Tiffany Poeppelman
Talent Builder | Professional Speaker | Financial Times Top 50 Inspirational Future Female Leaders
People who work in learning and development (L&D) are really being stretched in their roles right now.
As hiring slows across APAC, dipping by 42% in Singapore, 40% in India, and 35% in Australia between March 2022 and 2023, there’s never been a more critical time for employee retention and internal mobility.
In this environment, our purpose is no longer simply delivering course curriculum and adapting instructional design for changing technology. Today, we have an opportunity and responsibility to empower impactful careers.
Most likely you’re already aware of L&D’s tilt toward career development. It’s also likely that you’re busy trying to figure out what it means and what the best path forward is.
I’d like to help by sharing why this transformation is so important and how it empowers unstoppable talent. I’ll also share four questions — and small steps — that will help you make progress and align career development with business impact.
How career development motivates employees and supports business outcomes
Work is changing incredibly quickly, and organisations are looking to L&D to help with core business metrics. This is why the role of learning has shifted from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have.
Learning for learning’s sake is wonderful. Everyone benefits from a culture where curiosity, exploration, and experimentation rule the day. But it’s no longer enough.
To best inspire learning culture, we need to pay attention to people’s core motivation. And for the vast majority of learners, that motivation is the desire to succeed in their careers.
Across APAC, LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report tells us that “progress toward career goals” is employees’ No. 1 reason to learn.
The true magic of unstoppable talent happens when organisations direct this potent employee motivation to learning that supports critical business goals. Outcome-led learning geared toward career development keeps people learning and growing at the rate (and in the direction) that the new world of work requires.
In fact, globally, organisations that cultivate employee growth are:
● 7.2x more likely to engage and retain employees.
● 2.6x more likely to exceed financial targets.
● 4.1x more likely to innovate effectively
And across APAC, internal mobility drives retention:
● In Australia, an employee who has made an internal move has a 76% chance of
staying at their company at year 2 (vs 50% without internal mobility)
● In Singapore, an employee who has made an internal move has a 81% chance of
staying at their company at year 2 (vs 54% without internal mobility)
● In India, an employee who has made an internal move has a 79% chance of staying
at their company at year 2 (vs 67% without internal mobility)
● In Australia, an employee who has made an internal move has a 76% chance of staying at their company at year 2 (vs 50% without internal mobility)
● In Singapore, an employee who has made an internal move has a 81% chance of staying at their company at year 2 (vs 54% without internal mobility)
● In India, an employee who has made an internal move has a 79% chance of staying at their company at year 2 (vs 67% without internal mobility)
The four questions that help build a culture of career development
Building a thriving culture of career development takes time, and it might seem like a monumental mountain to climb. So it helps to apply our own curiosity and powers of experimentation to identify small victories.
Below are four questions and a few steps that can help you chart your way forward. Incidentally, I believe these questions can be equally helpful to organisations, managers, and even all of us individually as we look to build our own career paths.
1. How are you building agility?
Agility is our ticket to future success. We must be able to adapt quickly to market changes, rapidly evolving technology, industry trends, and customer needs. To build agility, we must invest in learning and development programs that inspire and enable people to continually improve and innovate.
Forward-thinking organisations recognise that agility means incorporating learning and growth into everyday work. Toward that end, even small moments of learning represent enhanced agility — and career progress.
Taken together, these quick and nimble hops represent the enlarged capabilities and outcomes that companies need to leap ahead.
Tip: Build agility by celebrating and thinking about career growth in a new way. Recognise and reward employees for trying a new tool, completing a course, sharing knowledge with others, delivering a stretch project, working with a mentor, taking a risk, investing time for feedback, activating a new idea, or developing a new relationship.
2. How are you prioritising skills?
Skills are the building blocks of agility. Many organisations are realising that the more we get to know our skills, the better we can understand our strengths and close our gaps.
To empower employees to achieve their career goals, we must help them understand the skills that are most relevant to their roles and career aspirations. This means providing tools and resources that help them assess their existing skills and acquire the new skills they’ll need to succeed.
Tip: Prioritise skills by putting them at the center of career development conversations. Help team members shine a light on what they consider their strengths and give them support and resources to understand what skills they need to develop for their current role and to achieve their aspirations.
“Companies that hire for skills and cultivate a culture of internal mobility by investing in upskilling and learning opportunities will find it easier to attract and retain top talent.”
- Georgina O’Brien, Director, APAC Learning and Engagement, LinkedIn
3. How are you embracing mobility?
Mobility — building flexibility and fluidity into careers — is an opportunity that everyone should seize.
For teams and organisations, it means fostering ways for people to take on new challenges and new roles, bolstering institutional knowledge and building a more versatile pool of skills. It also means looking at internal talent when hiring opportunities come around, creating career paths that enable lateral and vertical moves, and offering additional training to help people succeed in new roles.
For individuals, embracing mobility means having the courage to pursue big-leap growth experiences that expand skills and career relevance. It also means being open to sideways or jungle-gym moves instead of simply climbing an old-fashioned career ladder.
Tip: Embrace mobility by actively seeking to go beyond your career development comfort zone. Take ownership in seeking collaborations that break through traditional silos and open doors. L&D pros particularly need to partner with talent acquisition to help people transition and build new skills for open roles.
4. How are you empowering people to achieve their career dreams?
For employees to thrive now and in the future, they need to feel empowered to think big and harness their passions.
Unfortunately, working amid so much change and uncertainty can rob people of their sense of career ownership and autonomy. Many don’t know how to define their next step or have access to tools and networks that make career transformation possible.
Inspiring people to design their own futures starts with recognising their uniqueness and individuality, paying attention to their personal passions and encouraging them to flourish.
It’s also important to share information about roles and skills that represent the most impactful needs for the business, where the largest areas of opportunity reside. Help people think about skills that are transferable, opening new directions to grow.
Tip: Inspire people to achieve their goals by investing time with them to think and talk about career growth. Show them that their dreams are valued and help them achieve clarity on where they want to go. If you’re in a leadership or management role, make sure these career conversations include information on tools and resources.
Continuous development with LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning supports you on your journey and empowers your employees to develop the right skills to grow their career.
As the only development product that uses data from the world’s professional community to create and curate the most up-to-date skill building courses that drive individual career growth, we’ve identified that some of the biggest changes - and opportunities and developed LinkedIn Learning courses that can help grow and develop tech, business and creative skills, like artificial intelligence (AI).
Final thoughts: Stretch but don’t break
As highlighted earlier, many of the problems L&D are trying to solve are massive. They’re highly complex and nearly overwhelming.
As you stretch to both empower employee careers and drive business impact, remember that no single person or even a single team can do this work alone.
And no matter how the world of work evolves, remember that there’s one important skill set that is not going to change: We all need to apply our human skills, like empathy and compassion, to cheer for one another and take good care of ourselves.
I’m excited to share my new LinkedIn Learning course on Skills-First Talent Management launching soon. In the meantime, let’s connect on LinkedIn.