Accelerate out of Disruption: 2023 Employee Wishlist

In the past 3 years, major disruptions have destabilized our working space. The constant turmoil has resulted in high turnover rates, frustrated L&D Managers and slow organizational growth.

It started in 2020 when the pandemic forced us to adopt hybrid-remote working modes. Subsequently, 2021 was dubbed the Year of Resignations as employees reevaluated their life-work balance, seeing 47 million Americans leave their jobs. Then Talent Managers witnessed silent quitting and lay-offs in 2022 with employees continuing to prioritize other areas of their lives.  

How do we start building a reality now where people in your company grow resilient in 2023 and in a context that is unique to them?

Building on the EU’s 2023 agenda to create sustainable labor markets: The European Year of Skills, this Employee Wishlist illustrates to People Leaders how to make a people-centric culture to accelerate and stabilize your business in 2023.

But beyond compensation, what does talent desire for a long-term career at your company?  

1. Integrate AI into a Learner’s Workflow

Learners have different skill needs and with AI used by PWC to train customized feedback skills, tech personalizes training at scale. AI creates immersive and meaningful visual content that can be effortlessly interconnected to other training resources, such as an app.

Tobias Hoelzer, AI Lead in: How does AI shape the future of learning?

“With AI, learning will be integrated flexibly. Which means you can learn whenever you want it, whenever you need it. In our case, this is via an app for scalable soft skill training.”

Apps guide the learning journey with small consumable bites and streamline the material into a learner’s workflow. Therefore, it gives you the control to adapt training to the learner’s time structure, meaning less theory-heavy classrooms and more time practicing the skills talent needs.

2. Next An Onboarding Program.

Which sabotage for talent development did Lepaya’s recent impact lab highlight?

“Failure to communicate and engage with those we need to onboard.”

As an L&D Manager, you want to engage and attract the most talented employees to your company. Customized onboarding programs nurture new hires through the company lifecycle and construct a foundation for them to be experimental and innovative with their skill set.

But above all, onboarding is key to talent retention and a company which fails to onboard faces costly consequences:

• 18% of talent leaves a company because they did not go through a structured onboarding process.
• It costs on average between 6-9 months of a yearly salary to replace one employee.
• Whilst 78% of companies investing in onboarding have reported increases in revenue.  

3. Personalized & Purposeful Career Paths

Talent benefits from a multilateral, personalized career path to grow and find purpose in their careers. Managers who cannot offer this are plagued by retention & engagement issues in their teams.

Here’s a short story from Yara Karman: uni graduate, to intern, to full time Learning Design Specialist.

“I think at uni you gain a lot of knowledge and theories. Now I’m working full time, it’s rewarding to apply and transfer knowledge to actually impact people.

What’s been key for my development? Working with colleagues who have 5 years+ experience as they really challenge me by asking questions and sharing their experiences.

Where am I heading career-wise? I must be honest, I have no clue. I think that’s a common struggle at a scale-up because the roles keep evolving. But I’m not worried. I think the most important thing is to use my mentors as a guide but also develop my personal vision & integrate my scientific background with the work we are doing.”

What can we learn from Yara’s career development?

Teach your managers to build in performance reviews iteratively during weekly 1:1 meetings with tools such as Culture Amp or Lattice. This especially helps younger talent to dictate who they want to ‘be’ and how they want to progress.

Your talent doesn’t need to be instructed or know exactly how to develop, rather they need to be given the structure to realize their own vision & their growth will benefit your business.  

4. Meaningful Feedback that Impacts Learning

Feedback data is essential to analyze talent’s training development and produce high-performing employees whose feedback has an impact on their development.

Picnic’s L&D Manager Manouk Lohuis & Bo Dury were hosted by Kristel Moedt & Eveliese Luiting from People’s Mastermind in a podcast. The success of Picnic’s L&D depends on creating meaningful feedback loops to constantly adjust their L&D programs. Data feedback is gathered from different touch points with an app to gain the most rounded insight.

Bo Dury, Impact Lead & Expert:

“After every session we collect feedback via an app on Picnic’s learning programs. It’s important to communicate this feedback with speed to adapt quickly and achieve more impact.”

Feedback recorded in an app is key to spot patterns and take charge of your 2023 programs to gain tangible results. This also helps Talent Managers to adapt and improve the training’s structure, timing & impact.

5. 2023’s Key Learning Events  

Join communities with strong learning cultures.

New learning trends are constantly emerging. As a People Leader, staying up to date with the latest learning knowledge is essential to know how to ignite your talent’s growth.

L&D industry leaders form close-knit communities and co-create learning journeys on topics such as learning impact. What are the common pain points my fellow L&D professionals are facing? And how are they developing methods to tackle these challenges and train their talent?

Here are upcoming Leaning Events in 2023 to note:

• Impact Lab with Laura Overton, Virtual, February 21st
• HRtop100 2023, Amsterdam, March 23th
• Learning Technologies, London, May 3-4th
• LearnTec, Karlsruher, May 23-24th

Wrap Up Before 2023

What is the main trend?

Top businesses with low turnover bring meaningful learning to employees.  

Learning & employee experience has to be personalized at scale and adopt an employee-centric design. From AI to onboarding, People Managers need the right learning tools and structures to create customized learning journeys for talent to develop.

Having one integrated learning infrastructure that blends both technology and methodology such as an app is key because it interconnects and synchronizes elements of L&D training: consumable learning bites, effortless integration into workflows & a feedback hub to adapt quickly.

Which tools, structure and knowledge will you provide your talent to transform your business in 2023?