Innovation, customer experience and cost advantage are what we usually consider the holy trinity of organizational success, the make or break for the company. Going by the same logic, why do we fail to view the skilling and the benefits of learning and development (L&D) more holistically?

Peter Drucker said, "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence itself, but to act with yesterday's logic." To build the Workforce of the Future, we must move beyond yesterday's logic and elevate workforce education in our organizations to the game-changer that it is.

L&D as a sustainable game-changer

Drawing from McKinsey's thought process, it is evident that L&D has direct impact on key business priorities. Crystallizing the thought process from the below diagram, immediate takeaways include benefits in talent acquisition and retention, skill development, employee morale, sense of community, and brand reputation.

Come to think of it, there is potential to further extrapolate each benefit into sub-benefits. Let's look at them individually.

Good talent begets better talent – investing in learning initiatives within the organization builds an empowered workforce, creates an aspirational value for competent talent from outside creating a ready pool from which to pick, and improves talent retention. In addition, it provides the advantage of elevating and cherry-picking internal talent for strategic, senior roles only based on merit and not gender, color, race, age, etc. Diversity and Inclusion is fostered in the organization with direct impact on cost.

Across our client base, we see a 38% lift in retention of employees participating in workforce education programs as compared to non-participants. And 60% of those participants have been offered promotions or new career opportunities. Learning matters to employees and to their careers.

Capability to innovate – "Think like a giant, act like a start-up." The secret sauce to this winning mantra is simply "innovation"–not so simple when there is a mismatch between employee skills and customer needs. Customer experience, and hence competitive advantage, hinges on the ability of an organization to innovate and is an extremely strategic capability. Learning can be equivalent to the apt tools in the hands of the metaphorical sculptors for building a bright career path. One of our clients secured more than 2,000 patents over the last 10 years alone.

They've built a robust learning function, emphasizing STEM and digital learning, in order to education and develop a future-ready workforce that has innovation at its core.

Learning culture – Employees are increasingly taking charge of learning and it is giving rise to a fascinating corporate trend of lifelong learning. More on that later, but employees taking the lead allows L&D to act as a catalyst/guide for their aspirations. This single thread of purpose and autonomy has the potential to unite global workforces. Consultancies have long known and capitalized on this, and have permeated their culture at all levels with opportunities to learn and build new skills. In fact, it's difficult to develop your career without also developing skills in these companies. This sense of belonging is more potent than all the world's policies on paper. This is the organization's identity and the learning culture within the organization acts as a catalyst to create this.

Brand reputation – Speaking of identity, strategic investment in learning has a long-term influence on brand reputation, too. Reputation is often overlooked as an advantage but is probably the most valuable. It is what a brand stands for and how it is perceived by stakeholders – a grand sum of people, product, and purpose. Brand reputation directly affects success in the market, position in the industry, hiring, and more. More and more of our clients are even beginning to brand their workforce education functions and align them with overall corporate branding. It sends the message to the marketplace, employees, and potential recruits that this is a great place to work, where learning is valued, recognized and rewarded.

Happy employees = happy communities – It's tough to underestimate the power of 'happiness' on the larger community. Though intangible, motivated and engaged employees are more accountable and productive, go back home to happy families and form part of happy communities. An employee from one of our manufacturing clients said one of the happiest outcomes of his learning and education was "seeing the look on my parents' faces, as well as my wife and children. Quite possibly one of the most amazing things ever." Constructive engagement with employees through learning opportunities has been proven to impact employee satisfaction.

The Domino effect

As I put down these benefits, my mind conjures up the image of an unending line of cards falling one after the other. The chain begins with the learning and development initiative (or the lack of it) goes through every strategic function of the organization in a logical manner. Quite evidently, workforce education is the means for building the Workforce of the Future.

With both the personal and professional aspiration of the employee in mind, organizations that feed the 21-st century 'survive and thrive' mindset are set up for success. The good news is that today's employees are inclined to learning, that's half the battle won. With the right guidance, investments and intent, organizations can make sure they provide a level playing field for all employees to be rewarded on merit only, creating a healthy corporate culture. This will set the ball rolling for generations to come, causing another chain reaction that begins with learning and workforce education.

Anything that begins with learning, ends in positive change – at the individual, societal and national level. I look forward to sharing more thoughts as part of my new journey exploring workforce education and it's potential to enable employers to feed workforce aspirations and build the workplace of the future.

Priya Krishnan is senior vice president of client relations at Bright Horizons, where she is responsible for working with both current and prospective clients to determine the best solutions to meet the changing and growing needs of their workforce and their business. Bright Horizons provides workplace employee services to more than 1,100 employers across the world, including education benefits like education assistance program development and management, education advising, and student loan repayment programs available to over 7 million client employees.

Read more: 

• 7 principles for rethinking human capital
• 4 ways companies can drive employee learning & development
• Top emerging 'jobs of tomorrow' and the skills to fill them