In this blog post, you will read about the key points from the recent World Of Learning Report 2023, where Stella Collins, our Chief Learning Officer contributed.

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Find out about the significant trends and current challenges in the field of learning and  development with insights from industry experts, including our co-founder Stella Collins.

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Here’s our take on it for your organisation where upskilling people matters.

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Key Learning Trends for 2024

• Business alignment remains crucial: Aligning L&D with business objectives continues as a primary focus.

• The growing influence of Artificial Intelligence in learning: AI has already made a notable impact in 2023 and is set to become an even more integral part of the L&D landscape in 2024.

• A shift to skills: There's a notable shift from knowledge acquisition to emphasising behaviour change, skills and practical application in the workplace.

• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at the forefront: L&D is increasingly recognised as pivotal in promoting DEIB so everyone has access to meaningful work and skills development opportunities.

• Addressing employee engagement and retention: Following the trend of “The Great Resignation” and the emergence of “quiet quitting”, it remains vital to maintain employee engagement and foster continuous skill development.

• Hybrid working needs a new approach: Making hybrid working effective and inclusive for all is a challenge that requires innovative solutions from both employees and organisations.

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Navigating your challenges

After reading the report ourselves we were thrilled to see that our Stellar Labs skills transfer platform actively supports businesses like yours to navigate these challenges.

Align with business

Many L&D professionals still operate without a clear learning strategy aligned with the business's goals. This can result in well-intentioned training programs that fail to drive meaningful business outcomes or address critical skills gaps.

To bridge this gap you must actively talk and listen to other people in the organisation so you are aware of their priorities and business needs. Adopt a proactive approach that moves beyond traditional training and instead supports people to learn with and from their work. Help your stakeholders to specify what end results they need from learning initiatives.

How does the Stellar Labs platform align with business? Our behaviour generator simplifies the process of aligning behaviours and outcomes with stakeholders, particularly when clarifying goals like 'what do we want people to achieve post-training?’.

Retain and develop employees

In the wake of 'The Great Resignation,' a new phenomenon known as “quiet quitting” emerged with employees who are physically present but mentally disengaged. This trend highlights a critical need for effective retention and it’s known that high value training is seen as a benefit by employees.

Ensure learning opportunities create a sense of engagement and belonging among your workforce. ‘Lunch and learn’ might sound old fashioned but it’s a great way to bring people together. Action Learning Sets are a structured approach to help people learn by solving real challenges. Support mentoring and coaching so that more experienced people develop their colleagues as the norm.

At Stellar Labs, we facilitate connection among facilitators, learners, and mentors through discussion forums, work-based actions, and surveys to address real-world challenges.

Upskill and Reskill

The evolving workplace demands a renewed focus on upskilling and reskilling, making it a top priority for organisations. With rapid technological advancements and changing business needs, it's crucial to equip employees with relevant skills that go beyond traditional knowledge. You might have heard about the knowledge economy, but we’re actually in a skills economy

Focus on behaviour change and skills practice in the workplace. Put the emphasis on real-world application and hands-on experience with plenty of constructive feedback. When people are actively supported by managers and successfully apply their skills on the job they are more adaptable and ready for the challenges of a dynamic work environment.

A unique feature of Stellar Labs is the support we provide managers in helping their team members practice, reflect, and learn from work-based actions.

Cultivate a learning culture

Establishing a mature learning culture remains a challenge for many organisations but it’s crucial to sustain long-term business growth and innovation because it encourages continuous learning and skill development.

Don’t just provide access to learning resources because our brains are designed to forget, unless people are motivated to recall and retain information - information needs to be structured and relevant. Develop an environment where learning is a shared responsibility and employees are motivated to develop because they recognise the business / team / personal benefits of learning.

The Stellar Labs platform has a structured approach that makes the learning process transparent, enabling all colleagues to understand their contribution to a results and impact-focused learning culture.

Link learning to performance and productivity

A significant challenge for L&D is to demonstrate the tangible impact of learning programs on business performance. Many organisations still rely on vanity metrics like course completion rates or participant satisfaction, which do not tell you whether someone is using their new knowledge or skills.

Shift your focus towards metrics that demonstrate behaviour change and improvement in work performance. Don’t only measure people’s performance immediately after they finish training. What do they still do differently in a week or a month? How has their performance or productivity increased over the longer team? And importantly make sure you’re enlisting the support of their supervisors and colleagues to help them practice in the workplace and stay on track.

Configurable dashboards enable employees, managers and L&D to track progress and performance so that finally you start to see the return on your investment in L&D.

How does the Stellar Labs platform achieve this? Configurable dashboards enables employees, managers, and L&D professionals to track progress and performance, providing a clear view of the return on investment in L&D.

For a deeper dive explore the "World of Learning Report: Workplace Learning and Performance in 2024". Download your free copy of the report here and let the insights inspire and inform your learning strategies in the coming months.

To see how you can quickly and easily implement these strategies and more, with the aid of innovative technology, fuelled by AI and directed by neuroscience, ask for a free trial of the Stellar Labs platform.