Iowa Trends in Talent Development
2022-2023 Survey Results
A Note from ATW:
ATW Training Solutions has conducted an annual Iowa Trends in Talent Development survey since 2007. In its 16th year, this survey was conducted August 2-22, 2022 with 153 respondents from across the state. We are offering the results of this year’s survey to our talent development and business colleagues to continue developing the profession and its impact on our businesses and organizations. Special thanks go to the Association for Talent Development (ATD) Central Iowa Chapter and the Iowa SHRM State Council for their assistance in the survey distribution.
Results in this year’s survey reflect a degree of recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic that significantly impacted training and development efforts in 2020 and 2021. Organizations adopted new hybrid and virtual work practices to deal with Covid-19. In light of these changes, Talent Development professionals have faced – and continue to face – challenges in providing learning and development to leaders, managers, and employees in innovative ways. As you review the survey results, consider what current or future opportunities you might leverage to develop talent in unique ways now and to set the stage for future success.
We invite you to share this information with others. Our goal is to unleash human potential in organizations, and we hope this information can be useful. For specific comments on the survey or observations for the purpose of print or online news articles, contact:
ATW Training Solutions
www.atwtraining.com
Key Findings
ATW’s annual Iowa Trends in Talent Development survey highlights important issues and perspectives on talent development efforts in Iowa based organizations. Here are key findings from this year’s survey results:
Talent development budgets will remain strong.
54% of companies expect their talent development budgets to stay the same in the coming year. An additional 40% anticipate that budgets will increase. This means that approximately 94% expect budgets to stay the same or increase, while only 6% foresee a decrease in budgets. Fewer than 1% expect decreases of more than 10%. Organizations that may have deferred investing in talent development activities during the last two years while dealing with the Covid pandemic are keeping these budgets strong in the coming year.
Many employees continue working remotely.
This year slightly more than 78% of organizations have employees working remotely, down from nearly 83% last year. Talent development is provided to these employees in various ways, with the most frequent methods identified as live virtual sessions led by facilitators, bringing people in to participate in classroom sessions, and completing e-learning courses. The biggest challenges with delivering development to remote employees include engaging participants in learning, accommodating the mixed classroom (some participating in person and others participating virtually), attendance, and participants’ utilization of learning technology.
Classroom instruction predicted as the top delivery method.
In the coming year, organizations expect Classroom instruction to be the primary delivery method (82.58%, up slightly from 81.08% last year), reflecting a continued rebound from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020. In descending order, other delivery methods identified include Online course at 68.18% (down slightly from 70.27%), On-the-job training at 59.85% (up slightly from 56.76%), External conferences, workshops, seminars at 44.70%, and Virtual classroom at 43.18%.
Talent development priorities remain consistent.
The top priority for the coming year is once again Leadership training at 75.68% (virtually the same as 75% reported last year). Onboarding of new hires is again the second priority at 60.14% (up from 57.95%), followed by Job specific skills training at 57.43% (up from 47.73%). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a new topic in last year’s survey, dropped to 39.86% (down from 50% last year).
The top target audiences for talent development resources allocation are identified as those in manager and leader roles.
In this year’s survey, Managers (79.55%), Emerging Leaders (68.94%), and New Managers (68.18%) were the most frequent responses given, followed closely by Front Line Employees (67.42%), down from the top spot last year.
Outsourcing focuses primarily on delivery and on coaching.
Frequently, internal talent development professionals and subject matter experts are used for skills training unique to the company. In such cases, it makes sense to consider outsourcing other talent development offerings. This year’s survey responses show that well more than half plan to outsource facilitation/delivery of courses (58.26%) along with coaching for executives or managers (nearly 50%). Other outsourcing targets with fewer responses include custom content development for classroom instruction (24.35%) and for e-learning programs (20%).
The impact of Covid-19 on talent development activities may be lessening slightly but remains strong, with some changes in learning approaches likely to be permanent.
