of their workforce. 

 

Mistake 3: Faulty L&D Content 

Companies often include a lot of content in their L&D activities, making the curriculum irrelevant and/or unnecessarily heavy. For example, employees with excellent communication skills are sometimes required to attend communication training sessions. 

Additionally, the absence of contextual information further decreases the employees’ interest in some topics, as they find it difficult to figure out where to apply the knowledge. 

Employees need to acquire all the necessary skills, no matter whether they need them or not. The situation described to these employees during the session may not occur in reality for a long time. So, when such situations actually occur, they mostly forget how to manage them.  

Moreover, some companies follow the “one size fits for all” employee training approach, believing that their training programs will benefit all. Therefore, they conduct large-scale training, eventually following the same structure, set of standards, and assessment criteria for everyone. This often leads to learners taking a longer time to acquire the desired level of expertise. 

Solution: While designing L&D sessions, note that a flawed course design will act as a hurdle and may affect productivity drastically. 

Make sure that your employee training sessions are reasonably contextual and not content heavy. Go for microlearning that allows employees to master the skills and acquire the required knowledge in less time. 

Guided learning and learning while working help figure out the areas of improvement, eventually assisting in closing the skill gap. The primary goals of L&D should be to make employees skillful enough to deliver satisfactory results with respect to their roles, rather than simply enhancing their performance. 

 

Mistake 4: Wrong Selection of L&D Methods 

There are many L&D methods, including self-study, coaching and mentoring, eLearning, classroom training, role play, work shadowing, debates, experimental activities, simulation games, discussion groups, project study, etc. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to identify the right training methods for their workforce. 

For example, if a company is switching to new software, the L&D department will aim to teach the employees about the new software while applying the most suitable training method so that they can use it optimally.  

Solution: Choosing the right L&D method helps boost efficiency. Determine the goal of L&D and review all possible training methods before you finalize one. 

Evaluation of L&D methods is key to understanding the level of impact the training would create post implementation. The advantages and disadvantages of each training method should be identified to select the most appropriate one that can aid the organization in meeting its learning and development goals. 

  

Mistake 5: Lack of Creativity In L&D Professionals 

The majority of companies underestimate creativity when it comes to L&D. They don’t think out of the box and continue with traditional approaches that often fail to deliver expected results.  

In today’s digital era, people can acquire knowledge and skills via the internet. So, simply transferring knowledge doesn’t work in L&D sessions. Moreover, a common challenge for companies today is to train the trainers.  

Monotonous and bland L&D activities fail to draw the attention of employees, creating dissatisfaction among them and lowering their motivation to partake in such L&D sessions. 

Solution: The L&D department should plan learning sessions that are fun, engaging, and rewarding. Modern approaches like microlearning and gamification are known to boost knowledge retention, reinforce learning, and enhance employee engagement.  

Companies should aim to offer a memorable learning experience so that their employees can quickly apply the knowledge and skills in the tasks assigned to them. 

Creativity in employee training programs results in a more enthusiastic and focused audience, eventually helping the company to attain its L&D objectives. 

 

Bottomline 

In today’s competitive business world, it is critical to have employees who can keep pace with the changing environment. Learning and development is the continuous process that helps upskill and reskill employees to meet the market demands. 

If your organization’s L&D team is making the mistakes discussed above, it’s time to step back and consider the solutions provided above to make your employee training more productive, fun, and rewarding.  Try uQualio for L&D Video Training Solutions