INTRODUCTION

Companies are looking for employees who are resilient, innovative and can adapt to rapid change, while the workforce is looking for fulfilling professions that are in balance with their life and lifestyles.

Nearly nine out of ten businesses worldwide are struggling with a skills deficit. The epidemic has sped up the transition to digital platforms for communications, commerce, and many other crucial corporate operations. It’s become more crucial than ever for businesses to provide efficient staff training. As many as 70% of employees are willing to leave their current job to work for a company that is more willing to invest in their training and education. Workers are eager to acquire the skills of the new age.

The very last thing you want to do is to revert to or continue standard educational programs that are just minimally engaging when you have workers who want to learn and upskill. The latest report by KNOLSKAPE Insights Centre, “L&D Trends in the UK 2025: The Rise of Experiential Learning”, L&D Predictions 2025: Learning in the Age of GenAI.

Here are ten Learning and Development trends that we saw in 2022 that point towards better educational solutions which resonate with the workforce’s brightest minds.

 

1. Reskilling and Upskilling Continue to Thrive

In the 2022 L&D Global Sentiment Survey, reskilling and upskilling were ranked first  same as in 2021 and may continue to be so the next year as well.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on learning and development in general as well as talent management specifically. In actuality, the unexpected shift to remote work and increased digitalization have changed the required skill sets for employees.

Organizations are thus dealing with a skills gap in their workforces. In fact, 87% of organizations are now facing skills gaps or anticipate having them within the next five years, according to a McKinsey & Company survey.

Organizations continued to reskill and upskill their workforces in 2022 to close these skills gaps. The goal of upskilling is to impart new skills to improve the performance of your workforce. On the other hand, reskilling happens when people acquire new skills that take the place of their current skill sets.

Businesses will operate more effectively both now and in the future as a result. After all, your staff members will be better prepared to utilize digital technologies and processes once they have received reskilling or upskilling on the required capabilities.

 

2. Rise of the skills-based organizations

 For decades, the job-based model had never been challenged until the rise of ‘The Great Resignation’. Facing serious talent crisis in the industry, many pioneering companies have transitioned into the skill-based model and witnessed remarkable results. A skills-based organization transforms the workforce from being defined by their jobs to being seen as whole individuals with skills and capabilities that can be fluidly deployed to work matching their interests and to evolving business priorities.

Skill development and skills-based planning stand out as the most effective ways to advance in 2022’s storm of critical issues. Even though it’s understandable to be concerned when, for instance, just 10% of the HR and business leaders claim that their firms have a skills database with profiles for every employee, there is some good news.

Businesses that switch to skills-based planning have a great opportunity to catalyze a learning culture and profit from new trends, particularly the confluence of learning, talent acquisition, talent development, and the explosive growth of internal mobility.

As per the Workplace Learning Report by LinkedIn, almost 79% of L&D professionals agree: It’s less expensive to reskill a current employee than to hire a new one.

 

3. Hybrid Work in demand

Hybrid work will continue to exist. According to a poll by Accenture, 63% of high-growth businesses have already implemented a “productivity anywhere” workforce model, and 83% of people prefer a hybrid work style. Work from any place is about owning results, regardless of where or when work occurs, for both employees and companies.

This makes it crucial for employers to define successful work from anywhere practices. Many employers are developing guidelines to guarantee virtual collaboration, coaching, and asynchronous brainstorming for remote workers. These include setting up online communities of practice for remote employees, making sure everyone who works remotely has the correct set of communication tools like Slack, and providing synchronous brainstorming tools like Miro, Mural, Stormboard, and Annotator.

 

4. Boost in internal mobility

Companies are hiring internally much more frequently now. They look for talent within the organization as well as the external candidate pool. Organizations are less concerned with roles and job titles as a result of a larger emphasis on skills, experiences, and qualifications.

External hiring is challenging and expensive. However, if your company is unable to keep talent, it will be unable to employ quickly enough. In other words, the time when a candidate could be sold to a firm has passed. Welcome to the time when you can expand and improve your talents.

Employees in learning businesses have the resources they need to take charge of their own growth. Employees can grow their abilities and get ready for new tasks inside the organization with the help of resources like an internal knowledge academy. Effective onboarding frameworks facilitate the transfer between roles and further internal mobility.

 

5. Collaboration and Social Learning Remain in Focus

Humans are naturally social creatures. Making educational experiences social only makes sense in this context.

Since many years ago, social learning has become more significant. What therefore, made social learning in 2022 so unique? Because of the dispersed and fragmented teams, the previous two years have been quite difficult in the L&D sector.

