6 out of 10 companies: “Employee responsible for own development”

6 out of 10 companies: “Employee responsible for own development”

A lifelong learning, a beautiful promise, but the real situation appears different
Amsterdam, 11th May 2021 – No less than 58 percent of Dutch companies believe that own growth, such as developing skills, is the full responsibility of the employee. This is shown by research among 1,057 HR professionals conducted by Lepaya in collaboration with Panelwizard. The promises around lifelong learning don’t seem to match with the reality of the situation.

It is of great importance to reveal who’s actually responsible for the personal development of employees, the research shows. A third of all organizations expect that their employees will no longer have the right skills to perform their work properly in 10 years time, due to the influence of automation on the labor market. The larger the company, the greater the chance that employees will not be able to keep up with digitization. While small businesses expect a quarter of employees to fall short on skills in future, this percentage among large companies (1,000+ employees) is no less than 40 percent.

Hiring instead of retraining for own growth

The realization that organizations put the responsibility of personal development with the employee also comes from the fact that as many as 36 percent of organizations don’t have a strategy for upskilling and maintaining the skills of employees. This also impacts hiring, as a third of organizations are more likely to hire new people instead of simply upskilling or retraining existing employees. At half of the companies, not everyone within the organization is aware of the available learning budgets while 10% of the organizations surveyed say they do not even have a learning budget.

Unconsciously incompetent

According to René Janssen, founder of Lepaya, many organizations are not taking into account the personal development of their employees. The results of the study support this view. Remarkably, 12 percent of companies have no idea whether their employees currently have the right skills for their current role.

“The realization that the skills of your employees can make or break your organization is not on the radar of organizations. The current and previous research indicates that both employer and employee are pointing at each other about the responsibility of personal development and own growth. Tricky about this is that both parties don’t feel the owner of this crucial topic. It is up to the employer to take responsibility, identify the necessary skills and lead the way ”, says Janssen.

About Lepaya

Lepaya provides power skills training that combines online and offline learning. Founded in 2018 by René Janssen and Peter Kuperus who believe that the right training, at the right time aimed at the right skill, makes organizations more productive. Lepaya has already trained thousands of employees.

As a challenger in an overcrowded training market, Lepaya responds to the needs of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies, such as Mollie, Takeaway, and Picnic. By combining hard skills with soft skills, offered together as power skills, the Amsterdam company is growing faster in a market in which the demand for further education and training continues to increase throughout the world.

In 2020, Lepaya closed a €5M funding round and independently acquired Smartenup, a training company that supports professionals to work better, faster, and smarter with data. Lepaya focuses on the Dutch, Belgian, German, and Swedish markets and serves its customers worldwide.

More information about Lepaya: www.lepaya.com

‍