43+ Employee Training Statistics (2024) + Benefits and Costs

Report Highlights

As of 2024, 60% employees report they have never received workplace training; skills are often self-taught.
94% of employees would stay with their company if it invested in their training and development.
CEOs spend 20% more time on soft skills training than the average learner.
In 2023, 27% of learning and development professionals use surveys to assess learner satisfaction, up from 16% in 2020.
6 out of every 10 global employees believe training helps them adapt to change.
Half of employees lack time for training, and 61% of learning professionals see this as a barrier.
Trainees learn about 56% of programs through their corporate network.
By 2025, online course provider Udemy predicts that 50% of employees will need reskilling.

The Push for Learning and Development

27% of learning and development professionals say their CEOs are actively pushing for learning and training.
55% of these professionals further say that they take their executives as channels of encouraging training.
Executives in large enterprises (over 5,000 employees) are the biggest proponents of learning and training; 60% of learning and development pros leverage them to enable learning.
In comparison, for mid-market companies (1,001 to 5,000 employees), the percentage is 51% and 50% for small organizations (200 to 1000 employees).
27% of small organizations believe that learning and development is a key priority to their business while this percentage is 29% and 38% for mid-size and large enterprises respectively.
26% of small organizations build up corporate mandates and executive initiatives targeted at employee learning. In comparison, 28% of mid-market companies and 36% of enterprises do so.
68% of learning and development pros in Canada, 66% in the US, and 67% in South East Asia say that CEOs are actively pushing for such programs.

Numbers in Finances

The Training Industry Report by Training magazine surveyed 202 respondents; 40% from small companies, 34% from mid-sized companies, and 26% from large companies.

The report found that:

Training in the US took a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic as spending in it declined to $82.5 billion, and laid off employees caused the training payroll to drop by about 18% to $42.4 billion.
The average amount spent in training by the large companies (more than 10,000 employees) was $22 million in 2020, a rise from the $17.7 million in 2019.
The figure was $900,000 for mid-sized companies (1,000 to 9,999 employees) and an average of $808,000 for small companies (100-999 employees).
Other training expenditures, for instance, travel expenses, increased to $29.4 billion in 2020 from $23.8 billion the previous year.
Last year, organizations allocated an average of 16% of their budget to training tools and tech.
29% of learning and development budgets are spent on creating or buying the content or programs to be used in the learning. 17% is spent on building and assuring compliance training to employees.
16% is invested in pushing the learning programs to employees, 15% to identify the skills lacking, and another 15% in investing time with managers to determine the learning gaps.
A final 10% is used to push the ideas of learning programs to the company executives.

The Adoption and Impact of Learning Management Systems (LMS)

83% of companies use a learning management system.
72% of companies become more competitive after adopting an LMS.
Four out of five companies in the Fortune 500 employ the extensive use of an LMS to retain competitiveness.
Tech companies are the biggest buyers of LMSs globally, with a proportion of 30%.
Organizations that use LMSs have retained it for more than two years, with 88% of those switching citing a poor user experience.

Online Training Statistics

Nine out of ten employees are champions of flexibility saying they would do training from anywhere or at any time.
85% of employees prefer to have training plans that slot into their schedules.
80% of employees see frequent and regular training to be more important than formal workplace training.
A third of employees find training methods employed by their companies to be outdated.
91% of employees prefer having employee-specific training, with the opinion that it is more beneficial and relevant, and 75% of training professionals believe their companies are taking steps to achieve that in the future.
While three-quarters of employees believe employees should receive training on digital skills, only under half of them have received such training from their employers.

Leadership and Compliance Training

There is a 60% higher probability of employees who are outsourced to be released from their jobs as compared to employees who are internally promoted.
Six in ten millennials at companies are proponents for leadership training, as compared to 67% of Generation X who prefer external coaching.
The presence of training gaps in companies is evidenced by the fact that only 42% of important roles at the company can be instantly filled by present employees.
23% of companies do not perform any compliance training for their employees.
Four out of ten organizations consider their compliance training programs to be simple or reactive.
12% of companies have invested in cutting-edge compliance training programs.
30% of organizations do not evaluate the effectiveness of the compliance training programs they put in place.

Areas of Focus in Employee Training

In 2021, 59% of learning and development programs have prioritized time investment in upskilling and reskilling.
53% have chosen leadership and management as the area of primary focus, while 33% are prioritising virtual onboarding.
In comparison, in 2020, evaluating the impact of learning was the area of focus for 38% of learning programs.
35% of the programs sought to increase learner engagement, while another 35% of the said programs were focused on self and online learning solutions for employees.
32% were fixated on finding skill and development gaps, and 29% on including learning into other talent plans.

The Role of Employee Training In Diversity and Inclusion

Companies invested in diversity programs are 22% more likely to be perceived as industry giants with top talents, and 12% more probable to be seen as proper working environments for people from varying backgrounds.
In 28% of organizations, training and diversity teams work together in the creation of strategies to enhance diversity and inclusion.
12% of organizations have the training team in charge of building and executing diversity and inclusion programs.
15% of companies lack diversity and inclusion programs, but they say that they are planning to start one.

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Goals and Obstacles

Goals

In 2020, 34% of training programs sought to increase job satisfaction for their employees.
44% of these programs targeted improving employee engagement while 46% wanted to boost organizational growth.
In addition, 62% of training programs had the goal of bridging the gap in skills at their respective companies.

Obstacles

61% of companies cite the lack of time as the biggest challenge associated with training, 42% complain of budget constraints.
38% of training professionals are required to prove the ROI of training, while 31% find it hard to choose a suitable learning and development program.
64% of leaders say their biggest challenge is developing leaders for the next generation, and 60% say the challenge is to attract or retain top talent.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Before the pandemic hit, 63% of all training programs were conducted in person.

In a 2020 workplace learning report, LinkedIn found that;

38% of companies spent less on Instructor-Led Training (ILT), 27% spent the same, and 21% spent more as compared to the year before.
The budgets allocated for online learning for employees were less for 9% of the companies, the same for 18% and more for 57% of the companies between the two years.
Generally, 57% of learning and development pros spent more time in online training as compared to three years ago, while 37% of these pros spent less time on ILT than they did three years ago.
In 2021, 73% of companies expect to invest less time in instructor-led training as compared to before, while a whopping 79% see more time invested into online learning modules.