Clearing the barriers to continuous learning 

One implication of the digital revolution is a massive shift in demand for human expertise. Ninety-three percent of hiring managers say they’re struggling to find the workers they need, according to recruitment firm Robert Half. And yet this shortfall is just the calm before the storm: Over the next 10 years, 1.1 billion jobs across the globe will be transformed by technology alone, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

As a result, there is now a premium on learnability — the desire and ability to quickly grow and adapt one’s skill sets to tackle the toughest challenges facing their employer at a given moment — and then do it all over again. “You might be alright in your next fiscal year,” says Terrence Cummings, chief opportunity officer at Guild. “[But] in five years, you’re going to be in trouble.” That’s because the average half-life of skills is now less than five years, and in some tech fields it’s as low as two and a half years — making survivability dependent on, among other things, continuous learning. In this new environment, what you know today is less important than what you may learn tomorrow, and knowing the answer to questions is less critical than having the ability to learn what questions to ask in the first place.

Thankfully, companies are realizing that continuous learning represents a fundamental strategic choice of the future. And for their part, many are making significant investments to equip their people with the skills they and the organization need for the future. 

However, true learning cultures take time to build — and require a more intentional, strategic approach to generate real value than some might think. Leaders need to anticipate the challenges their employees will face, provide flexible programs that allow people to acquire skills that can lead to degrees and career advancement, and identify which skills will be most critical to their organizations five years from now. Addressing these and other issues can yield long-term benefits, such as knowing that your future workforce of skilled employees already works for you. 

Here are four ways to help empower employees to excel in the workplace and in their continuing education.

4 ways to empower employees’ continued education.

1. Understand your workers’ challenges and give them support. 

Unlocking employee potential requires that you first understand the challenges employees face. Beyond the obvious — finding the time and the tuition — working-adult learners need support. 

Managing education with hectic schedules and families.

“There’s a whole set of realities for frontline workers that many of us never have to face,” says Ellie Bertani, who ran Walmart’s employee learning program. “They’re often trying to support a family while managing unpredictable schedules. Getting through day-to-day tasks is challenging enough, much less tackling the unexpected hurdles that come with going back to school.”

The need for strong support systems in employee education.

Leaders must make the pathways for education clear as possible. “Even highly trained workers struggle to navigate the bureaucracy of higher education,” Bertani says. “Now imagine you haven’t interfaced with a system like this in years, you work odd hours, and maybe don’t own a computer. Any roadblock or misstep can be so disheartening that you just give up. If you want to build a successful employee education program, you need an easy solution and a strong support system.”

High completion rates depend, at least in part, on support systems like “scaffolding,” where students receive assistance in the early stages of learning but continue without support as their competency develops. 

Providing the right ‘scaffolding.’ 

“If you look at what has helped people achieve opportunity and businesses to be able to further their workforce,” Cummings says, “there’s a need for scaffolding to be in place around learning to make it successful.” He says that scaffolding can take many shapes, and there is an array of factors to consider: “How do organizations ensure psychological safety? How do organizations provide coaching, mentorship, human support? How do you build paths so people can see from A to B?”

2. Emphasize the opportunities that stem from continuous learning.

For any employee-education program to work, however, the road to success must be clearly marked. Employees need a road map that highlights career advancement opportunities and recognizes milestones and achievements. 

In the healthcare sector, for example, Humana recognized the need for a more deliberate strategy around training clinician leaders – and for articulating all the good outcomes that could come from continuous education. Humana’s clinicians, while excellent, often need additional developmental support to position them to also excel in senior roles. So, the organization began offering stretch assignments, experiential learning, executive coaching, and soft-skills training.

“Too many [clinicians] are leaving the profession and leaving organizations because they’ve been put in roles they are not prepared for — and without proper support,” according to Kathy Driscoll, senior vice president and chief nursing officer for Humana.

Embrace short-form credentials.

