For our 2023 Leadership Report, we partnered with YouGov to survey 557 business leaders across 12 industries. We asked them about their perceptions of learning in their organizations and, in the report, take an in-depth look at the priorities, concerns, and expectations business leaders share about L&D. At a glance, the data shows that:
- Business leaders believe L&D should be focusing on the people-centric goals of the organization.
- The things leaders care about the most (e.g., reducing operational costs and transforming/growing the business) are not necessarily the areas they expect L&D to be involved in.
- "L&D lacking a long-term vision" was reported by business leaders as the number one reason organizations are "held back" from achieving what they want to.
- Business leaders’ priorities for 2023 aren’t as clearly defined as they were in 2021.
The report focuses most significantly on the relationship between business environments and organizational priorities, and highlights ways in which L&D teams can use knowledge about their surroundings (in a business sense) to their advantage. At a time when leadership teams are most concerned about reducing costs and are having to make difficult decisions about what is and isn’t worth backing, we explore how L&D teams can become better at showing the impact of their efforts and initiatives to build stronger relationships with their leaders.
Meet our researchers
Anna Barnett
Researcher, Mind Tools for Business
With a strong background in academic research, Anna completed her PhD in 2020 and is now a core member of our Impact & Insights team. Anna specializes in producing high-quality, comprehensive, and topical evidence-based reports for the L&D community.
Gent Ahmetaj
Head of Research, Mind Tools for Business
Gent is Head of Research for Mind Tools. He's a mixed-methods specialist focusing on how learning and organizational development can have real positive impact on key business metrics. Gent and his team of qualitative and quantitative researchers are responsible for improving data collection and analysis, writing research reports, and building inter-disciplinary research partnerships.
Stats you can trust
Our data is collected in partnership with YouGov, and forms part of a longitudinal study we’ve been running for almost 20 years. In the report, we also include insights from our Learning Performance Benchmark, which remains the only free, independent, and confidential benchmarking tool for L&D professionals. If you’d like to know more about the data we collect and how we use it in our research, please take a look at the Methodology at the end of the report.
