With the passage of time, learning is a continuous process. However, over the last two years, the definition of learning has gained a new meaning. Not just in the workplace, but also in personal lives people had to learn, relearn and unlearn certain habits in order to adjust to the new normal.

At a session of the People Matters L&D APAC Conference 2022, Steve Bennetts, Head of Growth & Strategy - Employee Experience Solutions, Qualtrics said, “The pandemic has certainly forced us all to really adapt quickly and transform of what's going on. That's not just within our people. There's also changes happening with our customers, changes with the way we behave and we consume different things.”

In the session titled Storytelling with experience insights: Demonstrate ROI for Learning & Development, Steve upheld the changing needs of both the employees and the employers. On both sides of the coin, changes have been noticed in terms of skill development, expectations, work structure, flexibility and so on.

Steve noted, “We found that 44% of retailers offered curbside pickups for the first time ever, right compared to earlier in that year. We also found that 82% of companies immediately shifted to remote work experiences or a different on-site experience. And so suddenly, the behaviours and the way people are interacting with people interacting digitally, completely changed.”

He added that in fact, the digital transformation has been remarkable and huge since March 2020 when compared to the pace over the last ten years. He added that everything is cloud-based and is offering experience transformation. “And this is what we're getting into hyper-personalization,” Steve added.

With the changing demands, people have also started streamlining what they want from their careers. Today, people don’t work just for sake of earning a handsome salary, but also to find the right path of growth and opportunities relevant to their skills. According to Steve, this is adding to the 'Great Resignation'. 

“One of the key reasons why people are leaving is because both at the manager and individual contributor level, they have that lack of growth opportunities,” said Steve.

In fact, a notable change across all the industries is the mandate of having DE&I policies in place with proper implementation. Today, Steve the DE&I policies have travelled a long way from being a “good to have” thing to “won't be accepted if your company doesn't have”.

Steve said, “People are no longer accepting the lack of diversity, equity inclusion programs.”

According to Steve, policies such as DE&I and employee wellbeing have taken the center stage. He is of the view that over a long period of time, companies have failed to implement wellbeing We are seeing a lot of organizations losing their people because they haven't pivoted fast enough into this new world,” said Steve.  

Concluding the session, Steve said that according to their study around the factors driving Great Resignation, they found that “employee growth was deprioritised”.