HR Professionals Are Most Involved in These 3 Activities, According to Survey

The three learning, development, and training activities in which HR staff are most involved are sexual harassment prevention training, antidiscrimination training, and new hire onboarding, according to 325 US employers responding to XpertHR’s 2020 Survey on Learning, Development, and Training.

The survey asked about 10 learning, development, and training activities, and found that nearly three-fifths (57%) of surveyed organizations delegate sole responsibility to HR for sexual harassment prevention training, followed by 53% for antidiscrimination training, and 48% for new hire onboarding.

Even if HR staff are not fully responsible for a particular learning, development, or training activity, they are generally at least partially involved and working on the activity with other members of their organization. Additionally, the results show that employers prefer to keep learning, development, and training activities in-house, as few respondents noted they outsource any given activity.

“Even if HR doesn’t have sole responsibility for a particular learning, development, or training activity, they are usually at least working on the task with staff from other departments,” says Andrew Hellwege, Surveys Editor, XpertHR, “which indicates how crucial HR is for an organization’s learning, development, and training programs.”

The survey also asked about how organizations measure the effectiveness of their learning, development, and training activities, and found that the most popular method is employee feedback, with 69% of employers choosing this option. Other methods include performance/operational efficiency after activity (48%), participation rates (38%), trainee evaluations of trainer (38%), trainee testing results (31%), and return on investment (ROI) (19%). (Respondents could choose more than one option.)

“The survey indicates that when it comes to learning, development, and training activities,” says Hellwege, “employers tend to value the opinions of their workers when evaluating what’s working and what isn’t.”

XpertHR’s 2020 Survey on Learning, Development, and Training was conducted from June 2, 2020, to June 26, 2020, and published on July 24, 2020. The survey includes the responses from 325 US employers of various industries and workforce sizes. The total estimated number of employees of responding organizations is 1,019,316.

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