The Skills Gap Crisis Your Learning and Development Program Isn’t Solving
Your organization is likely investing thousands in learning programs while your employees still feel unprepared for their roles. The disconnect is staggering: only one in five employees believe they have the skills needed for both their current position and future career growth.
Meanwhile, 40% of leaders admit they don’t even know what skills their people currently have, creating a blind spot that grows more costly as skill requirements evolve rapidly.
Without competency frameworks guiding your L&D strategy, here are some problems you might be facing:
- Managers struggling to guide meaningful development conversation.
- Generic training that doesn’t connect to actual performance needs.
- Employees unable to identify which skills actually matter for their success.
- Development plans lacking clear objectives tied to organizational needs.
- Learning investments yielding poor returns because they’re scattered rather than targeted.
The Competency Solution:
Competencies refer to the observable behaviours, skills, and knowledge that drive successful performance and are the guiding force behind any learning and development strategy.
Organizations with robust competency frameworks report a 25% decrease in the time it takes employees to learn new skills. Additionally, 60% of internally promoted employees perform better than external hires in similar positions when competency-based development is in place.
A competency-based approach to L&D transforms your learning strategy by:
- Creating clear learning targets directly tied to job success.
- Enabling focused, relevant training aligned with business needs.
- Facilitating more effective coaching conversations.
- Empowering employees to self-direct their development toward what matters.
- Establishing clear connections between learning activities and performance.
One of our clients recently shared: “Before implementing competencies, our managers struggled with holding development conversations. Now, our managers report feeling more confident, while employees report greater transparency.”
With competency frameworks, your L&D investments become strategic assets rather than scattered expenses. Your people develop the skills they actually need, and your organization builds the capabilities required for future success.
How much more impact would your L&D investments have if they targeted precisely the competencies that drive success in your organization?
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