The lengthy coronavirus pandemic, now into the third year, has changed both the way employees work and also how companies conduct talent development. While in some cases learning activities have been deferred, in a great many cases there has been a shift to the greater use of technology for hybrid and/or remote learning. As talent development professionals and employees become more adept with virtual learning technology, this shift is likely here to stay.
Iowa employees continue to receive less talent development compared to the national average.
Iowa companies have typically reported that they invest less in talent development, both in terms of hours and dollars, than do companies whose results are reported in the ATD “2021 State of the Industry” report. 63.4% of respondents (not including “Uncertain” responses) indicate that employees receive 20 or fewer hours of talent development annually. 38.56% of responses indicate that employees receive 10 or fewer hours of talent development. Similarly, 54.9% of survey respondents indicate that their organizations spend $1,000 or less per employee annually on talent development. By way of comparison, the ATD national averages from the most recent state of the industry survey are 35.0 hours of employee talent development annually at an expense of $1,267. Hopefully, these findings indicate that Iowa companies are “doing more with less” rather than shortchanging employee skill development.
Uncertainty continues regarding investment in talent development.
As in previous surveys, a significant number of responders are “Uncertain” how much money is expended annually on talent development (26.14%) and how many hours annually employees participate in talent development activities (17.65%). Many HR systems and analytics may not capture and track this data. To be viewed as true strategic business partners, Talent Development professionals acquire and demonstrate the ability to quantify both investment in and return for talent development activities. This represents a growing need – and opportunity – to improve the ability to use data to build the business case for talent development initiatives.
Participation
In 2022, ATW partnered with the Iowa SHRM State Council and the Central Iowa Chapter of the Association for Talent Development (ATD) to ensure that the Iowa talent development and business communities were well represented in the survey. 153 respondents from 32 industries completed this year’s survey.
Number of Employees
The chart below shows the size of the organizations participating in the current survey with the largest representation this year coming from companies with 100-499 employees (37.25%).
Industry Classification
This year’s survey responses represent 32 industry classifications. Manufacturing claims the top spot with 18.95%. Health Care is next at 13.07% followed by Insurance at 12.42%.
Organizational Role of the Respondents
Human Resources Manager/Executive accounts for 41.83% of all responses. Operational Leader or Executive is next at 12.42% followed by Human Resources Representative at 6.54%.
Estimated Annual Average Direct Talent Development Expenditure
The formula for calculating the estimated annual average direct learning expenditure per employee as defined by ATD* is: Total Direct Learning Expenditures divided by Number of Employees.
ATD includes the following items as examples of Total Direct Learning Expenditures: talent development (TD) staff salaries (including taxes and benefits) and travel costs, administrative costs, nonsalary development costs, delivery costs (such as classroom facilities and online learning technology infrastructure), learning supplier expenses, and tuition reimbursement. It does not include the cost of the learner’s travel or lost work time while engaged in learning activities.
More than 26% of respondents indicate they are “Uncertain” of their organizations’ average direct talent development expenditures per employee (up from 21% last year).
Of the other responses, 31.37% estimate their expenditures to be $101-$500 per employee with 14.38% estimating $501-$750 and 9.15% estimating $751 -$1,000 per employee. These estimates remain quite low compared to ATD’s finding of $1,267 per employee on average.
*Note: This definition and the expense figure are from ATD’s “2021 State of the Industry” report (the most recent report available).
Estimated Annual Average Talent Development Hours
Another important factor indicating the overall health of an organization’s talent development effort is the number of hours per employee annually. In their “2021 State of the Industry” report, ATD reported an average of 35.0 learning hours per employee annually (up slightly from 34.7 hours the previous year).
