Trends 2019: What's next for learning and talent development

While L&D’s reputational stock may have taken a hit in the last decade, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has catapulted Talent Development back into the limelight.

The world of work is experiencing a perfect storm of challenging forces, including:

• • Rapid advances in technologies like AI and automation

  • Changing workforce expectations and demographics

  • New business models

  • The rise of a digitally native, globally dispersed workforce

  • Digital transformation has changed the nature of the jobs we do and how and where we do them. It is even changing who does the work – humans, robots, or co-bots. The division of labour between humans, machines, and AI is shifting quickly. By 2025, it is estimated that humans will perform just 48% of total workplace task hours, with machines and algorithms picking up the rest^₁. As a result, over the next decade, millions of workers will switch occupational categories. This means workplace skills requirements will change.

Thus, this is a significant moment for workplace learning. Work in the decades ahead may no longer be what it used to, but learning will not
be the same either.

L&D professionals must monitor key learning trends for inspiration and guidance.

5 Trends to watch:

1. Personalization
Learning is moving to an individualised experience, where learners will access material tailored to specific needs, roles, or departments. This trend has accelerated in the last year thanks to AI, and it offers tremendous potential efficiencies for workers with little time to learn.

2. Data and Learning Analytics
Once, we spoke of metrics such as impact, learning efficacy, and ROI. Today, analytics, fuelled by AI, have either replaced metrics or transformed them into Learning Analytics, offering new tools to create measurable, positive business and people outcomes and informed decisions around learning.

3. A Learner Ecosystem
Powered by new platforms such as LXPs (Learning Experience Platforms), learner-centred ecosystems promise a rich learner-driven experience where learners control and contribute to learning, rather than just ‘receiving’. Content from many sources can be created and shaped on the fly and learning can be integrated with productivity, in ecosystems that optimize learning for every employee.

4. Social and Collaborative Learning
Social tools support true collaboration in the workplace and integrate seamlessly into mainstream productivity tools. Using channels designed for social collaboration and learning can yield enormous benefits when it comes to sharing, contributing, knowledge exchange, and development in a corporate context.

5. More Modalities
L&D’s learning delivery toolkit is also growing, with an expanding range of technologies and modalities for every device.

Some modalities, like video, continue to shift from a passive medium to a more dynamic, interactive experience that fosters lasting learning and changed behaviour. Others, such as augmented and immersive realities, build empathy and connection, providing new, realistic experiences in a safe environment. Virtual assistants are entering the workplace and voice is emerging as a new medium, with far-reaching implications for how we experience and engage in work and learning.

Organizations and individuals will need to embrace a lifelong-learning mindset if they are to remain relevant in today’s marketplace.

We cannot predict what the decade ahead may look like for our workers and learners, but we can kickstart our thinking today.

^1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/future-of-jobs-2018-things-to-know/