Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Letitia G. | Delivered August 7, 2020

Learning and Development (L&D) Teams

Goals

To understand what is happening with L&D teams and roles in organizations as a result of COVID-19. The ideal response focuses on quantitative data and stories/qualitative; which organizations are investing in L&D teams versus reducing investments (including any trends by industry, geography or other dimensions); details about whether organizations are reshaping L&D team's structure and roles; the key business challenges in the coming 12 months (through the eyes of business leaders rather than L&D people); and the changes made by L&D teams since COVID hit, and what do they want to do more with or hold on to into the future.

Early Findings

Learning and Development Teams During COVID-19According to Karlie Cremin, Managing Director, DLPA, in the wake of COVID-19, re-engaging employees quickly is critical to protect organizations from the longer-term downturn. Importantly, employee expectations have evolved, pushing for a need to reset.
Cremin continues to assert that Australian businesses would likely save costs in the next 6-24 months unless they have a strategy that justifies value for maintaining investments into L&D.
Despite the impact of COVID-19 on all workplaces, Cremin remains positive that L&D is forward-looking; however, organizations need to focus on messaging, specifically the kind that gets people excited about it and can unite teams. Moreover, it is vital to be "strategic about the content — layer skills to elicit the appropriate effect."
 Cremin discourages organizations from going 100% online and asserts that blended learning is key, especially now that everyone misses human interaction.
Delivering Learning and Development to Employees During COVID-19According to KPMG Australia, organizations seeking to continue delivering learning and development can follow some three approaches — developing, implementing, and then evaluating.
Develop — organizations ought to reexamine their previous learning requirements and design to identify the opportunities likely to change in an organization's current business environment.
Implement — in the new virtual L&D environment, organizations should deliver information via "email, interactive PDFs, digital magazines, etc." For personal engagement and discussions, the focus should be on virtual workshops. Overall, organizations can focus on different collaboration tools, including social media platforms.
Evaluate — Organizations need to prepare for any eventuality. Meantime, they should collect feedback and information to help identify areas within the organization or "teams that need improvement, (content, process and structure) and feed into future sessions and programs."
Summary of FindingsThe first hour of research shows that information specific to Australia L&D teams is not that prevalent but can be available based on analysis of reports and articles by thought leaders in this domain.
In addition to this public search, we scanned our proprietary research database of over 1 million sources and were unable to find any specific research reports addressing your goals.