Research Summary: How Employees Learn 2021

Nurture a learning culture that engages employees and advances the business

How can organizational culture support learning initiatives? Under what circumstances do your best employees succeed? What are the key factors that determine the effectiveness of learning?

HR.com's HR Research Institute, in collaboration with Fuse, a learning and knowledge platform, conducted a survey recently, "How Employees Learn in the Workplace", to understand how an organization's culture enables employees to capitalize on organizational tacit knowledge, and whether employees have the freedom and time to learn from whom they want.
 

Here are the highlights from the survey:

Finding #1: Just 51% say their organization’s L&D is good or excellent at improving employee performance

Only half of the responding human resources professionals said their department is good or excellent at improving employee performance (51%). Even fewer said L&D improves learner engagement (43%) and just 41% said the same about learner satisfaction. Only about 10% of participants rate L&D as excellent in these areas.

Finding #2: The lack of a successful learning culture could explain why, in many cases, L&D is failing to drive engagement, satisfaction, and performance

Just 20% strongly agree their organization’s learning culture is successful, indicating much room for improvement. Further, a full 40% disagree, strongly disagree or neither agree nor disagree that their organization has a strong learning culture. Even these numbers may overstate the strength of today’s learning cultures. Other data from the survey shows that only 60% have cultures that support their L&D efforts, and even fewer (37%) say their culture definitely supports their organization's learning strategy. 

Finding #3: “Relevance” is the top determining factor for the effectiveness of learning

Respondents indicated that the top four most important factors that determine learning effectiveness in their organization are:

1. Relevance (64%)
2. Participation (56%)
3. Practice (41%)
4. Learning technology (35%)
To learn much more about the survey on How Employees Learn 2021 and to get key insights and 6 strategic takeaways, we invite you to read the complete report here:  

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