I keep reading about \u201cThe Great Resignation\u201d in which millions of employees either have already left or are forecast to leave their jobs in the next 12 months. But I\u2019d like to suggest organizations reframe the movement as \u201cThe Great Opportunity\u201d and focus on the valuable training and development they can provide to both their current employees and new hires to engage and retain them and help them grow.<\/p>\n
During our recent TechLearn 2021 Virtual Conference, I was glad to hear that keynoter Anh Nguyen Phillips, research director in Deloitte\u2019s Global CEO Program and author of \u201cThe Technology Fallacy,\u201d shares this sentiment, noting that \u201ccontinuous learning is key in today\u2019s Digital Age.\u201d She advocates encouraging experimentation, making learning more exploratory, and asking, \u201cWhat can you do to expand your own learning experiences?\u201d<\/p>\n
As I awaited the tabulations for our 2021 Training Industry Report, I wondered whether we would see a nosedive in training expenditures due to the pandemic as we did during the 2008 recession as training budgets often are the first thing cut during an economic crisis. Instead, I was delighted to discover our research showed training expenditures actually increased nearly 12 percent over the last year as many organizations plowed cost savings from virtual training back into their learning and development offerings. They also focused on employee engagement and well-being as they wrestled with decisions about whether and how to bring workers safely back to the office.<\/p>\n