SkillFlex

Make way: L&D leaders now have a seat at the table

August 18, 2022

Today, L&D leaders are more in demand than ever before. Of course, a lot of that is due to so much talk around upskilling that it’s become a buzzword in employer branding and talent sourcing. It’s often the first selling point of an organization nowadays that’s also catering to the increasing demands for learning opportunities laid out by employees. This has directly led to increased relevance of L&D leaders and departments in organizations. Most organizations earlier doubled the HR function with L&D as a subset. However, today, there are separate L&D departments in each organization with leaders who deeply specialize in developing talent.

Before we deep-dive into this, let’s leave you with some statistics that were recently published by LinkedIn on the increasing demand for L&D leaders:

15% more promotions of L&D pros this year
64% L&D pros saw their organization’s culture of learning grow stronger in the past year
79% of L&D pros agree: it’s less expensive to reskill a current employee than to hire a new one

*LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2022*

There has been a shift in the market and one that’s becoming increasingly prominent. From being a supporting function, L&D as a whole, but more importantly L&D roles are now at the core of what organizations are investing in for growth. The biggest change with regards to this has come in the form of top management giving L&D pros a seat on the table. The realization that’s now set in is that L&D leadership is critical in developing organizational growth strategies — this circles back to how learning is directly linked to business success.