Are you working on your 2017 Strategic Plan for your training department? Need some industry statistics? Here’s a curated list of training industry reports that you might find useful.

Free Training Industry Reports

2016 Training Industry Report by Training Magazine

Now in its 35th year, The Industry Report provides data on budgets, staffing, and programs. Only U.S.-based corporations and educational institutions with 100 or more employees  Only U.S.-based corporations and educational institutions with 100 or more employees are included in the analysis.  The data represents a cross-section of industries and company sizes.

ATD Research State of the Industry Report

The State of the Industry report is Association for Talent Development’s (ATD) review of talent development trends. In 2016, A total of 310 organizations representing a diverse range of industries, sizes, and locations participated in the benchmarking study.  Key findings include the following:

• Per-employee spending increased in 2015 to an average of $1,252 per employee (from $1,229 in 2014).
• 28 percent of direct learning expenditures went to outsourced or external activities.
• Direct expenditure as a percent of payroll increased from 4 to 4.3 percent.
• Employees averaged 33.5 hours of training in 2015, compared with 32.4 hours in 2014.
• The average cost per learning hour slightly decreased from $84 to $82.
• The top three areas of training content in 2015 were managerial and supervisory (12 percent), mandatory and compliance (11 percent), and processes, procedures, and business practices (10 percent).
• Instructor-led live face-to-face classroom was the delivery mechanism for 49 percent of learning hours available in 2015.
• On-the-job learning was a key part of employees’ development experiences; learning that occurs during work was emphasized heavily in two-thirds of participating organizations.

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Brandon Hall 2015 State of Learning and Development

State of Learning and Development 2015 examines how organizations in 40 countries and 33 industries are prioritizing and approaching learning. The data shows 55% of companies have a formal learning and development strategy in place. The prevalence of an L&D strategy grows with the size of the company, however. You will find them at 61% of large companies (more than 10,000 employees), 52% of mid-sized organizations (1,000 – 9,999 employees) and 48% of small companies (Fewer than 1,000 employees).

Conducted in June-July of 2015, other top findings from the research include:

• The biggest challenge to developing the L&D strategy is bringing all the stakeholders together, cited by 37% of organizations.
• More than one-third of companies say their L&D objectives are either not linked to corporate performance goals at all, or only linked to a small extent.
• Employee satisfaction and engagement are the most commonly used metrics to measure learning effectiveness.

Ambient Insight The 2016–2021 Worldwide Self-paced eLearning Market

A negative report about the state of self-paced learning by Ambient insight that states:

The global eLearning industry is now in the midst of a perfect storm of market conditions that are driving revenues down including weak demand for most self-paced products, commoditization, the late stage of eLearning’s product lifecycle, pronounced product substitution, and the so-called leapfrog effect with buyers in developing countries completely bypassing eLearning for newer products.

Sponsored Training Industry Reports

2016 Benchmark Report: The State of Online Training—Sponsored by Citrix GoToTraining

The benchmark report (sponsored by Citrix) explores how online tools are changing the job of the training professional

Technology is powerful and transformative. As L&D professionals, it’s important to learn from the experiences of our peers in order to apply new technologies for the benefit of learners.

In this Training Industry focuses on:

• How technology enables new training modalities
• The new role of the training professional
• The biggest changes in online training programs
• Key challenges and insights for 2016 and beyond

E-Learning Market Trends & Forecast 2014 – 2016 Report—Sponsored by Docebo

This report, by SaaS LMS Vendor is a biased view on the value of Elearning. None the less, it does have a some useful data about online learning. Use data with caution.

Paid Training Industry Reports

Bersin: WhatWorks® Brief: Corporate Learning Facebook 2015—Benchmarks, Trends, and Analysis of the U.S. Training Market

Free Overview; Research Report is Paid. The Corporate Learning Facebook 2015 provides current L&D benchmarks and guidance. How much are L&D organizations spending per learner? How are organizations allocating their L&D funds across different program areas? How do metrics for mature L&D organizations differ from their less mature counterparts?

If is worth looking at Josh Bersin’s free presentation Ten Trends Shaping the Future on Slideshare.

If you have other reports that you have found useful please share in the comments or on @learningcouncil.