This month’s eLearning Guild research report takes a look at how members of the eLearning Guild community view their work and its relationship to organizational goals. Among the areas explored were how business-critical priorities were defined, how well they felt their work aligned with those priorities, and to what extent they were ready to enact those skills. They were also asked to offer narrative responses describing their work and elaborating on the matter of alignment with organizational goals. Some highlights:

  • How training is delivered
    While respondents noted that the choice depends heavily on context, collaborative learning came in closely behind self-paced eLearning as the preferred method of delivery.
  • Business-critical skills
    Respondents agreed that the biggest areas of need were in leadership, technology, compliance, and soft skills. When asked how these were defined in the organization as “critical” answers were less clear cut. While most respondents described a deliberate, strategic process, some 10 percent said “everything is defined as critical”, while others said the definition often arose from squeaky wheels or in response to what they called the “crisis du jour”.
  • Alignment
    Most respondents felt their work was at least “somewhat” aligned with organizational priorities but noted, as with organizational decision making regarding those priorities, that a good deal of their work was reactive, addressing in-the-moment demands rather than proactive initiatives or business-critical needs.
  • “We could help the organization more”
    Finally, while respondents felt they were doing good work, many remarked that their talents were not being fully utilized. Noting a disconnect between business-critical needs and what they actually work on, a number said they could be doing more to help the business and saw this as a matter of missed opportunity.

Download this report now to learn more about the current state of developing business-critical skills.