This is an exciting time. Technology is creating more dynamic learning opportunities than ever before, employees are looking for work experiences that align with their personal values and organizations are having to look at change as the norm rather than some temporary thing that needs to be managed. During this time of change, we need to embrace new trends in learning and development to ensure that our strategy will create win-wins for the organization and the people in it.

According to the Association of Talent Development, organizations invested 34.1 hours of training and $1,273 per person in 2016 on training and development. Given the landscape of today’s organizations and the people in them, there are important things to consider to maximize the return on your training investment and secure the biggest impact on the end user.

Here are six recommendations to support your learning and development strategy:

Develop The Required Technical Skills For Today

Newer, better and more efficient ways of doing things are always around the corner in today’s world. Be it new software, a new process or newly discovered data, just because your employees were “experts” when they came on board doesn’t mean they will continue to remain on the cutting edge.

Don’t waste your time trying to stay on top of the latest trends in all the functional areas of your business. Leverage technical skills content experts to support you in providing specific skills training for your people. As they say, “Aces in their places.”

Develop Leadership Capacity At All Levels Of The Organization

These are skills that will support in long-term (3-5 year) career development. These leadership skills are not role dependent. Instead, they elevate the leadership capacity of every person in the organization, setting employees up to be successful as leaders, not just as employees.

One of the most effective skills in developing leadership capacity at all levels of the organization is the coach approach. By equipping leaders with the skill set to coach as well as manage, a culture of people development takes hold. People are empowered to find their own answers and leaders are no longer the bottleneck in getting things done.