Managing negative L&D trends in 2022

In October 2021, our company surveyed more than 800 learning and development professionals to get a sense of how they’re doing as we head into 2022. How has the pandemic affected L&D in organizations? What’s keeping learning professionals awake at night?

Jay Campbell, senior vice president of product development, and David Witt, program director, analyzed the data for a recent webinar. The survey findings revealed three negative trends that need to be addressed.

Trend No. 1: People are overloaded, fatigued and ‘too busy to learn’

The key takeaway from the survey findings was that people are exhausted and professional development has suffered because of it. Our respondents’ comments repeatedly mentioned phrases like “understaffed,” “overworked” and “burned out.” One participant put it this way: “Feelings of overwhelm and anxiety seem to be crippling our ability to get and stay focused enough to identify what learning is actually needed, learn and apply learning.”

This is not surprising. In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the average workday lengthened by 48.5 minutes in the weeks following stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, and the number of meetings increased by 13 percent. Between the psychological stress of the pandemic and the longer hours at work, it makes sense that people are feeling overloaded, tired and “too busy to learn.”

Best practices to address overload and fatigue: What’s the solution? The first step is for instructors to be aware that their audiences are stretched thin and feeling disconnected. They can increase their effectiveness by connecting with ice breakers and by using a friendly, relaxed approach that doesn’t add pressure to people’s already stressed-out and overloaded psyches.

Trend No. 2: Interpersonal connections are weakening

Another key takeaway from the survey is that people are feeling disconnected from each other. Respondents expressed feeling a loss of social cohesion and a sense that they’re no longer really part of a team. One respondent summed up the feeling as “emotional disconnection, loneliness and lack of purpose. People are on a lone journey with little support and feeling very vulnerable.”

The fraying of the organizational social fabric is particularly concerning for L&D because humans are social animals who learn by contact with one other.

“We are connecting less frequently, working in silos, and have smaller networks,” Campbell says about the data. All three trends are having a negative impact on learning.

Best practices to address weakened connections: When L&D professionals understand the importance of social support in learning, they can create more effective virtual learning experiences. A good example is the break-out group technique. Assigning the class to work in smaller teams to answer a question or discuss a challenge encourages participation from everyone. Break-out groups keep virtual learners engaged and discourage them from bailing on the class or multitasking. Most importantly, learners in break-out groups can restore those all-important social ties.

Trend No. 3: L&D professionals are stretched thin and dissatisfied with virtual offerings

When we touched base with L&D professionals last year at this time, they were busy converting from face-to-face to virtual training. This year’s survey found that the conversion is still happening — but people are not satisfied with the learner experience they’re creating.

“L&D professionals all share a difficult challenge: Converting a growing backlog of material to virtual but lacking the resources to do it and to make the material engaging,” Campbell says. “Doing this is a pressing need, but many are struggling to meet the challenges of the day.”

Learner engagement is another pervasive problem, according to the survey. Approximately 59 percent of respondents said “more learner engagement is needed” in their virtual and digital designs, and the word “engagement” appeared in one out of six responses. More than half — 53 percent —of respondents said their virtual offerings were less effective than face-to-face versions.

Best practices to address dissatisfaction with virtual offerings: To increase the level of engagement with virtual training, L&D professionals need to move from an “event” mindset to learning that is broken down into micro-activities and stretched out over time. Weaving learning into people’s day-to-day work lives employs the highly effective technique of spaced repetition—or what I think of as “interval training for the mind.”

Don’t get discouraged — we’re all still learning!