Fast-moving global markets, digital disruption, and a multigenerational workforce are just a few factors forcing companies to innovate. To help executives understand the challenges facing their organizations, a recent trends survey reveals that core talent functions such as culture, leadership, engagement, and learning round out the top 10 trends. Let's take a closer look at the top 10 trends.

Evidence suggests that organizations are more competitive, agile, and engaged when employees freely and consistently share knowledge. In other words, these high-performing companies have an established culture of learning. Despite the obvious benefits, only 31 percent of organizations have well-developed learning cultures, according to Building a Culture of Learning: The Foundation of a Successful Organization, a new report from ATD Research and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).

Popular topics get a renewed analysis.

Organizations face increasingly volatile and complex markets. To compete, they need a business strategy that counteracts negative forces and guides individual lines of business toward positive outcomes. The strategy needs to present leaders with guidelines on how to make decisions and allocate resources to accomplish key objectives, as well as define the actions people in the business should take (or not take) and...

Nancy Altobello and the talent function at EY not only have a seat at the leadership table, but also a valued role throughout the organization.

The argument: SMEs, not trainers, are the better choice for leading training courses. It's constantly being discussed: Do subject matter experts make better teachers or should we leave the job to trainers?

The Talent Development Executive Confidence Index (TDXCI), formerly the Learning Executive Confidence Index (LXCI), is a quarterly assessment of talent development executives short-term expectations for the health of the talent development function in organizations. The TDXCI is a composite score that takes into account four key indicators for how talent development executives believe the talent development function will change during the next six months:The TDXCI is modeled after the Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence, which rates CEOs expectations for...

The argument: M-learning needs to be part of your current learning strategy. It's worth the time and effort. Sure, your workforce is probably already mobile. Many employees are using mobile resources to get information they need to do their jobs. Does it make sense for you to provide a more specific solution for them via mobile? Will it justify the resource allocation required? Will you see both short- and long-term improvement in performance? Going mobile is top of mind for many learning organizations today. Is now the time to go full throttle?

My charter as the new head of executive development was to build a mini version of GE's leadership university—Crotonville—for Heinz globally. The Heinz CEO counted GE's CEO at the time, Jack Welch, as a mentor and wanted to ensure we were developing our far-flung executives to be prepared for growth. Headquarters was a relatively small group of executives focused on corporate strategy and portfolio. The CEO wanted to create a more cohesive, skilled top leadership team. I was asked to propose a leadership training program and a budget for the few hundred senior...

After registering a very high 68.0 for both the second and third quarters of 2015, the Learning Executive Confidence Index (LXCI) for the fourth quarter of 2015 dropped nearly four points to 64.3, suggesting that learning leaders' short-term expectations for the health of the learning function are down.

In this Q&A, Chief Learning Officer Rahul Varma provides an inside look at the talent development function at Accenture. How does Accenture define talent development? It's the end-to-end experience each employee needs to grow their career and reach their full potential. Talent development encompasses...

Developing talent today with an eye on tomorrow.

As a talent-led company, Accenture must look to the future of talent development. Rahul Varma leads that charge. "The role of learning at Accenture has always been critical," says Varma. "We are a talent-led organization and we often say that learning is in our DNA. Learning is a part of what we offer to the world." Varma should know. He's been with the company for 20 years in some key HR leadership roles. Talent development touches every aspect of an employee's path through the company...

ATD's 2015  State of the Industry report found that, in 2014, organizations on average spent $1,228.70 per employee on direct learning expenditures. This represents just over a 1.7 percent increase from 2013, when the average spent per employee was $1,207.73. The increase in spending outpaces the average inflation rate of slightly under 1.4 percent seen in...

Learning executives remain optimistic about the health of learning, according to the ATD's Learning Executive Confidence Index, which assesses the expectations of learning executives for the learning function in organizations for the next six months. The LXCI score for the third quarter of 2015 is 68 out of 100. This is identical to second-quarter results. This score is just over one point higher than...

For a time, the landscape for learning seemed to have reached a steady state: Traditional instructor-led training remained the go-to option for priority programs, alongside classic coaching and mentoring initiatives for one-on-one (personal) development. E-learning courses, supported by a learning management system, provided self-directed alternatives where scalability or cost concerns dictated. Nagging questions about usage and impact remained, with some resources grossly underused and key metrics on such areas as leadership pipeline remaining stubbornly...

The skills gap has garnered significant attention in the United States and globally in recent years. Communities, states, regions, and entire nations—now more than ever given the globalization of business—pay a heavy price when they cannot find or equip workers with the right skills for critical jobs. Simply stated, they fail to flourish and falter when meeting customer demands. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers's 2015 Global CEO Survey found that three-quarters of 1,322 responding CEOs in 77 countries say the skills shortage is the biggest threat to their business...

In this Q&A, Chief Talent Development Officer Martha Soehren provides an inside look at the talent development function at Comcast Cable. 1. Where does talent development fit into the org chart? Is it under HR or free-standing? Talent development is aligned under me—so is the talent management function—and I report to...

From her vantage point atop the learning organization at Comcast Cable, it's easy for Martha Soehren to forget how radically different things were only six years ago. That was before she and her team tapped a hidden wellspring of support from within senior management to help centralize their far-reaching learning operation. Little has remained the same. Today's Comcast University has been reconceived for maximum effectiveness—its 550 learning and development professionals divided among five colleges, one for each business function. Its 5 million hours of annual...

The argument: Improve the leadership selection process rather than focus on development. How does your organization build its leadership bench strength? Many talent development professionals back the notion that it is critical to put in place tools and processes that identify and select people with leadership potential. Meanwhile, others wager that it's more effective—and predictable—to invest resources in developing internal candidates. Two thought leaders share their contrasting viewpoints on the topic.