More than a third of Learning & Development professionals globally are expecting their budgets to grow year over year- shifting from Instructor-Led Training (ILT) to online learning—and executive buy-in continues to build, according to a report.

As per ‘2020 Workplace Learning Report’ by LinkedIn, 72 percent of L&D professionals in India expect budgets to grow over the year.

For the survey, LinkedIn asked L & Dprofessionals, people managers, and learners across 18 countries about their priorities, challenges, and what really inspires them to learn.

Amongst the countries surveyed were-United States, Canada, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Benelux, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland.

Interestingly, 64% of respondents believe that online learning helps them scale learning across the organization. While, 54% claimed "email campaigns" is a technique to encourage employees to engage with their learning content, however, only 21.53% spend time on building/sourcing learning programs/content for their organization.

Meanwhile, 58% of the L&D professionals from India said "keeping up with the fast pace of technology change" is the trend that most impacts their learning programs in 2020.

The report also shed a light on challenges faced by L&D professionals in India. The top three challenges faced by learning and development professionals in an Organization are - getting managers to make learning a priority for their teams (53%), creating a culture of learning(43%) and increasing employee engagement in learning (36%).

In the survey, 40% of L&D professionals mentioned that "enabling self-directed learning with online learning solutions" is the key area of focus for them in the next 12 months. While, 60% of them said "AI and machine learning to drive more accurate personalization" would significantly impact online learning in the upcoming 5 years.

It was found that 59% of L&D professionals plan to close critical skills gaps in 2020 by reskilling their employees to help close technology skills gaps.