Only 28% of businesses use social learning to offer their online training, according to the CIPD. However, in 2020, the percentage was only 19%. This development suggests that the time is right to create a solid social learning community around the training of your business.

Using social learning to train your staff members can be incredibly successful. After all, by upskilling numerous learners at once, you can generate effect at scale when you bring individuals with same goals together.

 

6. Micro learning is evolving

Staff members are busier than ever. They are now required to become accustomed to remote tools and teamwork on top of juggling their regular jobs.

It may be very challenging to make sure that your employees complete all of the necessary training with this time shortfall. In actuality, workers only invest 24 minutes a week in learning. And for this reason, microlearning ruled the market in 2022.

Bite-sized bits of training material are broken down into microlearning. These shorter content modules typically take five to ten minutes to complete, so they fit directly into the schedules of your busy learners.

Additionally, research points to the tremendous effectiveness of microlearning! It can increase learner engagement by 50% while enhancing information transfer by 17%.

Even though microlearning has been popular for a few years, its function is evolving. In fact, learner motivation is the key to the next generation of microlearning, according to ATD. Because learner demands are continuously changing, microlearning makes it simpler to satisfy them than standard training.

 

7. Learning Designed by Data

The widespread use of data in corporate learning design was likely the biggest and most significant L&D trend in 2022. Yes, forward-thinking businesses have been taking this approach for a while, but as of last year, it has become the norm.

What are the main advantages? Business leaders will be given the tools they need to ask the right questions at the right times, understand what matters most, and create learning solutions that take organizational and learner outcomes into consideration.

In addition, as more organizations transition from stand-alone learning to a culture of continuous learning for the benefit of work, which is characterized by active participation and tapping into tacit organizational knowledge, they will do so equipped for the first time with data-driven insight. What was the outcome? A self-sustaining learning success cycle that may be iterated as needed and will significantly improve the corporate learning landscape.

 

8. Simulation-based learning gain popularity

Simulator-based training takes into mind the expectations of visual learners who benefit from hands-on exercises because not everyone learns auditorily or visually. With the advancement of technology, e-learning tools, and our knowledge of how people learn, simulation-based training is growing in popularity.

The market for simulation learning has experienced substantial expansion as a result of the desire for cutting-edge and individualized training solutions. The combination of interactive computer-based 3D simulations, LIVE human contact, and artificial intelligence has improved simulation learning, providing the trainee with advanced training.

KNOLSKAPE has developed a variety of Simulations for people to learn via experiential learning courses rather than being preached.

 

9. Diversity and Inclusion Become More Important Than Ever

Prior to COVID-19, diversity and inclusion training had already begun to gain some traction, but current international developments and public sentiment have sped up D&I training activities. It’s currently one of the L&D industry’s most encouraging trends.

For instance, the trainers at Speak First evaluated the top learning categories for businesses in 2021. Diversity and inclusion were ranked third at the time (56%). It moved up a place and gained importance (60%) in 2022.

Similar to this, according to LinkedIn’s 2021 Workplace Learning Report, D&I has been prioritized by 64% of L&D professionals. The same trend continued in 2022, where 43% concluded that L&D shares responsibility for the DE&I strategy.

And it makes sense why! Effective D&I programs increase an organization’s likelihood of being viewed as a talent-rich leader in the industry. We therefore anticipate that this focus will persist through 2023.

 

10. Focus on Building Learning Ecosystems

As we have seen, there is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. And this is the cause of the emergence of individualized learning. But in order to advance matters, the year 2022 placed more emphasis on creating efficient learning ecosystems.

LMSs or LXPs, for example, can be very powerful learning platforms on their own. However, these methods don’t offer much latitude or discretion over how students acquire knowledge. Thus, the significance of learning ecosystems.

A symbiotic environment where your learners may simply and effectively interact with each other, their training content, technologies, and data is known as a learning ecosystem.

For instance, you could offer a learning app alongside your LMS to give your learners more access options to their training materials. But learning ecosystems go further than the resources you offer!

Final Words

A few of these learning and development (L&D) trends have been present for a while, but others have developed or evolved in 2022 as a result of the pandemic. The fundamental force behind these shifts, though, is undoubtedly digital transformation.

It’s important to comprehend how the industry is changing, even though not all of these trends may apply to you and your training program. Nevertheless, it’s clear that the learning and development landscape is changing. We predict that the future is more fun, engaging, techy and gamified than ever before. We are excited to see how the year 2023 shapes the L&D world, and which of these trends are here to stay!