Learning & Development – #oneword #CIPD #HR

In 2015 100s of HR professionals were asked a simple question in a survey… in one word describe…LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

Participants were invited from the CIPD Members LinkedIn group, the CIPD communities, and the CIPD Facebook group. 613 participated. Of those, over 70% have been in HR for more than 11 years.

Not all questions were mandatory

The demographics for this were:

Processing of one word data.

During data analysis, spellings were corrected, and capitalisation resolved. No words were merged.

Responses to the one word survey

1. Growth 11%
2. Development 9%
3. Skills 8%
4. Improvement 5%
5. Advantage 4%
6. Progression 4%
7. Competitive 4%
8. Progress 3%
9. Knowledge 2%
10. Growing 2%

What is curious about this is the diversity of leanings. Id L&D about skills, or personal development? are the two the same, or should they be? It is refreshing to see the business advantage, and competitive being high listing, but is this more about maintaining a level of skills or really being in a place to innovate for the future. We will never know what was going through respondents minds at the time.

Summary Conclusions

There appears to be a focus towards growth for competitive advantage. now from this temperature check survey we do not know if this is individual or organisational growth.

In recent years the trend for Learning and development has been to reduce “time away from the work place”, to put the responsibility of learning onto the individual, and when learning activities do take place for them to be experiential in nature. It seems strange that in 2015 2% (a top to response) is about “knowledge”. Something that can be more effectively communicated through other strategies than learning & Development.

It is reassuring that L&D activities seem to be more “bottom line” or business focused, but the apparent lack of clarity will lead to confusion and at times a confused delivery strategy

Other words used more than once included:

growth, self, development, skills, improvement, advantage, progression, competitive, progress, knowledge, growing, training, opportunity, personal, enhancement, capability, upskilling, investment, future, competence, awareness, learning, retention, progressive, performance, essential, continuous, stretch, reflection, potential, necessary, change, advancement, proofing, ownership, opportunities, motivation, improving, empowerment, edge, culture, competency, achievement, value, strength, skilling, skill, realisation, nurturing, life, holistic, fulfilment, expansion, enhancing, engagement, enabling, empowering, coaching, career, building, ambition, actualisation