Corporate learning is a top priority for employees

Why is corporate learning so important?

Integrating corporate education into a company's strategic goals is the way to improve millennial retention, according to Jason Wingard of Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies.

To stay competitive and to create and maintain an agile business, companies must adjust their corporate values, workplace environment and current team structures.

The value of corporate learning

In a blog for the Huffington Post, Mr Wingard stated that corporate learning has been critically under-leveraged in the race to attract millennial talent.

Millennials are eager to find out whether they will have the opportunity to develop a strong set of competencies and transferable skills that will not only be useful for their current employer, but in the future when their careers advance.

More than ever before, employees are considering future career trajectories and committing to working for businesses that will support their top priority: career development.

Attraction and retention through learning

Mr Wingard also highlighted that a high turnover hurts attraction and retention.

Job cultures that have a reputation for extracting the best from their employees, then replacing them with more highly skilled and developed workers, are perceived as far less attractive than those that have a reputation for injecting the best in transferrable skills and career development direction for their pool on a consistent basis.

In addition to tackling hard skills, corporate learning can also address culture by guiding people of different generations to work together more effectively.

“Companies that don’t learn and adapt to today’s new normal marketplace will not last,” Mr Wingard wrote.

“Invest in strategic corporate education, and talent attraction, job readiness and culture change will improve alongside the overall bottom line.”

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