I’m going to let you in on something: today’s one-size-fits-all approach to professional development is making your employees groan, not grow. Far too often, company-led programs consist of access to a single platform like Coursera or LinkedIn Learning and ignore employees’ preferences for diverse options like paid communities, mentorship programs, and niche-specific trainings.

No wonder 33% of employees find it hard to stay motivated with the training their companies offer.

It’s easy to want to pass the blame to HR, but it’s not their fault. 

They’re bogged down with clunky systems and laborious workflows that make it next to impossible to deliver the flexible, personalized training that could best serve each employee. Stuck in ongoing cycles of approvals and reimbursements, HR can’t offer the flexible professional development experience that today’s employees want. 

But staying locked into the one-size-fits-all approach creates several problems that can make employees feel unappreciated, prevent them from developing critical skills that lead to becoming unengaged, or worse, make them look for a new job altogether that offers the training they’re after.

As a result, many employees miss out on developing the skills they need to advance their careers and the value that they bring to an organization through a lack of professional development opportunities.

Choosing a one-size-fits all approach to professional development is simply not the answer.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #1: Each department has different training that’s relevant to them.

Thirty-eight percent of employees say they want training that’s more relevant to what they do on the job. But generic professional development can’t offer that to everyone. Sales has different professional development needs than marketing. Product developers face different challenges than IT managers. And new employees need to start at a different level than seasoned workers with more experience and advanced skills. Everyone needs different professional learning opportunities.

Attempting to meet everyone’s needs with blanket training or a generic learning platform inevitably leaves someone out. And that impacts employee satisfaction: A 2023 Pew Research report showed that 21% of employees are “not too” or “not at all satisfied” with the training opportunities their employers provide.

That means over one-fifth of the workforce feels like they’re getting little to no value out of professional development.

And no wonder. When the information doesn’t address the real-world challenges they face at work every day, training seems pointless, and employees become discouraged and frustrated.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #2: Diverse learning styles and preferences get ignored.

Most people have a preferred way of learning that helps them understand and retain information. Breaking it down, here are the various types of learners, learning method, and learning process:

• Visual learners: Images, charts, and media
• Auditory learners: Spoken presentations, reading aloud, talking through topics with others
• Kinesthetic learners: Hands-on learning with activities, on-the-job application
• Reading and writing learners: Interacting with text, processing through notes
• Linguistic learners: Conversational media (such as podcasts), discussions with others
• Logical learners: Structured processes with distinct steps
• Social learners: Group discussions and activities
• Solitary learners: Independent work, processing, and reflection

Only offering up certain books for your professional development resources? What about ebooks, or access to presentations, instead? The list goes on, especially if you want to develop a standout professional learning experience. 

A one-size-fits-all professional development program doesn’t account for these diverse approaches, making it much harder for employees to reach their professional learning goals.

For example, if you’re only offering a video-based, solo-learning, online learning platform, you’re ignoring the social learners and the reading and writing learners.  

What’s more, company-provided formal training, job-embedded training, or training found in a course library can often be outdated and unengaging.

It doesn’t enable the more than 70 million Americans with differing abilities to access the same information as their coworkers. Those with visual or auditory impairments may require alternatives to text, images, or videos. And others may benefit from accommodations like shorter lessons to keep their attention or frequent review to reinforce the content.

For these employees, the standard approach to professional development and professional growth is frustrating. The lack of flexibility and continuous growth can make them feel like the company isn’t interested in supporting their advancement — which, according to McKinsey, is one of the main reasons why employees feel disengaged with their jobs.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #3: Company-provided professional development is underutilized

We spoke with an L&D professional recently who admitted that their Coursera investment was only seeing a 10% utilization. While you don’t have to expect 100% participation rates, we see Compt clients on average getting three times the amount of participation a one-off program merits. And that’s for the same cost of their original one-size-fits-all program.  

But giving employees access to professional development funds is only a part of the problem. When employees don’t know what to do with their budget, or they only have an option that isn’t as appealing to them (hello, course libraries), utilization rate plummets.

