![](\"http:\/\/squarehr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-time-for-training-consider-role-specific-learning-reassessing-workload.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/squarehr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-time-for-training-consider-role-specific-learning-reassessing-workload-1.jpg\")
<\/div>\n?Workplace training is ineffective, according to a new report. Among the reasons: Employees lack time during the day to develop new skills, or the training that’s offered isn’t relevant to their needs.<\/p>\n
Among 1,209 employees in the U.S. and U.K. at organizations that offer some form of training or professional development, 65 percent said they either don’t have enough time or that the training doesn’t match their role, according to The Pursuit of Effective Workplace Training<\/em><\/a>, a new report from Emergn, a digital business service based in London. <\/p>\n The survey, conducted in July, focused on the opinions of learners at the management level or below, and IT directors and HR leaders who are responsible for overseeing workplace training. <\/p>\n A different report, The State of Learning in the Flow of Work in 2022<\/a>, found nearly half\u201447 percent of 2,961 respondents\u2014said they don’t have time to engage in structured, tailored learning at work. The only way they see their learning and development improving, they said, is if their manager lightens their workload. The findings are from a survey conducted in July in France, Germany, the U.K. and U.S. for 360Learning, a Paris-based collaborative learning platform.<\/p>\n Find Time for Training<\/p>\n Employers need to rethink employees’ workloads and schedules to carve out time for learning and development, said Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It<\/em> (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).<\/p>\n “We need to be creating space inside the workday to develop those skills,” she said. “People right now are feeling so exhausted, so tired. Their workload is so high” that there’s no time for training except on mandatory topics such as sexual harassment. <\/p>\n During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations were operating with a sense of urgency, and “we’re still behaving kind of like that,” Moss said. “Everyone feels like [what they’re working on] needs to be done immediately, and we haven’t gotten out of that habit, \u2026 even managers.”<\/p>\n More than two years later, “there hasn’t been a pause,” she noted. “We haven’t sat back and said, ‘Do we need to upgrade our training?’ We’re still working ineffectively, which is adding to our workloads and adding to our burnout.”<\/p>\n She recommended the following strategies:<\/p>\n Be realistic about what an employee’s workload will be while in training, and make adjustments, Moss advised.<\/p>\n That can be difficult, she said, because “we just can’t imagine not taking on new revenue opportunities, not growing. It does not occur to any employer that we have to slow down for a year because of [having gone through] the pandemic.”<\/p>\n Finding time during the workday for training does not mean impinging on employees’ lunch time, though, said Moss, who takes issue with the “lunch and learn” approach to training.<\/p>\n “We should be able to [let] people have their lunch without expecting them to go through training. We’re already in an ‘always on’ culture,” she said of workplaces in the U.S. “Work feels right now like school without lunch and recess. It’s really depressing, and people feel none of the good things” they once enjoyed about work. <\/p>\n Rethink back-to-back meetings and whether a meeting is necessary<\/a>. Moss pointed to a 2022 Microsoft Work Trend Index report that found a 252 percent increase in how often teams meet weekly since February 2020<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n
\n