The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the professional body for those involved in the management and development of people.  The 2008 Learning and Development survey provides data on current and emerging trends and issues in learning and development. This year CIPD focused on some important issues facing the profession: employee skills; current and future learning and development practices; perceptions of e-learning; and the role of coaching. They also provide benchmark information on trends in workplace learning and training spend.

Below I will outline the summary of key findings.

Employee Skills

• Two in five (39%) respondents feel their learning and development activity has been influenced by the Leitch Review of Skills: Prosperity for all in the global economy: world class skills (2006). Around two in five have also considered or would consider implementing initiatives such as Train to Gain (44%) and signing the Employer Skills Pledge (47%).
• More organisations feel it is the Government’s responsibility (87%) to raise educational standards among young people before they enter the workforce rather than employers’ responsibility to raise literacy/numeracy standards within the workforce (57%). Sixty-two per cent feel the Government should prioritise funding on basic/lower-level skills.
• Compared with two years ago, organisations are now requiring a broader range of skills (61%) and a higher level of skills (40%). The key skills that employers class as very important include interpersonal (79%) and communication skills (68%). However, 66% of organisations feel that new employees currently lack both communication/ interpersonal skills and management/leadership skills. Yet, these are also the same skills that organisations feel will be required to meet business objectives in the future.
• One-third of employers have a graduate training scheme. The main areas included in these schemes include coaching and/or mentoring (85%) and project assignments (81%).

Learning and development – the future

• The majority of organisations have experienced change over the last few years in delivering learning and development, with the most significant change concerning management development in the form of new programmes to develop the role of line managers (72%).
• Indeed, the crucial role of line managers highlighted in previous surveys is reinforced this year, with the majority being involved in determining learning and development needs (86%) and half predicting line managers will have greater responsibility for learning and development over the next five years (49%).
• On the whole, learning and development managers have accurately forecast changes in learning and development practices; e-learning, coaching/ mentoring and in-house development programmes were all previously highlighted as growth areas. In-house development programmes (61%) and coaching by line managers (53%) are both now used more than previously.
• However, the expected use of e-learning has possibly been overanticipated, with less than half (47%) using more e-learning and a quarter (26%) saying they don’t use or no longer use e-learning. This is possibly because few feel it is the most effective learning and development practice (7%).

E-Learning

• Nonetheless, over half (57%) of organisations use e-learning, while nearly half tend to agree that e-learning is the most important development in training in the past few decades. The vast majority (82%) of public sector organisations use e-learning compared with just 42% of private sector companies.
• There is some indication that e-learning will be increasingly used as a training tool, with 29% saying that in the next three years between 25% and 50% of all training will be delivered via e-learning.
• More than three-quarters (79%) of respondents feel e-learning is not a substitute for classroom-based learning, while the vast majority (92%) feel that e-learning demands a new attitude to learning on the part of learners.
• Almost all (95%) feel that e-learning is more effective when combined with other forms of learning.

Coaching

• Seventy-one per cent of organisations undertake coaching activities, with a similar proportion (72%) finding coaching to be an effective tool.
• However, the purpose of coaching would appear to vary according to whom coaching is offered. Thus, within organisations that offer coaching to all of their employees, the purpose of this coaching is demonstrably used for general personal development (79%) and to remedy poor performance (74%), whereas within organisations that offer coaching only to managers, the emphasis for the purpose of coaching shifts towards its positioning as part of a wider management and leadership development programme.
• The bulk of the responsibility for delivering coaching lies with line managers coaching those who report to them (36%) and to HR and/or learning, training and development specialists (30%).
• The main methods used for evaluating the effectiveness of coaching include: through observation of changes (42%) and reviews of objectives conducted with line managers, coach and coachee (42%).

Economic influences on learning and development

• More organisations report facing similar (44%) economic circumstances in the past 12 months than those reporting either worse (33%) or better (22%) circumstances.
• However, the public sector continues to be gloomier than the private sector, with 53% reporting worse economic circumstances in the past 12 months, 45% reporting a cut in training funds and only 13% experiencing an increase in funding.
• Larger organisations – that is, those with more than 5,000 employees – also have a gloomy outlook, with 44% reporting worse conditions and 39% saying they have received a decrease in funding.
• Seventy-seven per cent of voluntary sector respondents report that funding for training has remained stable or increased, compared with 75% in the private sector and 54% in the public sector.

Training Spends & Budgets

• Seventy-seven per cent of organisations have a training budget.
• Voluntary sector organisations continue to spend more per employee per year on training, compared with the private sector and with the public sector.
• Those employing less than 250 continue to spend far more per head on training than those with more than 5,000 employees.

The full report is available here and give us all the motivation we need to ensure that Learn Skills addresses a key need in the UK economy through the provision of web-based skills and compliance training for the workforce.