For decades, companies turned to four-year colleges to produce the talent they needed to power their businesses. But as the pace of technological change has accelerated in the AI era, many companies have been left straining to find qualified candidates and feeling exposed to an uncertain future.

To adapt to this change, HR executives have to continue to shift their thinking toward shorter-term educational programs. Micro-credentials — sometimes referred to as non-degree or short-term credentials — are more accessible and faster than college degrees (and can even later be used toward college credit). Most importantly, they help workers continuously adjust and expand their skillsets, which in turn helps their organizations stay competitive and innovative.

Interest in micro-credentials among adults without a four-year college degree has surged in recent years, according to a recent report by Lumina Foundation and Gallup. One reason is the need for flexible programs in the form of remote instruction, schedules more conducive to working learners, and the expedited time to complete programs. To wit: They let people learn in the way that works for them.  

Career advancement without the need for degrees.

“The degree isn’t going away,” Bertani says, “but the cost and time that entails means that it isn’t a realistic option for many people. For many workers, the motivation for going back to school is career advancement, and they want to see results quickly.” Short-term credential programs can meet those needs. “They help move frontline workers into well-paying jobs, and workers are more likely to finish them,” she says. 

For example, Walmart’s learning program gave employees access to educational opportunities that were more immediately attainable than a traditional four-year degree. “Learners are not all one type,” says Bertani, who is now president and chief executive officer of the GitLab Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to improving people’s lifetime earnings through access to opportunities. “Short-form credentials serve a huge need for getting people into good-paying jobs if they work well.”

3. Make skills stackable.

One major benefit of short-form credentials is that they enable greater skills-stacking — the practice of developing and honing a complementary mix of technical, creative, and interpersonal skills that enable employees to operate more effectively in different roles. 

Skills-stacking is especially important in industries like healthcare, where workers need a range of new technological skills, language skills, and inter-professional/collaboration skills to not only succeed in their current roles but give themselves greater career mobility. 

As Paul LeBlanc, former president of Southern New Hampshire University, explains, the idea behind stackability is that employees can move along a professional pathway while building up to a degree.

“Workers from underprivileged backgrounds often can’t afford to take two years off for an associate’s degree, but stackable credentials let them dip in and out of the higher ed system,” said LeBlanc, who now heads up the board at Matter and Space, an AI and education company that’s focused on micro-credentials. “Meanwhile, they’re moving forward in their current job while setting themselves up for increasingly specialized and selective future jobs — and maybe a college degree.”

4. Figure out what kind of skills your business needs — and create opportunities for employees to gain them. 

Before HR leaders can create learning opportunities for their employees, they must first understand which skills will be the most important to their organizations in the next five years. There’s a good chance you need a whole new suite of skills. Understand if those skills exist in the organization today; if they don’t, figure out what you need to invest in to get there in time. 

Assessing the hard and soft skills your organization needs.

During this process, it’s critical for experts to strike a balance between the technical hard skills and the kind of soft skills that are more durable, such as how to network, how to solve problems, and how to give and receive feedback. Both hard and soft skills are equally critical to creating a flexible and adaptable workforce. The key is to cultivate both. 

In the same way you can train someone to become a more creative prompt engineer, you can nurture a stronger storyteller, program manager, or design thinker. And even in an era of AI-driven efficiency, there are millions of jobs where human-centric, durable skills will be critical or even more important given the work that AI will automate. 

Ultimately, Cummings says, employee success is synonymous with agility. “The skills that are going to be the foundation for people to build their futures upon are your ability to communicate, your ability to provide feedback, and your ability to navigate tough situations.”

The future of the workforce is in the hands of employers across industries the world over. By viewing education and learning and development as a mission-critical initiative and investing in flexible pathways that make it easier for individuals to pursue continuous, lifelong learning journeys, leaders can gain a competitive edge and invest in their people in tandem.

About Compass Staff

The Compass editors cover the most important trends impacting HR and people strategy today, translated into practical insights so you can put them to work. To receive exclusive content from Guild and our team of experts, sign up to receive the Compass newsletter.