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Many organizations invest heavily in learning but struggle to translate that investment into workforce capability. The issue isn’t access to learning. It’s a lack of visibility into whether skills are actually developing and where gaps may be limiting execution.

Well-designed learning and development programs can support this adaptability, but only when they’re connected to a clear view of workforce skills. Read on to learn how skills visibility can turn employee training into valuable capabilities that fit the right roles.

Learning investment can do a lot of things. It can:

• Help companies attract talent
• Increase retention
• Improve employee satisfaction
• Prepare future leadership and development initiatives

However, as budgets and priorities shift, even well-funded training programs can stall if organizations don’t effectively define, maintain and measure their learning and development priorities.Ìý

When budgets are tight, it’s common for decision-makers to allocate all available funds to daily operations, utilities, production expenses and salaries. Training can get pushed aside.

According to a , fewer companies are increasing their investment in training. (Forty-one percent of surveyed companies were increasing their training budgets, which represents a drop of 5% from the previous year.) Among the surveyed companies experiencing decreased budgets, 58% cited economic uncertainty as a reason for the cuts.

In some companies, employee priorities shift about every three months, and sometimes, sooner. Organizations that fail to focus on resilience and adaptability, cross-functional skill building and aligned learning investment might struggle to keep up with major changes and emerging demands.Ìý

Companies typically implement upskilling programs to enhance competitiveness and employee retention. However, companies that face significant skills gaps, workforce disruptions (e.g., from technology or the market) or poor measurement of learning investment impact can fail to benefit from upskilling initiatives.

Upskilling can also stall when companies lack visibility into their employees’ existing skills and roles that may be disrupted by technology such as AI.

Some companies may struggle to demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for training. Investing in upskilling may make sense generally, but connecting the dots between training and a company’s financial outcome can be tough to do. This is especially true for organizations that can’t or don’t keep track of resulting productivity gains.

This problem isn’t only germane to companies with new learning initiatives. It also extends to organizations with established employee training programs. The challenge is to accurately attribute positive financial outcomes to investing in workforce skill development.

It may be tempting for organizations to judge learning investment by surface-level activity metrics such as completions, engagement and course volume. Such accomplishments can look strong on paper. Yet they reveal little about whether employees absorbed the training to the point where they can implement it — and that affects just how equipped they are to help companies meet performance goals.Ìý

One mistake companies can make is providing training without an opportunity or environment for employees to apply what they learn. Training module completion without practice can fall short of yielding results. Employees need simulation and the ability to build new neural pathways so that the knowledge becomes fully learned.Ìý

Learning and development can lack a structural connection to business and may place too much emphasis on transactional activity. When this occurs, companies might experience an inability of employees to execute skills that demonstrate true value.

In some companies, employees complete training for role-specific skills, harassment awareness and compliance. While these training protocols may be standard, they don’t represent a learning investment that truly demonstrates value. In a , chief human resource officers were surveyed on which skills they wanted to see their organizations develop the most. They cited leadership, management, digital and technical skills as most important. Such skills are definitely not part of compliance and harassment training.

On the other hand, some learning platforms still design content-heavy programs that get rolled out reactively to meet a company’s emergent needs. This requires organizations to move fast, stay responsive and quickly build new skills as changes occur.

To achieve workforce adaptability, it’s not enough to simply have a talented team. It requires organizations to actually see, understand and act on the existing skills within their workforce.Ìý

Companies should be able to identify the skills employees already have and use that insight to create pathways to evolving roles. For example, a healthcare organization might identify that a group of experienced nurses already demonstrates strong communication, care coordination and data documentation skills. Rather than hiring externally for care management and leadership roles, the organization can create a targeted development pathway that builds on those existing capabilities, adding skills like team leadership or population health management. This can allow employees to move into other roles faster, while helping the organization fill critical gaps with talent that already understands its systems and patients.

Additionally, when employers identify the skills required for each role within their company, skills gaps and commonalities between entry, junior and senior positions become clearer.

Closing visibility gaps can allow companies to develop learning investment and workforce planning strategies that can help employees to progress internally.

The , conducted by the leadership development firm DDI, reveals that amid AI advancements and evolving business models, companies aren’t always investing in talent development. In fact, only half of the surveyed companies made internal talent development a priority. At the same time, roughly 20% of chief HR officers had the talent to fill important business and leadership roles.

It’s worth noting the other side of the coin: For employees who have the skills to advance within an organization but lack the opportunity, they may feel forced to seek new roles with different employers.

However, with well-aligned learning investment, talent can be redeployed quickly based on a company’s needs. When organizations focus on skills — both in terms of which skills are needed and how to grow those skills in their employees — instead of outdated and rigid job titles, they can gain a more adaptable, dynamic workforce.Ìý

Few HR executives effectively establish a taxonomy where they can organize and categorize skills within their organization. As outlined, companies must be able to identify the skills they need and invest in meaningful training that develops those skills in the right people. This personalized level of attention creates skills visibility — and it requires a clear, common language between all parties.Ìý

Skills visibility means that employees can demonstrate their capabilities and that HR managers have systems in place that recognize them. When this visibility is in place, learning and development can serve as the bridge between an organization’s goals and the current capabilities of its employees.

Companies have the opportunity to turn learning investment into an operational necessity by focusing on targeted skills, creating cross-company alignment and enabling performance as work evolves.

When skills visibility is established as an assignment layer, the resulting cycle looks like this:

Learning activity → Skills signal → Workforce visibility → Prioritized development → Adaptability

So, what does this mean exactly? Employees receive training through online courses, on-the-job training programs, graduate courses and mentorships designed for learning or enhancing job-related skills. After completing a learning activity, employees demonstrate a newly acquired skill, and consequently, receive recognition for it.

Companies can then move employees into new or enhanced roles, rather than hire outside talent.

Finally, teams can be reconfigured, new priorities can emerge and companies can introduce new technology. Since organizational change is ever-evolving, the cycle must continue for a company to remain agile.Ìý

The organizations that will see greater adaptability are not the ones that focus exclusively on learning investment. They’re the companies that achieve greater skills visibility and use that insight to guide development and workforce planning strategies accordingly. If you’re looking to better understand where skills gaps may be limiting performance, start by getting a clearer view of your workforce.

Identify where skill gaps may be impacting your organization.Ìý