Key Takeaways:

• L&D must lean into tactics that limit operational disruption while continuing to provide the support people need to perform at their best.
• L&D must move beyond isolated AI tools and use cases in 2024. We must rethink the role L&D plays within an AI-enabled workplace and adapt our practices accordingly.
• L&D must step in to reduce the number of “accidental managers” (85% are promoted without adequate training).

This article is clickbait.

Well … it’s usually clickbait. Every author, vendor, analyst and “thought leader” drops predictions this time of year. They publish articles, webinars and whitepapers with titles like “Gazing into the Crystal Ball of L&D” and “6 Must-Watch L&D Trends for 2024.” Some provide evidence-based analysis of the changing professional landscape. Most do it for clicks and FOMO.

Heading Back to the Future

How well do these annual predictions align with learning and development (L&D) realities? After all, L&D pros work in every industry and region. We support a wide range of workforces, from retail associates and manufacturing workers to delivery drivers and corporate teams. We may do similar jobs, but we solve lots of different problems.

To find out, I traveled back in time to December 2022 and picked up 30 articles predicting the biggest L&D trends for 2023. Then, I fed the content to ChatGPT-4 to extract the biggest themes.

Here’s what we were supposed to focus on for the past 12 months:

1. Microlearning and bite-sized content
2. Skills-based learning
3. Personalization and individualization
4. Remote work and virtual training
5. Data-based decision-making
6. Employee wellbeing
7. Cultural competency and inclusion
8. Social learning and collaboration
9. AI and machine learning
10. Economic factors
11. Burnout
12. Extended reality (XR)
13. Gamification and interactive content
14. Gig work
15. Learning ecosystems
16. User-generated content
17. Learning on demand
18. Outsourcing content services
19. Learning experience platforms
20. Return on investment
21. Growth mindset
22. Practice and reinforcement
23. Design thinking
24. Frontline workers

Did you find time for all of that? I sure didn’t.

Finding Our Focus

John Doerr put it best in Measure What Matters: “We must realize - and act on the realization - that if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.” 2024 prediction lists will include another overwhelming collection of “the most important things for next year.” While L&D must set time aside for exploring new ideas, no one benefits if we’re off chasing trends or getting distracted by shiny objects. Instead, the key to predicting L&D’s not-so-distant future is understanding the micro and macro influences on how we do our jobs.

Micro factors are unique to your organization. They include your company’s short-term priorities, operating practices, technology stack and workplace environment. L&D pros must consider these factors to architect a right-fit learning ecosystem, including the tools, tactics and technologies needed to help the organization achieve its goals. This is also where annual predictions fall short because they’re not created with your specific organization in mind.

Then there are macro influences - factors that impact the broader workplace regardless of company. They include economic trends, technological innovation, political shifts and social change. This is where informed predictions can be especially useful. Macro insights help L&D pros consider how factors outside their four walls may help or hinder their efforts.

Here are 3 major macro influences that will impact L&D in 2024 (and how we must adapt to them).

Tight Purse Strings Sideline Learning

Mark Zuckerberg may have declared 2023 the “Year of Efficiency,” but Meta certainly wasn’t the only company to adopt this mantra. Organizations across every sector - from technology and retail to healthcare and finance - cut costs through restructuring and layoffs. Many paired down their workforces, including HR and L&D, to 2019 levels after two years of pandemic-induced hiring. Large capital expenditures, including HR programs and technology implementations, were heavily scrutinized with many being delayed or canceled altogether.

US economic growth is expected to decelerate in 2024. The Fed may be done hiking interest rates thanks to declining inflation. Still, analysts expect consumer spending to slow next year while unemployment begins to drift upward. Continued recessionary fears along with rising costs, international conflicts and political uncertainty will push executives to tighten budgets, hire sparingly and explore new ways to maximize efficiency and boost profits through at least H1.

Ongoing cost cuts will negatively impact L&D in another big way: time. When staffing is reduced and people are required to do more with less, they don’t have time for nonessential activities. That includes traditional learning and development offerings. L&D must lean into tactics that limit operational disruption while continuing to provide the support people need to perform at their best. This includes workflow-friendly approaches, such as microlearning, performance support and coaching. At the same time, L&D must be ready to respond to economic upswings and subsequent requests for onboarding and skill-building programs.

