Demand for professionals to fill learning and development jobs has almost doubled as businesses turn to training to retain employees.
Data from LinkedIn shows that more than two-thirds of employees (67%) are looking to move jobs this year, but 29% could be convinced to stay if they had the opportunity to develop their skills and 28% if they could progress their career.
As a result, the number of learning and development jobs advertised via LinkedIn jumped 94% in late 2021.
LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report found that 41% of companies plan to launch large-scale upskilling or reskilling in response. Half of organisations said their skills gaps had widened over the past year.
Four-fifths of businesses surveyed by LinkedIn thought it would be less expensive to upskill or reskill an existing employee than hiring a new one. For 57%, giving employees the opportunity to find new roles in the business is a priority.
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Demand for learning programmes and professionals to manage them means that budgets will rise this year – 38% of L&D teams thought this would be the case. The skills they will prioritise are leadership and management (76%), digital upskilling (39%) and diversity, equity and inclusion (49%).
The report also found that learning professionals’ influence has grown in the past year: 74% of those surveyed felt L&D had become more cross-functional, and 72% felt the function had become more strategic.
LinkedIn said it would introduce new features to its Learning Hub next year to help employees connect to development opportunities, including internal jobs.
It has also launched a “learning pathfinder” where individuals can access learning courses tailored to their personal career goals – these courses will be free to access until 30 April 2022.
Becky Schnauffer, senior director of LinkedIn Talent Solutions, said L&D teams play a “huge role” in helping organisations to retain top talent.
“By providing employees with opportunities to develop their skills and progress their careers, not only will companies strengthen their talent retention and recruitment efforts in a tough jobs market – but they will also boost the engagement of existing employees,” she said.
Earlier this month, the Institute of Directors wrote to the government urging the Treasury to create tax incentives for workplace training so organisations could address skills shortages in the labour market.