Survey respondents indicate 17.65% (up from 10.64% in last year’s survey) are “Uncertain” of the talent development hours per employee. 16.34% report 0-5 hours (down slightly from 17.02%) and 22.22% report 6-10 hours (down from 28.72%). Only 11.12% (down from 14.24%) of respondents estimate 31 or more talent development hours per employee, which means the majority of our respondents see their organizations providing far less than ATD’s national average of 35.0 learning hours per employee. The number of respondents estimating over 40 hours of talent development per employee dropped to 5.23% (from 6.38% last year).
Budget
This year’s survey shows that 54.05% (down from 58%) of respondents expect budgets to stay the same next year. An additional 39.86% of respondents reported that budgets are expected to increase next year, with nearly a third of all respondents anticipating an increase of 1-10%. Only 6.09% (up from 3.41%) expect budgets to decrease in the coming year and fewer than 1% expect budget decreases of more than 10%. It may be that organizations that deferred talent development activities the last two years due to the Covid pandemic are devoting more resources to development in the coming year.
Talent Development Priorities
The top priority for the coming year is once again Leadership training at 75.68% (virtually the same as 75% reported last year). Onboarding of new hires is again the second priority at 60.14% (up from 57.95%), followed by Job specific skills training at 57.43% (up from 47.73%). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dropped to 39.86% (down from 50% last year).
Talent Development Topics
The talent development topics organizations plan to address in 2023 are a mix of familiar topics:
First, Leadership for Emerging Leaders at 47.55% (second last year at 41.46%)
Second, New Employee Orientation at 43.36% (first last year at 45.12%)
Third, Career Development at 42.66% (back on the top five list after dropping off last year)
Fourth, Coaching at 41.96% (third last year at 40.24%)
Fifth, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at 41.26% (fourth last year at 39.02%)
Dropping off the list of top five priorities from last year is Feedback – Manager to Employee
Talent Development Topics – continued
Here are the seventeen talent development topics receiving the highest response rate in this year’s survey, from Leadership for Emerging Leaders at 47.55% to three topics, Change Management and Interpersonal Skills and Relationship Building, tied at 25.17%.
Remote/ Virtual Employees
In last year’s survey respondents were asked about the number of employees who work remotely / virtually. For the current survey, 78.32% of respondents indicated that their organizations have employees who work in this way (down from 82.93% last year), while 21.68% do not (up from 17.07%). As most organizations have many employees continuing to work remotely, talent development is provided to these employees in various ways. Mentioned most frequently is Participate in live virtual sessions led by facilitators at 71.43%, followed by Bring them in to participate in classroom sessions at 66.07% and Complete e-learning courses at 65.18%.
The biggest challenges identified with delivering distance learning were identified as:
Engaging participants – 66.97%
Accommodating the mixed classroom, with some participating in person and some virtually – 44.04% (down from 54.69%)
Attendance – 32.11%
Utilization of technology by participants – 27.52% (down from 48.44%)
Virtual Delivery Platforms
Organizations delivering talent development content virtually predominantly use Microsoft Teams (80.18%, up from 63.08%) and Zoom (51.35%, down from 61.54%). WebEx Training (17.12%, up from 13.85%) and Go To Meeting (5.41%) were identified by far fewer respondents.
Target Audiences for Talent Development Resources Allocation
Managers claims the top spot this year at 79.55% (third spot last year at 74.32%). This is followed by a near-tie for the next three audiences: Emerging Leaders at 68.94%, New Managers at 68.18%, and Front Line Employees at 67.42%. Supervisor/Lead follows at 56.82% (down from second spot at 75.58%).
A related question regarding allocation of talent development resources asked which areas will receive the greatest percentage of resources allocation in the coming year. Respondents indicate that Managers holds the first spot at 27.27% (up slightly from 25.68%) and Front Line Employees is next at 18.18% (down from 21.62%). New Managers and Newly Hired Employees follow, tied at 11.36%.
