A successful learning and development (L&D) strategy for 2023 needs to focus on the intersection of business, technology, and impact.

L&D teams need to incorporate trends such as microlearning, data-driven learning, and extended reality (XR) into their strategies to create engaging and impactful learning experiences that are tailored to the needs of the modern business.

With the right strategy, these trends can unlock a new world of possibilities for training in the future.

Robin Hoyle, a writer and consultant working with organisations large and small to implement change through people development, recently reflected on this in his blog on TrainingZone (UK).

Robin wrote on how he was encouraged to see “that a lot of the L&D conversation of the year” was focusing on three key areas:

S: Strategy
T: Techno9logy
I: Impact

Strategy:
The focus for L&D should be to develop and maintain the necessary skills for success now and in the foreseeable future.
For a long time, L&D teams have been urged to be more mindful of corporate strategy. However, during the pandemic and its consequences, it has become increasingly evident that business strategy has started to consider the capabilities of the people it relies on. Therefore, it is not anymore just a matter of having the right aptitude, but wider aspects that can impact productivity, such as available time, resources, equipment, and guidance.

Technology:
Each year, using technology for learning appears to become more of a trend. Having to depend on technology to keep learning during multiple lockdowns, many became aware of what works and what doesn’t.

Technology can be used to address the learning needs of organisations and their employees, although too often, implementing a particular technology decides how and what people are supposed to learn, even though we all know that a single solution rarely, if ever, is suitable for all.

Impact:
The strategies and technology to be implemented will be determined by what L&D departments are looking to accomplish and how we will know when they have succeeded.
Robin talks about his experience on this matter by referring to be “given statistics about how many views had been on how many videos”. Although these could be seen as valid advertising metrics, they are pointless when it comes to learning and, above all, team and individual performance growth.
The point being that If we can’t measure our value in terms of improved performance and capability, then we’re doing the wrong things.

So let’s take some guidance from Robin – lets see if we can focus on these three aspects as part of our L&D journey in 2023.

I am sure there will be time to reflect on these in the last days of 2023 and as Robin says, “be amazed at just how wrong I have been”

Robin, we don’t think you will need to do that – we believe you are as we say down under “on the money” with these three trends.

Happy New (L&D) Year 2023!

Access to full blog here:
https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/lead/strategy/three-learning-and-development-trends-for-2023