HR Insights
December 9, 2024

Trends in workplace learning every leader should know

Rethink the traditional approach to workplace learning to ensure your people have the skills required to succeed today and in the future. Here are the key learning trends to keep an eye on.

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The business case for learning and development is clear. Ongoing labour and skills shortages are driving wages higher, leaving organisations to cope with rising costs. Meanwhile, workplace learning trends are revealing that employees want opportunities to grow their individual careers, and they’re choosing employers that offer career pathing over organisations with outdated training programs. 

Learning and development plans were once seen as a checkbox item to meet basic compliance training and certificate completions. Offering personalised development plans is now an essential strategy for employee retention and performance. These plans put employees on their desired paths, while building the next generation of in-demand skills right in house. According to LinkedIn, 8 in 10 people say learning adds purpose to their work.  

Today’s employers should establish an organisation-wide skills-based, career-centric learning strategy to reduce the high cost of turnover, fill open roles faster, address skills shortages, and minimise disruptions to business continuity. 

With more people working in remote work environments or on variable, flexible schedules, employers need different types of training to meet people where they are. Skills gaps can show up in multiple forms including lacking industry knowledge, technical capabilities, or interpersonal soft skills. In fact, many organisations are re-evaluating their learning and development programs to be personalised, targeted, and scalable.  

Here are some of the key workplace learning trends and types of training you should consider adopting. 

The new workplace learning trends 

1. Personalised 

With nearly half of workers saying they would consider switching jobs for better learning opportunities, workplace learning experiences will increasingly need to be tailored to the varying preferences, expectations, and learning styles of all their learners. The bar for quality learning content has been set higher, and what works for one group of people might not work for another. For example, traditional training manuals and long-form content might make it difficult for some employees to retain what they’ve learned, while for others, it may be an ideal format. 

Personalised learning platforms or Learning Experience Platforms help organisations create customised learning paths for each employee, as this type of technology recommends modules to the learner based on their own unique context. To truly stand out in a competitive market, employers need to be able to offer learning plans that provide tailored recommendations based on the individual’s current skillset, role, and learning preferences. 

2. Career-centric  

Companies will also need to focus on tying employee learning paths to performance management to illustrate clear career progression and encourage employees to drive their own development. Additionally, employees will be more likely to participate in these types of training and reskilling initiatives if they see the investment in their own development. Identifying in-demand skills and gaps within your talent pool can help guide your organisation on which types of skills to nurture, such as technical capabilities or leadership qualities.  

This workplace learning trend also strengthens your learning and development function. Connecting learning paths to performance management not only makes progress tangible to leadership but also involves managers and team leads directly in the learning and development process. 

3. Microlearning 

Workplaces today are busier than ever, and employees are more likely to be checking in from multiple devices and locations. To match this, organisations need to consider the methods of delivery and type of content they’re providing to ensure their people are effectively retaining the material. In fact, if information isn’t applied within six days, we forget about 75% of it, as found by Harvard Business Review. Microlearning can help employees learn from short bits of information and immediately apply their learnings to the project or task at hand. For example, short snippets of information or videos pushed from mobile applications can help employees learn in the flow of work. Employers can remove friction points in the learning process by helping people learn on their own time, anywhere they are. 

4. AI-driven 

Traditional learning methods are evolving and using AI in learning development can help teams provide opportunities for more customised, effective learning content at scale. In addition to personalisation, new intelligent technologies are helping L&D teams create learning content more efficiently, save more time, and capture more data for analysis to better match employees with the right learning content. However, human oversight and data security remain key risks that leaders need to be aware of when leveraging new tech.  

5. Social 

Social learning methods such as cohort-based learning and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing are new impactful ways employees can build knowledge and skills quickly through peer collaboration and coaching in an informal setting. This type of training is ideal for developing soft skills training, allowing employees to share concepts on the job and directly reply to questions or read answers on specific topics. Social learning experiences accessible on mobile devices can help employees build knowledge and skills through peer collaboration and informal coaching. Additionally, this type of learning experience can help keep remote workforces engaged and connected to their colleagues. 

Related: Engage and retain top talent by elevating your employee learning experience 

Embedding learning into the employee experience 

Traditional ways of learning may not always be effective in today’s fast-paced and constantly changing landscape. Developing individualised, skills-based talent development doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Offering different types of training can help organisations offer more personalised options to a diverse workforce at scale. 

Businesses must stay ahead of workplace learning trends by implementing an effective learning and development strategy to build the next generation of in-demand skills, in-house, with the dual benefit of putting your employees on their desired development paths. Creating a culture of skills-based, career-centric learning should be a priority, spurring the need to update the traditional learning infrastructure and make learning part of the broader and on-going employee experience. 

Learn how Dayforce Learning helps organisations build learning into their culture 


This post was originally published on May 18, 2021 and was updated on December 9th, 2024 for recency and to include new perspectives on the topic.

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