UK workers are primarily focusing on current skills needs in their roles instead of long-term career growth, new research has found.
The study, by learning technology firm Degreed, found that 40% of employees were setting goals to excel in their current role and 37% felt motivated to learn to perform better in their current job.
Managers were the top source (at 33%) for understanding what skills workers need to succeed in their roles.
The How the Workforce Learns 2023 report, which set out to “uncover the individual motivations behind learning”, found that UK workers were motivated to learn primarily to perform better at their current jobs (37%) and, secondly, to prepare for their next role in the same career path (24%).
UK employees set career and learning goals, claimed the study, primarily to improve their performance in current roles (40%), with preparing for long-term career opportunities ranking second (26%). Degreed concluded that such employees were “treading a fine balance between building the skills needed for today’s job requirements while preparing for future career moves”.
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When wishing to learn a new skill quickly, 35% of UK workers turned to their peers and colleagues, the analysis found. Half of them enjoyed learning in a small group or with a colleague or peer. Beyond this, 30% of UK workers watched videos to learn something quickly and 29% attended classes or conferences.
The study also looked at learning in the US, Japan, France, Germany, Brazil, India, Spain and Canada, and found that the UK’s managers were relatively good at proactively supporting their team’s learning. Most UK workers (71%) reported that their manager supported their learning at work. Managers were also helping workers to understand what skills were needed to succeed in their profession and were the top source at 33%, with L&D teams coming in second at 23%.
In the UK only 57% of workers felt they had a learning culture at work; a relatively low number compared with other countries. This poor ranking could be linked to inaccessibility of learning with low numbers of workers reporting that learning opportunities were shared equally across their organisation, said the analysis. It was also connected with the finding that in the UK relatively few workers (64%) felt they had opportunities to advance their careers through learning (the third lowest figure among the countries surveyed).
Reinforcing this, a quarter (25%) of UK workers had not experienced career growth in the past three years, defined as receiving a promotion, working on a temporary assignment, switching to a new internal function, reskilling for a new career, or working with a mentor or coach, found the study. As a result, only 62% of UK workers feel empowered to do their best work every day, compared with 74% across all respondents globally.
Individual motivations of employees were the key to understanding trends in the current climate, argued Spencer Smith, VP of communications, customer, and product marketing at Degreed. He said: “L&D leaders find themselves at a critical time, with increased pressure to get ahead of technological innovations like artificial intelligence that are widening the skills gap at an unprecedented pace. The report shows how strategically aligning skill building with personal career goals and business objectives is helping organisations and individuals keep up with change.”
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