As many as 70% of UK employees said they would be happier in their current role if they had more personal development opportunities. Almost as many, 65% of UK workers claim that lack of employee personal development opportunities is a reason to seek out a new job.
Three out of four UK employees (75%) believe that it’s important that their employer invests in their personal development, yet 85% of them are not approaching their managers to ask for more opportunities, according to Europe’s fastest-growing digital learning provider, GoodHabitz.
Large European survey confirms the importance of employee personal development
In their recent report, GoodHabitz surveyed 13,000 employees from businesses across Europe to investigate the value that personal development has at work and how employers can meet the needs and wishes of their workforce. Unsurprisingly, up to 81% of the UK workforce find personal development important, and 70% of employees said they would be happier in their current role if they had more personal development opportunities.
However, despite the demands for more training, only 15% are proactively reaching out to their employers to ask for more opportunities.
Tim Segers, UK Director of GoodHabitz comments on the report
“Employees want to feel valued and heard, but most importantly they want their employers to invest time in them and their personal development path. Three out of four UK employees (76%) feel that their employers are more responsible for their personal development, whilst in the same breath, 71% of them agree that employee personal development is their own responsibility.
“Therefore, it’s surprising to find that only one in every four employees in the UK seek further training opportunities from their employers. There seems to be a disconnect between employees’ needs and their actions. Employers need to make the first move and be conscious of this when planning employees’ personal development strategies”.
Conversely, employers feel that they value their employees’ personal development journey (74%), whilst three out of four (75%) say they encourage their employees to work on personal development.
However, ‘encouraging’ doesn’t mean that employers are actively providing their employees with these opportunities or have development strategies in place. Moreover, out of the 15% of employees that do ask for more opportunities, 59% of them feel that their requests are not taken seriously.
“In the end, personal development is growing in importance on a global scale – employees are craving it and employers are realising that they have to keep up with this trend, not only for the health of their employees, but also for overall business growth. Therefore, HR managers should consider employee personal development to be high up on their agenda.
“Personal development is here to stay, and it’s encouraging to see that 81% of the UK workforce found it to be important or very important. However, whilst finding it important to learn, employees need a little nudge in the right direction to get started. This can be in the shape of encouragement from people around them, or in the shape of fun and interactive learning formats,” concluded Segers.
GoodHabitz is featured in Training Industry’s 2022 Online Learning Library Companies Watch List.
About the research:
Together with research agency Markteffect, GoodHabitz asked 1,039 UK employees from the working population and a further 12,576 European employees how they considered their current opportunities to develop themselves and their talents within their organisation.
The GoodHabitz Personal Development at Work Report is available to download here.
Our print magazine career development columnist Adam Fidler talks about the importance of Professional Assistants owning their career goals.
