Summary of key findings from this year’s survey:

Organisational and management challenges

• The greatest challenges for organisations over the next three years are predicted to be organisation-wide leadership capability and the effectiveness of management teams.

• Achieving cultural change and major-reorganisations are challenges for more organisations in 2016 than previously.

• Organisations recognise the need to address these core challenges by giving more attention to the issue of succession planning in 2016 than has been reported in the past and particularly at a senior level.

• Respondents report first-hand that their focus is on the alignment of long-term organisational goals and leadership development.
Learning and development plans

• Senior and executive management is still the group most likely to feature in organisational development plans in 2016, but middle managers are now as likely to be included in plans as high potentials, both senior and middle managers in 40% of organisations

• Individual coaching is the most used learning and development method, with online and blended learning development methods next and followed closely by team coaching in approximately 60% of organisations. The predicted use of team coaching has seen the greatest overall increase in the last year.

• Coaching is still the preferred learning and development method for senior and executive management and high potentials, and this if followed by classroom-based learning, with online learning being the least preferred method for both groups.

Executive learning and development plans

• For senior and executive management, organisations are most likely to work with individual coaches/ consultants whereas high potentials are more likely to have development support from internal senior managers.

• The percentage of organisations who predict that their learning and development budgets will increase in 2016 has grown in the last year, however there is a decrease in budget predicted in larger organisations.

• The single largest external investment in 2016 in the execution of learning and development plans will be with classroom-based training providers, individual coaches/consultants and then business schools.