How L&D Can Develop the Workforce of the Future
The skill sets your staff need are expected to change by 50% in 2027. That's according to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report.
50% in just a few short years. With so much changing, L&D has a role to play.
In today’s episode of the Learning for Good podcast, we are exploring two techniques L&D can use to prepare your staff for the future.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
02:55 Identifying skills for the future
05:48 Allowing staff to build skills for the future
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How L&D Can Develop the Workforce of the Future
The skill sets your staff need are expected to change by 50% in 2027.
That's according to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report. 50% in just a few short years.
Is your organization ready for workforce development?
Is your L&D team ready?
I've been in Learning and Development for well over 15 years and spent half of that inside a large national nonprofit.
We spent a lot of time thinking about the skills our staff would need then AND in the future. And now as a consultant, I get to help nonprofits just like yours identify new skills as well.
We keep hearing that the workforce is changing.
We hear all about the future of work.
We hear about upskilling and reskilling.
But how do we actually prepare our staff for the future if skills are changing by 50% in just a few years?
How can L&D be a strategic partner for your organization’s workforce development?
In this blog post, we’re covering two techniques to get us there:
Identify future skills needed through a custom competency model
Give staff the opportunity to build skills through training and leadership developmen
We all want to prepare our staff for the future. That is the goal.
1) Identify Future Skills Through a Custom Competency Model
The first step is to identify the skills that will be needed in the future through a custom competency model.
The 2023 Workplace Learning Report identified four focus areas for L&D. One of them is being aligned to business goals and another is upskilling. A competency model helps you do both.
Here's why I love a custom competency model as a technique to prepare your staff for the future. When you create a custom competency model, you go through an intentional process of identifying the skills your organization is going to need to be successful.
So we look at external research.
What do the big research studies say is going to be important in the future?
What are the potential disruptors that are coming your way and might change the way your staff works?
We look at all of those things.
And we perform internal research.
What does your strategic plan, mission, vision, or DEI commitment say your staff are going to need to be able to do?
What does it not say that might be implied?
We do that research as well.
And then we also talk to staff in different roles throughout the organization to hear their perspective on the skills people use now, and the skills they might need in the future.
We can then sort through all of those insights and all of this data and find themes and priorities that are specific to your nonprofit, but also aligned to the future of work.
Through this process. I typically see organizations identifying things like communication or emotional intelligence, project management, and some sort of strategic or critical thinking skill.
The 2023 Workplace Learning Report identified 10 skills for the future. This included some of the ones that I frequently see but also things like customer service, research, and teamwork. ]
When you go through this process, you can identify the skills that are exactly what your organization needs, and they will be written in a way that reflects your strategies, goals, and values.
I’ve talked a lot about custom competency models. So, here are some related episodes of Learning for Good in case you want to learn more about the topic:
Episode 51: Using Your Competency Model to Develop a Comprehensive Training Program
Episode 39: Ask These Two Questions to Identify Your Nonprofit's Core Competencies
Episode 20: How to Determine Which Competencies Are Right for You
Episode 19: One Nonprofit's Honest Opinion after 6 Months with a Competency Model
Episode 18: Four Reasons Your Competencies Don't Work
If you aren't sure what skills are important for your organization, and you feel like you're spinning in circles trying to figure out what to prioritize, it doesn't have to be that way.
If you are ready to stop spinning and start working with intentionality, let's get on a 30-minute call and discuss your particular situation and needs. You can book a call here.
This is a quick and easy way to discover your path forward so you can stop spinning and get clear on what your staff need to be successful.
2) Give Staff The Opportunity to Build Skills Through Training and Development
The second technique is to allow staff to build those skills through things like training, career pathing, and other professional development opportunities.
So now that you know what skills your staff are going to need in the future, it's time to help them develop them.
Because your staff WANT to be developed.
They want to make progress toward their career goals and that requires new skills. They want to stay up to date in their field and that requires new skills.
They want to be developed; they want you to invest in them.
This is where training typically comes in:
Maybe you create an emerging leader program to develop the skills you identified as important in the future.
Maybe you create a future-focused executive leadership program.
Maybe you pick a handful of skills and you create a training specific to those skills so everyone in the organization is focused on the same skills at the same time.
There are a lot of ways to do this. The important thing is that you provide a way for staff to develop the skills that you've prioritized.
We don't want that competency model to sit on a shelf. But it's also important to note that how you allow your staff to develop those skills doesn't have to be training.
You could provide your frontline managers with a mentor.
You could implement a cross-training effort so individual contributors get exposure to other departments and other roles, and they're able to develop their skills there.
You could use individual development plans so that each staff has a plan that's unique to them.
There are so many training and leadership development options.
These options are great not just for developing skills, but also for career pathing. Plus, they will help you achieve the other two focus areas for Learning and Development as defined by the 2023 Workplace Learning Report.
Those two things are:
Creating a culture of learning. Which I know many of you are trying to do.
Improving retention
Because again, our staff want to be developed; they want us to invest in them.
Now, I've used a lot of data from the LinkedIn report, but these two techniques are tried and true. I've used them in nonprofits and associations, just like yours.
That's why, as I think about our goal in Learning and Development to prepare our workforce for the future, I know we can accomplish this if we:
Are intentional about identifying the skills our staff will need by creating that custom competency model
Invest in our training and development efforts through training, coaching, mentorship, and career pathing.
To hear the full conversation I had on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 58.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
Do you wish you could connect with other nonprofit learning and development leaders?
I know what it feels like to want someone to bounce ideas off of and to learn from, someone who really understands you and your work. Imagine if you could have a simple way to meet people in the field, ask questions, and share information.
That's why I created the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – so nonprofit L&D, talent management, and DEI leaders can connect with each other quickly and easily in a virtual space.
When you join this community, you will walk away with a new, diverse, and powerful network – and a sounding board for your staff development needs.
So if you're ready to exchange ideas and collaborate with your peers, come join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
