Attracting and retaining talent with Learning and Development

| 3 Min Read

Attracting and retaining talent is essential to the success of any organisation. However, many organisations struggle to recruit and retain talented employees. To attract top talent, you need to create space in your organisation for people to advance their careers.

Now more than ever, it is the skills, knowledge, and creativity of employees that contribute to a company’s success or failure. Investing in the development and maintenance of these skills is beneficial for both employees and their organisation. This post will explain how you can use Learning and Development to help your organisation to attract and retain talented employees. 

Why is Learning and Development so important?

Many organisations struggle to find ways to help their employees progress in their careers.

According to recent surveys, concern about a lack of advancement opportunities is employees' single greatest motivation to change jobs. As such, your organisation will have the advantage in a competitive talent market if you provide employees with the opportunities to grow, develop their skills, and excel in their roles.

Learning and Development are also essential because they motivate and inspire employees, helping them to realise their full potential. If you invest in helping your employees grow, they will be more motivated to invest their full efforts in your organisation. Providing employees with learning and development opportunities decreases turnover, which can be incredibly costly for organisations. Creating plans to help employees grow and improve develops loyalty and helps organisations to retain talent.

After years of constant changes and disrupted or remote working, employees are increasingly looking at more than just the financial side when deciding whether to join or remain at an organisation. Instead, employees consider factors such as workplace culture, flexibility, and development opportunities. This is where Learning and Development are essential.

How can you attract and retain talent with Learning and Development?

There are many ways that you can use Learning and Development to attract and retain talent in your organisation.

1) Create a culture of continuous learning and growth

One way to attract and retain talent is to cultivate a culture of growth, where employees continuously look for ways to obtain new knowledge and develop their skills to improve performance. Ensuring that learning is one of the core values of your organisation will help you to remember to keep learning at the forefront of everything you do, creating a culture focused on learning.

To create a culture of learning and growth, it is essential that employees feel they are in a safe space. Employees will be more willing to innovate and develop new skills if they feel supported and able to make mistakes without severe consequences. It is also important to identify people excelling in their learning development. Encouraging and rewarding those who engage in learning programs helps to create a culture in which employees are motivated to continue their learning.

2) Develop personalised growth plans

Many organisations focus on delivering generic training programs over true learning experiences. While there certainly is a place for generalised training, for example, to help onboard new employees or teach crucial legislation, it is important to also create opportunities for truly personalised development programs. One way to do this is to create independent development plans that are specific to the position and department. These plans should begin at onboarding and contain on the job and online learning, as well as mentoring and project experience. IDPs should be monitored and updated recently as a cooperative effort between employees and their managers.

Personalised learning plans can help to make learning more inclusive and accessible for employees. They can also ensure that learning is at a similar level to each specific employee. This is important as employees who are required to complete learning above their level may lose motivation and not gain the benefits from the learning. Learners who are required to complete tasks below their level may get bored and be reluctant to participate in development opportunities.

3) Promote opportunities for L and D

To attract and retain talent, you need to share the opportunities that your organisation provides for development both internally and externally. Firstly, you should make internal growth and promotion opportunities known within the company. Employees who are looking for a change should be made aware of opportunities to upskill or reskill and take on a different role within the same organisation, reducing turnover. Your organisation could use staff newsletters, company meetings, and internal job boards to share opportunities with employees. You could also develop clear paths for internal promotions by making sure that employees are aware of the value the organisation places on development. It is important to develop promotion paths with employees from the beginning of their time at the organisation and provide ongoing support with learning, skill-sharing, and encouragement.

Externally, high performing job seekers will often try to identify organisations with reputations for prioritising learning and providing development opportunities. To attract top talent, ensure that the value your organisation places on learning shows externally. On your website and LinkedIn, emphasise that your organisation invests in employee Learning and Development. For example, you could share stories of internal development and promotion on your LinkedIn company page.

If you're ready to start expanding your L&D opportunities, Guroo can help you to develop the learning and development programs that are right for your organisation. To find out how we can help, contact us today to set up a meeting to discuss your needs.

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