Good morning!
Hot take: Your learning and development leader is secretly the most popular person in the C-suite. Don’t just take my word for it. A new LinkedIn report finds that L&D leaders are gaining influence among C-suite executives. Granted, I know some pretty excellent L&D leaders, but their resurgence in popularity is more recent as companies rush to upskill and redistribute talent amid an ever-tight labor market.
The percentage of learning and development professionals who report working more closely with CHROs jumped from 39% to 44% in the past year alone. And 50% say they work more closely with all C-Suite leaders, up from 43% in 2022. They’re not just chiming in on training. Sixty-eight percent of L&D leaders say they are specifically brought in to help their companies navigate economic storms.
“We know [developing] skills as a strategy, both for people and for the business, is going to pay off in this world where we are experiencing some economic headwinds,” says Linda Jingfang Cai, global head of learning and talent development at LinkedIn. Her own team has grown and expanded in her nearly two years at the professional networking site.
“The work we are doing is increasingly strategic, cross-functional, [and] the scope of work has increased from just building skills to diversity, inclusion, culture, supporting hybrid work policies, all the way to internal mobility and careers,” she says. “I tell my team we need different muscles ourselves.”
L&D leaders must know what’s on the minds of CHROs and CEOs, and vice versa, because in addition to helping leaders discover skill gaps within the organization, they’re executing much of the firm's talent mapping work, says Jingfang Cai. To pull this off, they need to have deep relationships with CHROs and the rest of the executive team and their full support.
“Increasingly, HR is trying to overcome its historic siloed tendency and say, ‘Hey, what's the ultimate employee experience? What are the skills we want to drive? And how do we plan to solve it together?’” says Jingfang Cai. Pulling in L&D leaders is often the first step in that process.
Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton
