As the haze of Christmas and the New Year celebrations fades into the dyspepsia of January and the credit card bills of tightened belts, it’s time for another round of predicted learning and development trends for 2025.
This year, will we move beyond quick fixes and generate real value for L&D and those with whom we work?
A quick recap on 2024 trends
In 2024, the first of three L&D trends I forecasted focused on artificial intelligence (not exactly a surprise to anyone). This was specifically with the hope that L&D teams would re-think their approach to factor in the availability of co-pilots for teams. However, as the year drew to a close, the cascade of AI-generated digital content still took centre stage.
My second 2024 trend centred on impact – and here I think the green shoots of change have begun to emerge. I increasingly read of people looking to effect meaningful and long-lasting change as an outcome of their L&D endeavours. I also see less focus on counting the number of content consumers or post-course NPS scores, as though they might mean anything in terms of lasting impact. We’re not fully impact-driven yet, but there are hopeful signs.
My third prediction for 2024 was that communication skills will move front and centre. Again, there are promising signs of progress here. Organisations today increasingly recognise the importance of collaboration and effective interactions between team members, leaders, partners and customers. Still, workplaces can further boost productivity through a more evidence-based approach to developing core communication capabilities.
Buoyed by some partial success in interpreting the L&D zeitgeist twelve months ago, what might happen in 2025?
1. The end of soft skills
I should be clear. I don’t mean that we should ditch our focus on those interpersonal skills commonly clustered together under this heading. Rather, we should stop referring to them as ‘soft’. These skills are hard. They can also be improved and there is significant evidence of what we mean by improved.
We can measure how well people communicate, listen, handle conflict, are creative and work constructively with others. From observing effective ineractions, we can also derive the behaviours that are statistically significant contributors to being a good colleague, leader, team member and customer service provider.
When we discuss these attributes of our more effective colleagues as ‘soft’, we don’t just under value them. We also provide an excuse for those who peddle psycho-babble. ‘Soft skills’ is frequently the cover for fluffy thinking.
I hope as an industry we can focus more on positive, proven behaviours that enhance the work environment in 2025.
Anyone who tells you they can’t possibly monitor or measure success in these areas is talking hogwash.
A focus on improving communications, collaboration and evidence-based leadership behaviours associated with those areas, works. It not only improves employee engagement but that engagement is strongly correlated with higher performance, less absence and shared commitment to organisational purpose.
I hope as an industry we can focus more on positive, proven behaviours that enhance the work environment in 2025.
2. Learning transfer to take a more prominent role
As a codicil to my 2024 predictions about AI and impact, this will be the year in which learning transfer (or the application of new skills and behaviours in the workplace) takes a more prominent role. It will be seen through how we design learning interventions and how we engage with those we serve.
In the past, the focus has been on what people know, accompanied with a devout hope that this might result in changed work practice. Crossing our fingers and promising to be good is all very well, but it doesn’t amount to a strategy for change.
As upskilling and reskilling overtakes compliance training in L&D’s areas of primary concern (see here for Fosway’s illuminating research on this), L&D teams need to focus on how to improve skills where it matters.
It’s time to call managers and influential individuals to account when they undermine the organisation’s investment in skills and change.
What do I hope to see in practice?
Design for implementation
- A clear path for how our colleagues and clients will do things differently, set out in learning journey designs and learning programmes and initiatives
- The creation of resources, support tools and check ins to enable people to not only try things out, but gain feedback and practical support that helps us avoid reversion to the tried and tested
- An environment within teams, and above teams, that facilitates experimentation, continued learning on the job and meaningful reflection
Manager engagement
Too often, despite efforts to the contrary, the tacit – and occasionally explicit – response people get when they come back to the day job is ‘let’s just do things the way we always did – forget what the L&D people say’
That kind of response from leaders and influential peers ought to be unacceptable, but is frequently demonstrated without comment. It’s time to call managers and influential individuals to account when they undermine the organisation’s investment in skills and change.
A real learning culture
As a starting point, let’s stop trying to describe people logging on to our learning experience platform or on-demand library as evidence of a ‘learning culture’. The real acid test will be for leaders and managers to demonstrate – and be held accountable for – how they enable individuals to change approaches and behaviour in the workplace.
3. A focus on ‘How’
From learning objectives to pre-programme publicity, many learning initiatives describe, in great detail, what they will enable people to do. The problem is, most of the content is precisely about the ‘what’ and infrequently about the ‘how’. Telling people what they should do – and backing that up with evidence about why it is important to carry out these tasks – matters, but it is not the whole story.
Without the detail of ‘how’ this is to be achieved, the steps to competence and what good looks like, participants in these programmes are often left in the wilderness. They know what they ought to be doing. They may also know which of their previous practices are no longer appropriate. But without the ‘how’ they simply don’t have the tools to change.
In 2025, I believe we will shift towards better facilitating experimentation and change by creating an environment that is psychologically safe. This means – in part – providing the tools, the time and the clarity to incrementally try new things and reflect on how, and how well, something worked. It is about providing feedback. It is about being alongside people as they try to do new things or to do the old things better.
I start 2025 full of optimism and I hope you do too.
2025 learning and development trends: Final thoughts
Those are my three predictions for where L&D teams will focus their attention in 2025.
You may interpret them as more hopes for the future and the profession’s continued relevance. Or as a series of expectations that will be dashed come December.
But I start 2025 full of optimism and I hope you do too. Happy New Year.
Your next read: 11 expert predictions for learning and development in 2025
Robin Hoyle will be Chairing the World of Learning Summit at Olympia, London on 4th and 5th February.