On top of that, as we’ve talked about more in this post on broken professional development systems, the process to get approval and reimbursement for their professional development account is clunky and confusing. Here’s a sample approval workflow. For both the administrator and the employee, there’s one thing in common: A massive headache.

As a result, employers are wasting money on under-utilized programs. If employers move that investment to personalized professional development, utilization (and overall satisfaction) will increase. It’s all a part of building a strong learning culture.

The hard truth? This old approach is setting not only your professional development program up to fail, but your people, too. 

Ouch. 

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #4: Employees fail to build the skill level they need to compete in a changing market.

Skill gaps prevent employees from advancing in their careers. Yet employers are placing more and more emphasis on skills that enable companies to compete in a changing market. They’re on the lookout for employees with the technical skills to optimize user experience and user interface design, analyze complex data sets for actionable insights, and develop engaging mobile apps.

Employers aren’t blind to the problem. Forty-three percent of companies say they currently have skill gaps in their workforce, and over half acknowledge that the programs they use to build employees’ capabilities are only effective some of the time.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most sought-after skills in today’s workplace. Employers want employees who are adept at not only leveraging AI tools but also developing and training the algorithms that power them. As AI becomes more complex and more deeply integrated into everyday workflows, employees will need consistent upskilling opportunities to stay current.

But professional development isn’t rising to the challenge yet. Despite the fact that over 75% of companies are adopting AI, only 35% of talent received AI training in 2024.

And fewer than 4% of workers learn any new skills within their first year on the job, which leaves only one in four highly confident that the skills they do have can help them move forward.

The problem compounds when cross-functional teams try to collaborate, because they have varying skill sets and don’t have a choice in how they’re being upskilled.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #5: Employee retention suffers.

Look, there is a solution, and it’s right in front of you. Clear opportunities for career advancement would be enough to retain 11% of employees who otherwise leave their jobs. And for 36% of employees in positions that offer those opportunities, training and skills development is the top reason they stick around. This is why a strategic, all-encompassing professional development program is critical to employee and company growth. 

The impact may not be immediately noticeable if only one person leaves their current role because they feel stuck in their job. 

But if employees start to exit en masse, the costs add up. 

And we know that high turnover is expensive: According to Gallup, the price of replacing just one employee can be anywhere from one-half to two times their salary. 

High turnover burdens HR with the responsibility of going through a hiring process, training new employees, and trying to navigate the growing needs of their workforce. Employees who stay have to pick up the slack of those who leave until new hires are brought up to speed. The increased workload can impact productivity and delay work on larger company goals for weeks or months.

Offering another  generic ‘learning platform’ isn’t going to solve these problems. And HR can’t be expected to create flexible professional development programs when all they have are rigid, complex systems.

What if professional development initiatives could look different? What if employees could choose their own paths and professional development plans, learn what they want, and not have to struggle through a million steps to get reimbursed? It would be a dream come true for frustrated employees and overwhelmed HR departments.

Well, friends. You don’t have to keep dreaming. Your magic wand for professional development is here. 

Professional Development Pro™ by Compt — A streamlined solution for personalized professional development.

Compt’s Professional Development Pro™ by Compt gives your company the tools to provide flexible training without burdening employees or HR with a complicated approval process. With dedicated professional development support through Compt, you can:

• Create employer-approved programs that include a wide variety of courses and platforms
• Allow employees to submit and track approval requests through a self-serve portal
• See and manage approval requests from a central dashboard
• Create custom pre-approval and reimbursement workflows
• Track budgets and spending with real-time reports

The streamlined approach to requests, approvals, and reimbursements means employees are free to choose training that meets their needs and aligns with their learning styles.

And for HR? Compt’s centralized platform puts all the important information in one place so no one has to spend hours chasing email threads to determine the status of an approval or answer budget questions. Integrations and automations create a seamless flow that can finally free you from the problems of one-size-fits-all professional development.

Start giving your employees the flexibility they want from professional development. Request a demo and start managing your program with Compt.