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Learning and development teams are heading into 2025 with one clear reality: change is the new status quo.
The trends on the horizon point to both opportunity and disruption. Josh Bersin, HR expert and founder of The Josh Bersin company, is optimistic. “We see a massive disruption in L&D in 2025, all for the positive.”
The question isn’t whether L&D can keep up — it’s how they’ll stay ahead. Let’s take a look at the top trends to watch for in 2025.
1. More Growth, Less People Focus
During the pandemic, many companies were hard-pressed to find employees. The result was people-focused organizations that touted their employee experience priorities. Now, that’s going to change.
Dani Johnson, co-founder and principal analyst at RedThread Research, said companies are more focused on growth today. And more growth and less people focus means budgets might be cut, leaving L&D to do more with less.
It also means a new priority for L&D teams: “How do I find out the skills that individuals need in order to change the behavior so that we get that growth,” asked Johnson, “rather than this Netflix-for-learning mess that we've been in for the last few years?”
2. Moving From AI Experimentation to Use
Of course, artificial intelligence (AI) will become a much larger part of learning and development in 2025.
Brandon Carson, global head of learning, leadership and cultural experiences at Starbucks, said, “HR and L&D will continue to integrate their practices to craft end-to-end employee experience products.”
Part of that, he explained, will be AI in HR and L&D workflows to augment the people practice and drive more automation in talent processes and procedures.
Johnson added that L&D departments have been doing a lot of experimentation with AI for the past two to three years. In 2025, that will change into actual use cases. “So instead of just experimenting for the individual, I think L&D is going to use some of this technology that's popped up and start to actually build use cases that will take the stupid work off their plate and will enable end users to to help.”
Some specific use cases we might see? More AI coaches, along with simulated experiences using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Related Article: Tips for Wary HR Leaders to Get Started With AI Implementation
3. Rethinking the L&D Tech Stack
For the first time in over 20 years, L&D teams have the opportunity to replace or upgrade their learning management systems (LMS), learning experience platforms (LXPs) and content management systems (CMS) with AI platforms, said Bersin.
“Most larger companies have struggled with these legacy systems and kept their content development at the current level,” he noted. “The new AI platforms generate content 10 to 100 times faster, they personalize the experience and the content can be updated in minutes. This is a revolutionary change and we are heavily involved with many large companies in this process.”
Legacy LMS systems and vendors will be threatened, Bersin claimed, including ERP vendors. And some companies are realizing that the LXP may also be out of date.
“Despite constant interest in skills, companies are going to find that AI-first learning platforms and agents will totally hollow out the existing infrastructure. So 2025 is going to be a time to rethink the whole L&D technology stack.”
Beyond the learning and content spaces, Carson added that in 2025, companies will also focus on “leveraging new and emerging technologies to build a talent intelligence platform that helps them proactively connect rapidly changing business needs to a dynamic marketplace of skills and capabilities across the workforce.”
4. A New (or Old) Outlook on Skills
Speaking of skills, how organizations approach them will also see big changes.
“The interest in skills will continue, but the idea of ‘skills based organization’ is likely to wane, since most companies now want skills integrated into their HR programs, not as an initiative in its own,” predicted Bersin.
According to Johnson, RedThread Research is starting to see organizations say they’re not sure if a skills-based organization is worthwhile. Instead, some are shifting back to a mindset very much like the competency models of the 1990s.
“The competency models were basically what we have with skills, only at a much higher level,” she said. “So with skills, we've gone and sort of defined each of the things that you need to do for a particular role.” The problem with this is that it varies by function and department and role and organization. “And so by the time you get one built, they're often outdated. And if you take that and you ramp it up by like two million, you get what kind of what's going on with skills right now.”
Currently, she continued, we have technology that’s able to help us understand how other organizations are assigning skills to rules. And AI came in, which changed almost everything.
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“And so now we're trying to determine, are these the skills that the role even needs, or are some of these skills going to go away because of AI? And we're changing all kinds of systems and processes in our organization, and that means the skills that people need for the jobs are different, and that means the way that I develop those skills are different and the types of skills that I develop are different. And so it's just a gigantic mess.”
Related Article: Skills-Based Hiring Is All Talk and (Almost) No Action
5. Geopolitical Disruption to the Workforce
One change to expect in 2025 is organizations adjusting their workforces due to global instability.
“We've been a fairly global society for quite a while,” said Johnson. However, “In the last couple of years, we've seen some things that give us pause. So Israel is still at war, Ukraine is still at war. China is now in a trade war with us.”
One result of this, she explained, is onshoring — bringing work from places like Taiwan, for example, back into the U.S. Another effect is ramp ups in different parts of the world. Where previously you’d see outsourcing to India and China, now, companies are looking at Latin America as a new source of talent.
“And so it's not necessarily a broader, more dispersed workforce. In some cases, it's a tighter, closer to home workforce. But the changes that are happening globally require HR organizations, particularly, to determine where they're going to be able to find that talent in ways that are legal and cost effective.”
Related Article: How I Decided to Launch an AI Chatbot in Our Recruitment Process
6. More Remote vs. In-Office Power Struggles
The remote vs. in-office debate has been going strong in 2024, with many companies making headlines for issuing return-to-office mandates. The result is employee livelihoods on the line and quite a bit of negative sentiment toward organizations prioritizing in-office work over the benefits of work from home.
In fact, according to a FlexJobs’ report, 95% of working professionals surveyed said they want remote work in some form, whether that’s fully remote or a hybrid arrangement. Meaning only 5% are up for working in the office full-time.
This debate, said Johnson, has a big impact on L&D. “Are we gonna have people in the office so that we can do the types of face-to-face stuff? Or do we need to think more broadly about how we deliver that?” For now, it seems, that question is still up in the air.
The Road Ahead for L&D
New trends and those with staying power will shape L&D into a new beast in 2025. Are you prepared?
One way to stay ahead of the curve, said Carson, is to build an infrastructure for continuous development so that you have a future-ready workforce with a deep bench of talent readiness. “This requires a wholesale re-thinking of many current L&D functions. Building more trust and connection to the workforce to provide career opportunities at all levels and leveraging L&D as a true enterprise-wide capability-building force is necessary and requires investment.”
The bottom line? L&D teams in 2025 will be defined by their ability to adapt, innovate and align with business priorities amid disruption. The organizations that get this right will not only keep pace, but set the standard for the future of work.
