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Training and Development HRM 6303 Unit I DB Reply
A response post to at least one other student is due by end of day Tuesday.
Posts to others should be a minimum of 250 words in length.
Part I
My name is Larry Taylor, and I live in Delaware. I am married with two thirteen-year-old daughters, one is a cheerleader and the other a travel softball player, so as you can imagine, my plate stays pretty full during the school year. I’m a retired U.S. Army First Sergeant, with over 25 years of service and I currently work at the Department of Veterans Affairs. As for my future goals, I would like to continue to work in the VA, because I enjoy working with and supporting our Veterans, both as clients and fellow employees. My plan is to use what I learn in this course, as well as my degree once I’ve completed it, to grow within the organization and eventually end up in a leadership position that will allow me to maximize my experiences.
Part II
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and lasting impact on training and development (T&D) practices within organizations. In the initial emergency phase, companies scrambled to convert instructor-led and classroom programs into virtual offerings. That rapid shift normalized digital learning: self-paced online courses, instructor-led virtual sessions, and recorded micro-modules became central tools for delivering both mandatory compliance training and strategic reskilling initiatives. A 2022 SHRM study found online/self-paced courses became the most popular training format for employees, and e-learning adoption jumped dramatically during 2020–2021.
Beyond format changes, the pandemic accelerated several deeper trends in organizational learning. First, there was a clear shift from episodic training to continuous skills development: organizations began to treat learning as an ongoing capability tied to career paths and internal mobility rather than one-off events. Second, investment in learning infrastructure, online learning platforms, content libraries, and analytics, grew because organizations needed scalable ways to deliver, track, and measure learning at distance. Third, employers increased emphasis on digital, data, and hybrid-work skills as automation and remote work changed job content and collaboration norms. McKinsey’s research documents that COVID-19 sped up remote work, e-commerce, and automation trends, which in turn raised demand for reskilling and upskilling.
There have also been important pedagogical and design shifts. Learning designers moved toward shorter, more modular content (microlearning), more practical project-based learning, and blended experiences that combine asynchronous study with synchronous coaching or cohort work. Leadership and manager training evolved to focus on remote team management, psychological safety across dispersed teams, and inclusive hybrid leadership practices. At the same time, organizations discovered both the benefits and limitations of virtual delivery: virtual makes training more accessible and scalable, but it can reduce social bonding and experiential learning—factors that are driving a measured return to in-person and blended formats for certain types of development (for example, executive programs and intensive cohort learning). Recent reporting indicates an uptick in face-to-face executive education even as online and hybrid options remain important.
On the challenge side, organizations wrestled with engagement, assessment, and equity. Not all employees had equal access to high-quality home workspaces or reliable internet; asynchronous formats helped, but the digital divide remained a concern. Measuring learning transfer and linking development to on-the-job performance also became a higher priority, pushing L&D teams to adopt more data-driven evaluation methods and stronger manager involvement in post-training coaching. Industry reports noted almost universal use of e-learning in 2020 but also highlighted the need to rethink how learning outcomes are achieved when face-to-face options are limited.
At my current place of employment, our mission was driven on seeing Veteran clients face-to-face within our Vet Centers located nationwide. Previous to COVID-19, telehealth was not really an option, and most of our client population were from the Vietnam era so technology was not their strong suit. Once the pandemic hit and we had to not only limit the population that came through the door, but also still be able to reach our clients that could not travel, we had to change the way we delivered services by utilizing telehealth and virtual appointments. Even with great frustration from our clients, we were able to adapt and overcome most hurdles in order to continue to deliver timely and effective services to the Veteran population. The same can be said for our employee training over that time, we had to introduce a temporary culture change, where we began to conduct training and meetings virtually, due to travel restrictions.
In summary, the pandemic didn’t simply force training online, it changed expectations about how learning is delivered, scaled, and measured. Organizations that treat learning as continuous, invest in accessible digital infrastructure, and blend virtual convenience with occasional in-person experiences are better positioned to meet evolving skills needs and to engage employees in meaningful development.
References
SHRM. (2022). 2022
Workplace Learning & Development Trends.
McKinsey & Company. (2021).
The future of work after COVID-19.
Harvard Business Review. (2021).
Our work-from-anywhere future / Hybrid
