Future Trends in Learning and Development

1.    It’s all about increasing business results

Think effective, cost-efficient learning that positively impacts on business results. Think L&D working with business leaders to create solutions to help them achieve business deliverables. The learning of the past often operated in a silo where learning professionals had little interaction or input from other areas of the business until they had created a programme, and then went looking for ‘trainees!’ The learning of the future is about helping companies achieve measurable business results. Learning will focus on partnering with the business to achieve company revenue and other measurable business results. This will drive a new level of accountability for learning to demonstrate a sound return-on-investment.

2.    And it’s all about individualized learning

There will be a creative tension between organizations providing the learning they need to deliver business results and offering learning opportunities for employees to advance their own careers. Learners now want to take responsibility for their own learning. They expect companies to explain the capabilities needed to progress their career and then provide learning opportunities when, where and how they want them in a way that suits their own learning style and motivation. Offering opportunities for learning and personal development will be seen as a recruitment differentiator.

3.    Expect more mobile learning

Given the expectation of flexibility and mobility, the modern learner learns anywhere and anytime, using their smartphones, tablets and laptops. Time and location are not fixed in this way for learning, with mobile learning more and more accepted. Expect an increasing use of YouTube type videos where employees can create and access content. This rise of user-generated content that others freely access will challenge the concept of recognized subject matter experts and ‘approved’ operating procedures. Everyone and anyone’s opinion will be offered as the best way to perform in your workplace.

4.    The workplace will become the learning environment

Companies will embrace the 70% learning proposed in the 70:20:10 model and organizations will intentionally facilitate learning on-the-job to make learning a normal component of daily work. This will drive three significant changes:

a) A growing library of individualized learning content, where the L&D function operates as curators of learning resources. 

b) Leaders operating as coaches and mentors at all levels of an organisation, and not all existing managers will be able to adapt to this paradigm shift.

c) The traditional 10% learning workshops will flip, shifting from delivering content to be more about engaging and motivating learners, and providing experiential, reflective learning experiences to challenge and grow an individual’s self-awareness.

5.    Social learning will be the norm

Learners will seek opportunities to engage with other learners to discuss and reflect how they explore and apply new ideas. These peer-managed groups will be a mixture of face-to-face and social learning forums with the ability to quickly form and disband. Knowledge sharing will be a global phenomenon with employees sharing their knowledge to learn from each other by discussing and evaluating best practice.

6.    Behaviour on-the-job is what matters

Compliance, attendance based training will become less relevant with a greater focus on actual on-job capability. Traditional qualification based training will be challenged by a shift from acquiring and retaining knowledge to using dynamic assessments that enable learners to demonstrate they are applying learning to their real workplace environments. Traditional Learning Management Systems, designed to track and monitor learning/qualification completion, will struggle to record informal learning and capture on-the-job experience. As an example, we recognise that having your driving license does not guarantee other road users are safe when you are driving! It is unclear how the compliance need for monitoring and recording knowledge will be balanced with the need to know how well people are doing their job.