As organizations seek new strategies to develop talent and drive productivity in an ever-changing business landscape, HR leaders have a tremendous opportunity to evolve their approach to learning, skills development, and talent management by harnessing emerging technologies and homing in on the human element of work.
 

Rather than relying on conventional compliance training and rigid development programs, forward-thinking HR professionals will leverage data and analytics to hyper-personalize learning based on individual skills gaps and aspirations. These leaders will recognize the value of transferable skills like adaptability, critical thinking and communication in enabling employees to thrive in volatile times.

While organizations won’t slow in their pursuit of productivity, the conversation will finally shift from focusing on capital investments to a more holistic strategy that prioritizes empowering people and enables all parties to reap the benefits.

2024 calls for HR to reimagine its role in creating organizational success. By implementing new philosophies around lifelong learning, transferable skills and human-centric productivity, HR can become a transformative force for developing talent from the inside out. The future of work is undoubtedly human — and HR should lead the charge in helping employees reach their full potential.

1. People Data Will Enable L&D Leaders to Pursue Ambitious Strategies to Yield Results

Companies are bogged down in the timesheet view of learning: an hour a week, five hours a quarter, checking boxes to satisfy a quota. This approach isolates the tactics of learning while neglecting the strategies behind them. The result? Too many L&D programs fail to inspire workforces or deliver results.

The tactics of learning, executed through webinars, mini-courses, conferences, mentoring, and other means are essential. But the ambitions of learning should be greater than the sum of those parts.

Whether in traditional learning institutions or the organizations where we spend so much of our adult lives, learning should reveal opportunities we never expected were available to us. It should open doors to new career pathways, unexpected avenues of fulfilling work, and cumulative knowledge that inspires greatness in our daily lives. Learning can guide us to a different (and better) life if we let it.

Learning’s power to forge new paths doesn’t stop when we complete our formal education. Employers who champion this transformative view of lifelong learning will partner with employees to build real-world outcomes into their L&D strategies.   

In the year ahead, people data will take center stage as organizations recognize its potential to power more personalized, skills-focused learning. By using data to understand their workforce's skills proficiencies and gaps, interests, and career aspirations, learning leaders can synchronize the ambitions and outcomes that will grow their people and fuel organizational success.

2. Employers Will Lean on Transferable Skills as Their Secret Weapon

The value of transferable skills reveals itself most during rapid change and high pressure. Heading in 2024 with lean workforces and global volatility, employers will prize team members who can tackle new challenges with adaptable skill sets. Rather than endlessly seeking an expert they’ve yet to find (or hire), managers will mine their current workforces for resourceful team members eager to apply their critical thinking, communication and troubleshooting acumen.

For example, Pearson data tells us that the average accountant has 75% of skills matched to a data scientist. We also know that the adoption of automation has led to great demand for data scientists to help companies better understand what their data might be telling them. In contrast, automation has prompted many companies to reduce their accountant staffing. Because of the high skills match between accountants and data scientists, companies could choose to upskill individuals to help accountants become data scientists.

Companies invested in refining proficiencies like their workforce’s ability to cope with change and work out novel problems will gain a strong advantage over organizations hindered by the pursuit of perfection.

3. Organizations Will Shift Their Mindset on Productivity from Tools to People

For years, productivity has proven an elusive beast, with minimal growth globally despite organizations' best strategic efforts and capital investments. Though technology like automation assists in certain tasks, productivity ultimately relies on developing human capacity. Most organizations have historically channeled investments into infrastructure — building roads, purchasing laptops, and increasing internet availability.

Rather than fixate on technology investments alone to solve our productivity woes, organizations will look in their own backyards and take the time to understand the skills that make their people more productive — and strategize how to develop those skills. Savvy organizations' next pursuit must be grappling with the human element of productivity. These people insights, paired with the technological advancements already augmenting human work, will fundamentally transform productivity.

4. Companies Haven’t Gleaned the Value They Want from L&D Because Leaders Neglect the Learners

Many business leaders don’t see learning as a solution to their most pressing problems: operations, precision, pace, and productivity. These leaders have seen ineffective learning initiatives from both camps of L&D philosophy.

They’ve lived through lackluster, check-the-box compliance training that left new hires searching for better resources — and watched time and money poured into tuition assistance for university programs failing to map back to business priorities. As a result, decision-makers believe in the value of development, but not learning, to grow talent. And they budget accordingly.

For too long, learning has borne the brunt of the criticism when the real problem lies in the execution of learning initiatives. When organizations can deploy the right type of learning to the right person at the right time for the right purpose, learning contributes to talent growth and business excellence.

To gain support in 2024, forward-thinking L&D leaders will leverage insights about proficiency gaps and emerging skills demands to tailor learning to their workforces’ needs. And we’ll see the tides change.

Finally equipped to individualize learning, these leaders will clearly connect a specific role to its key skillset; identify and close skills gaps; and spotlight what learning will do for the employee and business. When executed correctly, workplace learning will demonstrate its undeniable value.

HR leaders have an unprecedented opportunity in 2024 to evolve from business partners to change agents. Rather than mere training compliance, HR can spearhead more personalized, skills-based learning initiatives informed by workforce analytics. They can champion critical transferable skills within their organizations to build adaptability and resilience. And they can shift mindsets from technology adoption to human empowerment to improve productivity.

Companies that capitalize on employees' adaptability, critical thinking, communication skills, and purpose will gain a competitive edge in times of volatility. HR leaders can redefine their strategic value in a radically human future of work. The time is now for HR to step up, look within, and lead the charge in developing tomorrow's talent today.

Author Bio

Ali Bebo is Chief Human Resources Officer at Pearson.

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