AI Moves from Experimentation to Value Creation

Artificial intelligence will be at the top of most 2024 predictions list (just above skills). But this isn’t just hype. We’re just beginning to understand the impact Generative AI will have on how work gets done. Today, 56% of workers use GenAI on the job. One in ten uses AI-powered tools every day. This number will continue to grow as LLMs like GPT-4, Gemini and LlAma improve and specialize.

AI adoption is also accelerating within HR, where 93% of managers using AI-enabled tools believe it contributes to cost savings. Plenty of questions remain regarding considerations like privacy, bias, copyright and security. The regulatory landscape is beginning to take shape with the passing of the EU AI Act. While AI has been embedded within learning technology for years, many L&D teams are just starting to experiment with GenAI. This includes use cases such as content development, language translation, performance support, coaching and personalization.

We may be at the peak of the GenAI hype cycle, but the digital evolution of work will only accelerate in 2024. As GenAI integration becomes table stakes, HR tech providers will find new value-add use cases in order to stand out in a competitive marketplace. Executives - driven by FOMO and a mandate to increase profitability despite slow economic growth - will leverage emerging technologies to adapt business models, improve efficiencies and reduce costs. L&D must move beyond isolated AI tools and use cases in 2024. We must rethink the role L&D plays within an AI-enabled workplace and adapt our practices accordingly. Otherwise, the organization will do it for us.

Managers Finally Have Their Day

Middle manager is the “middle seat” of the modern workplace. On one side, you have corporate - adding more and more tasks to the manager’s already overloaded plate. On the other side, you have employees - relying on the manager for communication, coaching, recognition and empathy. Managers, who are doing their best to just keep the lights on, are crunched in between them with no time to focus on themselves. It’s no wonder 46% of middle managers are likely to quit within the year due to stress.

To borrow a page from Zuck, 2024 must be “The Year of the Manager” in HR. It’s time to rethink the manager's job from the ground up, including selection, training, evaluation and compensation. L&D must step in to reduce the number of “accidental managers” (85% are promoted without adequate training). This includes shifting from structured leadership development programs, which provide limited-time benefits and are difficult to fit into the manager workload, to ongoing manager enablement that supports their changing development needs. HR must also partner with operations to simplify the day-to-day manager role. By reducing administrative burden and fostering continuous skill development, L&D can help managers better lead their teams and run their businesses. Otherwise, organizations will struggle to execute and lose a critical piece of the talent pipeline over the next few years.

Getting Past the Buzz

Predictions nudge us to think more boldly about the work we do. They simultaneously expose us to new ideas, challenge existing assumptions and confirm well-formed perspectives. Unfortunately, this value often gets lost in a sea of SEO-friendly wishlists with semi-veiled connections to the authors’ products and services. It’s already hard enough to get past the noise and keep up with changing industry trends. L&D professionals deserve better.

It would be easy to say “2024 is L&D’s year!” But it’s not. Otherwise, 2023 would have been L&D’s year as forecasted in last year’s predictions. The same goes for 2022. And the year before that. And the decade before that. Let’s be real. 2024 will be another challenging but meaningful year for L&D. We will struggle to prioritize learning programs alongside budget reductions and a never-ending list of operational initiatives. We will make small but important gains in our shift from order-takers to strategic partners.

We will check lots of regulatory boxes. And we will do everything we can to make sure the people we support get the help they need to do their best work. Hopefully, my predictions will help your L&D team be successful with all of this and more in 2024.

Be well.

Author Bio

JD Dillon is the world’s foremost expert in frontline enablement. He spent two decades working in operations and talent development with dynamic organizations like Disney, Kaplan and AMC. A respected author, speaker and advisor, JD continues to apply his passion for helping people do their best work every day in his role as Axonify's Chief Learning Officer. His new book - The Modern Learning Ecosystem - is available at jdwroteabook.com.

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