New research has revealed the need for businesses to re-prioritise upskilling employees as over half of workers have received no training during the pandemic.
HowNow, an intelligent learning platform, has found that over half of employees (52 per cent) reported that they have not received any training during the pandemic.
A further quarter of workers (23 per cent) stated that they had a ‘significantly reduced’ amount of training, owing to the disruption that COVID-19 has caused businesses.
However, this lack of focus on learning and development has also been echoed by the reduced budget that businesses have given to upskilling employees – with the average company spending over two-thirds less (67 per cent) on staff training.
Along with this, the study also found that the number of people who received promotions over the last year has dropped.
Whilst in 2019, almost three-quarters of businesses (72 per cent) said there had been promotions, under a quarter (24 per cent) stated the same over the course of the pandemic. This means promotions have dropped by just under half over the last year (48 per cent).
This also seems to be leading to a rise in job dissatisfaction with over one in three (35 per cent) “actively looking for other opportunities”.
When asked why they are no longer happy with their current job, six in 10 (60 per cent) cited stress related reasons and over half (51 per cent) said they had a clash with management. Over two-fifths (42 per cent) felt a lack of growth at the company they were currently at.
Nelson Sivalingam, CEO and Co-Founder of HowNow, said:
Through the initial stages of the pandemic when redundancies were rising, we were seeing a lot of people that were simply grateful to still have a job. However, as we approach a year since the first lockdown, that appreciation has worn off, and those that are unsatisfied now appear to be stepping up their job search.
We know the last year has been tough on a lot of businesses and in many cases learning and development opportunities may have been pushed to one side. However, in the current environment where changing a job is essentially; same home, different Zoom call, and the switching costs are not as high, it is even more important to engage and retain employees by investing in their continued learning and development. By giving them the opportunity to improve their skills and rewarding this development with promotion incentives, you’ll stand a much better chance of keeping your employees.
HowNow surveyed 2,040 working UK professionals about workplace development in the last 12 months to obtain these results.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.