Towards Maturity’s 2018 benchmark research, launched at the Learning Technologies Exhibition and Conference on 31 January, reveals that the journey to learning maturity consists of stages - each with its own complexities and challenges.

With mounting pressure to meet the changing needs of business today, this year’s benchmark data with over 700 L&D professionals shows that L&D must shift the way it operates in order to add new and lasting value. To become a flexible and adaptable organisation that puts learning at the heart of its business - a New Learning Organisation - L&D must first navigate its way through a series of transformations.

Despite being a well-resourced and technology-enabled profession, L&D is still encountering the same management resistance to change. A staggering 58% report that line managers are reluctant to encourage new ways of learning - up by 4% this year.

Despite organisations spending on average 22% of their budget on learning technology - as reported in Towards Maturity’s November report "L&D: Where are we now?", the digital transformation of learning is consistently slow.  

To help L&D breakthrough the barriers, Towards Maturity has applied new analysis techniques to the benchmark data to produce this year’s Annual Benchmark Report, "The Transformation Curve". The result is a clear map for L&D professionals to guide their organisations to success that could result in a 24% increase in productivity, a 24% increase in customer satisfaction, and an 18% reduction in staff turnover.

Commenting on Towards Maturity’s new research, Donald Taylor, Chair of Learning Technologies Conference, said, "This report becomes essential reading not just for L&D leaders, but for everyone in the business who wants to understand how to become a competitive, agile 21^st-century organisation."

The new report examines each stage of learning - the challenges, the opportunities, and what to let go of in order to reach the next stage of success - and will be launched at the upcoming Learning Technologies event.

Laura Overton, CEO and Founder of Towards Maturity added, "We’re proud to be sharing first hand the results of this year’s unique analysis with our Global Benchmark Partner, Learning Technologies. There is no better place to launch this year’s groundbreaking research than with a community of people who share our passion for understanding how learning innovation can deliver business impact but are frustrated by lack of progress.  We find ourselves saying the same thing each year: We must have change in the industry. I’m confident that this new report will be L&D’s go-to guide to deliver just that."