Delivery Methods
In the coming year, organizations expect Classroom instruction to be the primary delivery method (82.58%, up slightly from 81.08% last year), reflecting a continued rebound from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020. In descending order, other delivery methods identified include Online course at 68.18% (down slightly from 70.27%), On-the-job training at 59.85% (up slightly from 56.76%), External conferences, workshops, seminars at 44.70%, and Virtual classroom at 43.18%.
Allocation of Talent Development Budget Resources
Facilitation/delivery of courses again holds the top spot at 48.48% (down from 63.51%) and continues to be the largest allocation for talent development budgets. In a near tie for the second spot are Custom content development for classroom instruction at 31.06%
(down from 40.54%) and Learning Management System at 30.30%. This is followed by Custom content development of e-learning programs at 23.48% (down slightly from 28.38%).
Outsourcing
This year the top candidate for outsourcing is Facilitation/delivery of courses at 58.26% (second spot last year at 40.98%). Second is Coaching for executives or managers at 46.96% (first spot last year at 54.10%). These are followed by Custom content development for classroom instruction at 24.35% (down from 26.23%) and Custom content development of e-learning programs at 20.00% (down slightly from 21.31%).
Challenges
We asked the open-ended question, “What are the most significant challenges to implementing your talent development strategies?” and received 79 responses. Time, Budget, Resources, and Coverage were the most frequent responses. Following are the primary issues illustrated with a sample of respondent comments:
Time/Coverage
Time is always a challenge; dedicated time for participants to participate in training and development activities
Making time for training/education in staff schedules
Time away from duties, pulling people away from production in order to train; taking time out of daily jobs, and travel to attend classes in person; pulling Operations leaders out of facilities
Finding time to structure on-the-job, technical training that can only be done in house
Time to conduct departmental assessments
Time for HR staff to coordinate initiatives
Reaching employees on different shifts
Staffing to cover while others are away from the office
Budget/Resources
Budget constraints (“Budget” mentioned many times) and shifting priorities
Providing training needs with inadequate/tight budgets and limited resources
Demand for development is higher than what we can accommodate
LMS system is costly
Talent Development Responsibilities and Staffing
Demand for development is higher than what we can accommodate as a small Talent Development team
Finding training opportunities that we can demonstrate the value of
Needs analysis, determining ROI
Availability of qualified and effective trainers
Understanding and defining the capabilities of our workforce to make more targeted decisions and investments to support those employees and the skills needed to perform jobs now and in the future
Trainer burnout, onboarding new employees non-stop; constant stream of new hires due to high attrition and turnover
Most of my time is spent “keeping the lights on” with little left to advance our strategies and to innovate
Leadership
Buy in from the Executive Team; manager buy in
CEO not putting more focus on middle management training
Creating vision and connection to business outcomes
Alignment among all stakeholders; agreement among executive leaders on strategy
Determining what is most critical to the organization for 2023 to meet strategic goals
Getting leaders to engage with their teams’ learning
Engaging Employees Across Multiple Locations
Virtual attendee engagement and commitment to learning
Getting front line employees to attend training
Managing time zones and languages
Employees being at multiple locations
Employee Needs
Trying to fit everyone into the same training when different people have different backgrounds and experience levels
Identifying candidates and meeting training needs
Choosing the right e-learning module to support the growth of new leaders
Finding training opportunities that team members are interested in
Training leaders, but then not being able to offer them promotions and/or higher-level positions to use the training
Getting stuck in a rut with the same trainings over and over again
Covid-19 (coronavirus pandemic) and changes in work arrangements
Ongoing impact of Covid, lack of meeting in person
Increasing attendance in training back to pre-pandemic numbers
Increase in hybrid/remote work
Increase in technology and remote work, along with increased workload, leading to lower attendance in training
Other challenges mentioned include competing training priorities and initiatives; participants following through; identifying up and coming leaders; having to deliver in multiple languages; continuous change; new hire training using up more resources compared to prior years.
Detailed Findings
The following findings include all challenges and the detailed results from the survey.
Unleashing Human Potential
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