Employee performance is at the heart of organizational success. When people show up to work with a sense of purpose, passion and commitment, businesses can thrive even under the most tumultuous circumstances. 

Conversely, when employees are disengaged and underperforming, your business can experience increased operational costs, a decline in customer experience and ultimately, lost revenue.

Learning and development (L&D) has emerged as an influential factor that shapes performance, positioning learning leaders as catalysts for organizational success.

Let’s discuss how you can strategically leverage L&D to positively impact employee performance.

Many studies show that today’s employees are eager to learn and develop relevant, in-demand skills that support career growth. Learning and development can support employees in these goals by helping them learn new skills or refine existing ones. Employees can then apply these skills directly and immediately to their work, improving performance right away. 

In addition to fostering skills development, learning also improves employee engagement. In one survey, 80% of workers said that acquiring new skills makes them feel more engaged. And workers who feel engaged can be up to 125% more productive than their dissatisfied counterparts. 

While learning is important for improving performance, it's important to remember that it’s not the only influential factor. A variety of factors can affect employee performance and learning is just one piece of the puzzle.

Most businesses have existing L&D initiatives in place but leveraging L&D strategically to improve employee performance requires a few additional considerations. 

To feel the impact of learning on performance, employees have to be engaging with your L&D initiatives.

One of the easiest ways to encourage employees to take part in learning is by making sure that the learning opportunities you offer align to career growth. Whether it’s for a full-fledged degree program or a short training course,  learning requires time and effort. Employees want to know that their efforts will put them on the path to reaching that next step in their careers.

More than a third of workers are worried that their skills are becoming irrelevant. Similarly, skills gaps within the workforce can pose a major threat to productivity and performance.

That’s why continuously identifying skills gaps and optimizing your L&D programs to address them should be a top priority. It’s not enough to simply have learning opportunities available. These opportunities should be directly aligned with your business’ most pressing skills gaps.

Giving your employees access to the education and learning resources they need to build the right skills helps to boost their confidence and ultimately, can lead to positive performance and engagement outcomes. At the same time, you end up with a workforce that’s equipped with the skills your organization needs to succeed.

Learning is a powerful tool for fueling internal mobility. Developing talent from within drives performance by promoting retention and keeping institutional knowledge within the organization.

The most obvious way that L&D supports talent mobility is through upskilling but reskilling and cross-training come with equally significant business benefits. Equipping employees with cross-functional skills allows them to step into other roles as needed or move to other areas of the business entirely.

L&D can be used to strategically develop high-potential talent and help with succession planning. Not only does learning equip employees with the skills they need to take on future positions, but it also allows them to hit the ground running once they get into those roles. This is essential for smooth personnel transitions, especially in the case of high-level roles.

Employees who are better prepared for increased responsibilities and promotions can experience a faster time to adequate performance once succession happens. They’ll also experience greater satisfaction when they witness the growth that results from their learning efforts.

To accurately measure the connection between learning and performance, there are a handful of steps you need to take: 

While it may not be the sole factor that influences employee performance, it’s clear that L&D plays a critical role in driving employee success. With these tactics in your toolbox, you now understand where L&D fits into the picture and how you can better use it as a tool for enhancing performance and driving other talent outcomes such as improved engagement and retention.

Explore more L&D resources: Check out this step-by-step guide on how to fast-track skill-building within your organization.