Theme #1—People are overloaded, tired, and “too busy to learn”

A pervasive feeling of workforce exhaustion—and professional development suffering because of it—was a common observation in the survey. Here are snippets of what participants shared:

• “Understaffed and overworked. With our team on scattered hybrid schedules, team members are doing extra work.”
• “Burned out leaders are struggling to effectively manage hybrid teams.”
• “Feelings of overwhelm and anxiety seem to be crippling our ability to get and stay focused enough to identify the learning that’s actually needed, to learn, and to apply our learning.”

These comments reflect the mental state of the UK’s population. Levels of psychological distress increased from 20.8% in 2019 to 29.5% in April 2020. These levels have continued to seesaw as pandemic threats have receded and grown, and remain above the norm.

Our mental state affects our ability to learn. Anxiety and depression, in fact, cripple it. If someone is struggling to get through the day, they will have little mental reserves left for anything else.

Longer workdays during the pandemic are exacerbating this pervasive emotional fatigue. In fact, UK workers “have increased their working week by almost 25% and…are logging off at 8pm.”

Considering all this, it’s no wonder people feel overloaded, tired, and too busy to learn.

Theme #2—The level of connection is dropping

Organisational culture can be likened to a tapestry. It is the product of many relationships woven together by shared values and norms.

Here, too, the pandemic is exacting its toll.

“That cultural tapestry is thinning. It’s weakening our sense of social cohesion and teamwork. It’s disconcerting to see this happening,” observes Campbell.

Comments from participants bolster Campbell’s insight.

• “Learning how to be more connected when some are here some of the time, some are never here, and others are here all the time.”
• “Emotional disconnection, loneliness, and lack of purpose…people are on a lone journey with little support and feeling very vulnerable.”
• “Weak relationships due to working remotely”

Third-party data echo these sentiments. An analysis of the emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls, and workweek hours of 61,182 US Microsoft employees over the first six months of 2020 found “a decrease in synchronous communication and an increase in asynchronous communication,” which likely made it harder for employees to gain and share information.

“We are working in silos, have smaller networks, and are connecting less frequently. When we do connect, it’s on a computer screen,” says Campbell. “There is a pervading sense of isolation. It’s a strong word, but it’s the right one. Yet paradoxically, people enjoy working remotely, which certainly has its virtues. We are all in the middle of a huge experiment.”

Theme #3—L&D is stretched and dissatisfied with converted offerings

At the start of the pandemic, L&D professionals heroically worked to convert face-to-face offerings into virtual ones. A year later, they are dissatisfied with the converted offerings.

“L&D professionals are in a difficult position,” says Campbell. “They have a growing backlog of material that needs to be converted and often don’t have the necessary resources to do it. They don’t know how to make it better—and they think, ‘We’ve just got to keep pedalling.’”

Learner engagement looms over everything. It may be the biggest theme of this report. In fact, the word engagement appears in one out of six responses—and 59% of respondents said more learner engagement is needed in their virtual and digital designs.

These themes are pressing challenges for L&D professionals. How they respond will define their workplaces as well as what they produce in the coming year.

A closing thought for succeeding in these difficult times: The greater the challenge, the greater the reward.