In a year marked by transformation, Tracey Power, Chief People Officer at Highspring, is leading with intention. From revamping onboarding experiences to integrating AI into peer-led training, Tracey shares how Highspring’s 2025 learning and development strategy balances agility, scale, and sustainability.

In the first part of the interview, Tracey shares how Highspring is tackling the biggest L&D challenges in 2025 — from making learning a priority to showing real results. She highlights how their programs are helping leaders grow, teams perform better, and a stronger company culture take shape.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: What is your L&D strategy for 2025?

Tracey: Our learning and development strategy for 2025 is deeply rooted in agility, alignment, and intentionality — especially as we navigate a transformative year following our brand transformation to Highspring and Vaco by Highspring.

One of our top priorities was establishing a robust and thoughtful onboarding experience that not only equips new hires with the tools to succeed in their roles but also immerses them in our culture and values. We believe that from day one, employees should gain a deep understanding of who we are as a company, what we stand for, and how we show up for our clients and each other.

We offer a mix of role-specific training for functions including sales, recruiting, and consulting, as well as broader programming that includes both hard skills — systems training, operational processes, and professional development — and soft skills, such as communication, goal setting, and leadership capabilities.

Leadership training is a key focus for us, and we’re intentional about covering both strategic thinking and the practical aspects of people management, such as conducting performance reviews or navigating compensation conversations.

We also consider how our employees best absorb training—whether that’s live and in-person, virtual, or self-paced — and we tailor the delivery accordingly. Compliance and values-based training is another important pillar of our approach, including ongoing programs around ethics, anti-harassment, and unconscious bias.

Our L&D strategy is about building a culture of continuous learning and providing clear pathways for career growth, so every employee feels supported, empowered, and aligned with our collective purpose.
 

Q: What is going to be your biggest challenge when it comes to employee learning and development in 2025 and beyond?

Tracey: One of the biggest challenges all organizations face with L&D is time — specifically, creating the space for meaningful development while the business continues to move at full speed. It’s easy to fall into the trap of prioritizing short-term productivity over long-term growth, but we’ve found that even a small investment in training can lead to behavior shifts that have a lasting impact on performance.

The challenge is helping leaders see that giving their teams a few hours to sharpen their skills isn’t taking away work time, but rather an investment in better outcomes.

Another challenge is scale. We have a small but mighty training team supporting a growing and complex organization. They’ve done an incredible job curating a robust catalog of programs, but as our business evolves — especially considering our brand transformation and unified go-to-market strategy — our programs need to evolve with it. We're also focused on ensuring our client-facing employees deeply understand our new story, the full scope of our capabilities, and how to effectively communicate the value we bring to the market.

Equally important is reinforcement. Training doesn’t stick unless it’s reinforced quickly and consistently. Studies show people forget the majority of what they learn in a session unless they practice the skill within 48 hours. A critical piece of our strategy is enabling our leaders to carry those lessons forward, creating the kind of real-time coaching that makes development efforts sustainable and actionable.
 

Q: Can you provide examples of how learner programs have directly impacted your employees and the organization’s overall performance or productivity?

Tracey: One of the most impactful examples is our Leadership Foundations program. It's designed to equip our leaders with the tools they need to navigate real-world challenges — whether it’s giving feedback, having difficult conversations, or guiding teams through change. We’ve seen a noticeable shift: managers now approach situations with more confidence and clarity, which strengthens leadership across the board.

On the sales side, our structured sales training and models have been game-changers. By providing a clear framework for client and account management, we’ve helped our teams approach their roles with more strategy and consistency, which ultimately drives results. It’s about giving people a roadmap so they’re not just working hard but working smart.

Beyond individual skill-building, our programs also focus on creating meaningful cross-functional connections. During in-person sessions, we intentionally bring together employees from different business units and geographies. That’s been a huge win for collaboration. People leave with not just new knowledge, but new relationships. They know who to call when they need help — and that builds a stronger, more connected culture, especially in a hybrid or distributed workforce like ours.
 

Q: What specific metrics or KPIs do you use to track the return on investment (ROI) for your L&D initiatives?

Tracey: As a large, enterprise organization, one of our primary focuses is reach — specifically, how many employees are engaging with our learning programs and what percentage of our business units are represented. We use this data to ensure that no part of the organization is left behind and that every employee has access to the resources and support they need to grow.

While we’re still building the baseline data required to measure long-term impact through metrics like retention or productivity gains, we’re very intentional about tracking participation, representation, and engagement across the company. If we notice that a particular group or function is underrepresented in our programming, we respond by developing targeted initiatives to ensure they receive training targeted to their development needs.

Additionally, many of our learning and development efforts are closely aligned with our career pathing and performance management strategies — embedding growth opportunities directly into the employee experience. Over time, this integrated approach will provide more measurable outcomes tied to advancement, engagement, and overall performance.
 

Q: With the rise of AI and automation, how have your L&D programs evolved to meet the skills needs of 2025?

Tracey: We’ve taken a very intentional approach to integrating AI and automation into our L&D strategy — not just to stay on trend, but to genuinely equip our people with tools that drive better outcomes in their roles. For us, it’s not about training for training’s sake. It’s about identifying the behaviors we want to shift and then building programs that enable that change.

Right now, we’re focused on helping our teams use AI to be more efficient and effective in their day-to-day work. For example, when a great human resources AI course became available, one of our team members took it and came back to teach the rest of the team. That peer-led approach has jump-started how our group is using AI and created space for shared learning and experimentation.

Looking ahead, we’re exploring ways to leverage AI as an interactive learning tool. Think sales roleplay simulations, real-time feedback platforms, and more immersive e-learning environments. As these tools evolve, so will our programming.

Q: How do you balance short-term learning outcomes (e.g., skill acquisition) with long-term organizational growth when calculating ROI?

Tracey: We see short-term skill development and long-term organizational growth as two sides of the same coin — you can’t have one without the other. Achieving long-term growth requires us to be deliberate about creating incremental wins along the way. That means reverse engineering our goals: if we want to be a high-performing organization a year from now, what foundational skills, behaviors, and outcomes need to be in place today?

We also look at things like sales metrics, product penetration, and how someone progresses through their career path as signals of ROI. Are they evolving from Sales 101 to 301, for example? Are they taking the initiative to learn more? Those high-potential individuals who are hungry to grow often create the ripple effect across the organization.

Click here to read Part II.



 
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